Just noting here that I wrote something for the VMware EMEA Blog, "Home-working surveillance: Utopian or dystopian?."
I present the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the move to home-working, as part of a project that VMWare have organized on the topic.
I have organized a Day School event on the 12 February 2022 to (belatedly) mark the centenary of the birth of John Rawls (1921-2002).
Rawls was a liberal egalitarian political philosopher whose writings spanned the 1950s to the early 2000s. Rawls' works aren't available for free as far as I'm aware (at least not legally). These are:
I thought it would be useful to provide some links to good quality audio/audio-visual materials explaining and discussion Rawls' work.
Then and Now "Introduction to Rawls: A Theory of Justice" (2020)
Michael Sandel’s Justice Course Lecture 14: A Deal Is A Deal (2009) (You Tube direct link). Lecture 15: What’s A Fair Start? – Harvard Justice (2009) (You Tube link)
"Glenn Loury & Josh Cohen - John Rawls at 100" The Glenn Show (2021)
"John Rawls, Global Justice and Health Equity" Thomas Pogge (2021, particularly
minutes 4:30-16:30)
Moral Foundations of Politics Course "Lecture 16. The Rawlsian Social Contract" Yale University (2011)
Bryan Magee
Interview with Ronald Dworkin “Rawls vs Nozick” (1978)
Philosophy Bites episode: Jo Wolff on Rawls (Also copied into a You Tube video)
Talking
Politics: History of ideas “Rawls on
Justice” (2020)
(Most political
philosophy podcasts will have an episode on Rawls’ theory of justice)
Charles Larmore Lecture "The Permanent Achievement of ‘A Theory of Justice’" University of Virginia Law School Podcast (2021)
Some of the videos above will be available via your podcast app, and some of the podcasts below may have been turned into (static image) You Tube videos as well, so the line between the two is somewhat blurred.
If you have any further suggestions do add these below!
This coming term I will be teaching a new course for the general public on some overlapping issues relating to justice that I thought would work well together.
The online course Equality of Opportunity and the Ethics of Discrimination covers some lingering issues of controversy about how society should respond to unequal opportunity. There is even disagreement about what 'equality of opportunity' actually means, and whether it is really an important goal.
You can read more about the course on the webpage.
However, I thought I would share some useful background materials for those who might want to explore further, either in advance of taking the course or if you miss the course and want to investigate the topic.
Online lectures
A good place to start with political philosophy is Michael Sandel’s Justice Course. Several lectures are directly relevant to this course topic, such as:
Lecture 14: A Deal Is A Deal (You Tube direct link) and Lecture 15: What’s A Fair Start? – Harvard Justice (You Tube link).
Tommie Shelby "Justice and Race" Blavatnik School of Government (2020)
Charles W. Mills "Theorizing Racial Justice" Tanner Lecture on Human Values (2020), or a video of his talk "Racial Equality" UCT (2014)
More advanced are Tim Scanlon's Uehiro Lectures, Oxford (2013). The third is “When Does Equality Matter? (lecture 3 – equality of opportunity)” but lectures one and two are useful and relevant as well.
Janet Radcliffe Richards' Uehiro Lectures, Oxford (2012) are also relevant. Again, the third is particularly relevant, but references arguments introduced in the previous two.
“When Does Equality Matter? (lecture 3 – equality of opportunity)” but lectures one and two are useful and relevant as well.
Scanlon builds on the work of his teacher John Rawls, and there are lots of lectures and podcasts about the work of Rawls, such as this Bryan Magee Interview with Ronald Dworkin “Rawls vs Nozick” (1978).
For podcasts, there is the
Podcasts
The BBC Reith Lecture series by Kwame Anthony Appiah (2016) is worth a listen.
“Discrimination is Expensive” The Pie (2021)
Policy Matters “Discrimination
in the labour market and what policymakers can do about it” University
of Bath (2021)
Interview with Tarun Khaitan "Indirect Discrimination" Philosophy 247
"Episode 9 - Understanding indirect discrimination" Mills & Reeve - Employment law Podcast (2017)
The Libertarian Podcast “Anti-Discrimination Laws Vs. Freedom of Association” Hoover Institution (2021)
Course
books
The course does not have a single textbook, and those on the course will be provided with selected readings from several sources.
However, if
you wanted to purchase a book for use alongside the course then you could go
for one of the following, depending which of the three related topics you are
particularly interested in:
Are new tax technologies something to fear or an opportunity to do things differently?
One of the contentions in my book Rethinking Taxation (2014), repeated in several blog posts around the time, was that IT advances could change taxation in the same way that it changed other aspects of our lives.
We are now starting to see these developments happening. Real time taxation has been introduced in the UK and an article in today’s Financial Times explains how HMRC is increasingly making use of big data.
