POLSCI 331 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: David Schmidtz, Win-Win Game, Basic Income
4 May 2018
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PHIL 9.15 Lecture Notes
Justification of the state property rights trade and markets
Hume’s theory
o No natural right to property
o But property rights should exist to the extent that it maximizes public utility
o We shouldn’t just accept the government or system handed down to us
o But we also shouldn’t resort to dissolution of government because it probably evolved to
solve certain problems
o Conditions that property rights exist
▪ Moderate resources and moderate sympathy
▪ Tenuous virtue vs. natural virtue
▪ Artificial virtue of justice that only applies to dividing up the world
Locke protects the sphere of liberty
o Start off with common ownership of everything
o Protect natural liberty to property as long as enough is left for others
o Two proviso – no spoil & enough and as good
Adam Smith – promoting your self interest is beneficial to others
o If you acted out of altruism, you would actually hurt others in the context of the
marketplace
David Schmidtz Reasons for Altruism
How can we have an unconditional right to exclude?
We live in a scarce world so appropriating some resources will inevitably leave someone worse off
Ex: take half of the trees in the world and create boats and houses
o Better off for people who can get the goods
o Fulfills spirit of Locke’s proviso
Permissible rules within the game of property
o Does the game itself leave enough and as good for others?
o Game can be weighted morally, but the moves in the game are not weighted morally
If I take something from the commons, it must make someone better off
o Actually a positive sum game
o Ex: early settlers get free rent, but they have to do the work to make future generations
better off = positive sum
o Problem: Very long-term theory, but individuals within the game might not have a positive
sum
o Paine – universal basic income
Scarce resources – such as scarce heavy metals
o Schmidtz believes that private property should be applied to these situations to make
innovative use out of it
o Heavy metals in the raw form is useless, but if you make it into technology or other things
(by mixing it with intellectual labor), people will actually want it
o Schmidtz believes that the scarcer the resource, the more urgently we need to privatize it
What if we had a scarce resource that we didn’t allow to be privatized?
o Commons tragedy
o Story behind it – land shared by farmers for grazing cows, but everyone takes their cows
there and the land is overgrazed
o Share the losses and internalize all the benefits
o Solution – let people own their own smaller plot of land and the land will be used socially
optimally
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Document Summary
Locke protects the sphere of liberty: start off with common ownership of everything, protect natural liberty to property as long as enough is left for others, two proviso no spoil & enough and as good. Adam smith promoting your self interest is beneficial to others: if you acted out of altruism, you would actually hurt others in the context of the marketplace. We live in a scarce world so appropriating some resources will inevitably leave someone worse off. Ex: take half of the trees in the world and create boats and houses: better off for people who can get the goods, fulfills spirit of locke"s proviso. Permissible rules within the game of property: does the game itself leave enough and as good for others, game can be weighted morally, but the moves in the game are not weighted morally. Scarce resources such as scarce heavy metals. Individually rational to not do work because you expend more calories doing work.
