On desert (1/1)

I have long wanted to blog about economic desert and I am finally getting around to doing so. I would love to write an academic paper about this but a blog series should be less time-consuming and have a wider potential audience.

Sometimes people complain that they or others have not received what they deserve. It is a more common complaint from right-wingers, who sometimes claim that entrepreneurs and high-earners lose out on what they deserve due to taxation. On the other side, left-wingers will claim that working people do not get what they deserve for their time and efforts.

Not many political philosophers advocate a desert-based theory of economic justice for reasons I will describe in a later blog. However, some of those who do have a more sophisticated position than the unreflective cries of unfairness outlined above. David Miller is one such prominent thinker, and he advocates a form of market socialism whereby worker-owned firms would compete in a marketplace and the workers would get the benefits of the work they do.

In this series of blogs I will explain the desert-based approach to justice and outline why it is considered attractive and yet problematic. I will then suggest a new way of linking desert and the market that would, I believe, provide the most plausible theory of economic desert.  I will conclude by highlighting how this would fit very well with my CLIPH-rate tax proposals.