This can make tax easier for taxpayers and make it easier for HMRC to crack down on fraud.
My argument has always been that this opens up the possibility of making the whole economic system much fairer.
We can calculate everyone’s tax-rate in a more personalized manner without the bureaucratic challenges this would have made this impossible in the past.
Technology will make it possible to apply a much more thorough tax base, taking much better account of the gains that each person gets from society.
Put together, these reforms would tax the economically fortunate much more and provide direct support to the less fortunate, skewing the benefits economy back towards working people.
This can be achieved without the discouragement to work that some people accuse tax-and-redistribute programmes of.
You can find out more about my proposals for a different way of working out who should get what in society by reading my book Rethinking Taxation, reading some blogs I wrote around the time, or watching some videos I made.
Legitimate concerns remain about the digital divide and an overpowering state. My view is that these IT developments are going to continue anyway, so we have to hold the state to account and make sure that technology is used to make things better for the citizens.
My proposals should help in this regard by building direct distribution to individuals into the system, not leaving resources directly under the control of politicians or bureaucrats.
We should be concerned, but this just means we have to uphold our duties as citizens to keep ourselves informed and to hold our government(s) to account. We have to demand that the system supports those who aren’t digital natives, that the state does not adopt arbitrary powers, and that the system is making society fairer not less fair.
Governments might not be as innovative with technology as the private sector, but we voters can demand that they use the technology available in ways that improve our lives and society.
New taxation technology creates the opportunity to have a fairer economy, if only we demand it.
I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but I feel I should make the effort to list the courses I will be offering to any adults who wish to take one this coming academic year.
I will be involved in many times more courses than usual, though some of them I'm just chairing. As always, you can see the list of upcoming courses here, though for some reason the Political philosophy: An introduction online course isn't yet linked with my name though I will be teaching it again.
This list is organized by start date but does not indicate my role. I will also be chairing some of the lectures and day schools so these appear on the list above.
I will therefore list the courses I am actually teaching below in a more systematic manner. The main split is between those in Oxford and those which are online (in many cases there will be an online and an Oxford version of the same course topic):
I am currently pre-recording lectures for a second course, having done one last term as well.
I thought I would share my set-up, offering you a chance to imagine the magic taking place.
Desk/equipment configuration
The first here view of the desk and equipment from an angle.
The first thing I would point out is that I have raised both my laptop and the monitor behind up on boxes and books.
The aim of this is to make sure that the camera is at eye-height.
As the camera is at the top of the laptop, having the second screen peering over it means that I don't have to look too far from the camera to view the information on the monitor.
Basically, I've got my script/prompts directly above the camera.
Screen configuration
Most of my students in adult education do not have an 'institutional login' which would enable them to access online books and journals that are behind paywalls.
That is true also of independent scholars.
Indeed, it is true of everyone who wants to learn but isn't a member of a University!
So, how can people access scholarly work without spending large amounts of money to buy books or access to journal articles.
You might be able to access online material in your local library. The Access to Research project aims to make this a possibility in the UK.
Your local library could arrange for you to borrow a physical copy of a book you were particularly interested in via an 'inter-library loan.' These services may be limited, though.
If you live near a University they may offer you the chance to enter their library and browse their collections. You may have to apply for permission, of course, but their website should indicate what they offer.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a website that provides articles from very many academic journals (not always the most recent ones though).
JSTOR are currently
(during the pandemic) offering I think 100 free journal articles per month, up
from the usual six, so if you can find a journal article via JSTOR you may be
able to download it (though not all will be available). You can set up an account
here: How
to register & get free access to content – JSTOR Support
Some academics make the penultimate version of their paper available, even if the full version is behind a paywall.
They usually do this via their personal or University website, or on their accounts on academic websites such as academia.edu, researchgate, ssrn...
Google scholar often provides links to these free versions of
papers when they are available. Clicking on the link will sometimes lead you there, or the pdf link on the right-hand side...or click on the 'all ## versions' to see links to the several versions, some of which may have freely available links (though be a bit careful - these may not be legitimate).
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| Image by Gerd Altmann |
Old books
Classic books that are out of copyright are often freely available online.
Project Gutenberg has been working to transcribe classic texts that are out of copyright and make them available to all.
However, there are many other websites that offer older books, such as google books and many subject specialist websites.
You can also often view the first pages of a book online. This can give you an idea of whether it is really useful to you or not before you go on to buy it (or request it from your local library).
Publishers sometimes provide the introductions to their books to tempt people to buy them.
Google books (and Amazon ‘look-inside’) sometimes show the early parts of a book.
There are often options, if you want to read the first part at least.
Other online resources
There are loads of interesting materials provided online.
Academic lectures are sometimes available to view to You Tube, or University Websites.
Specialist podcasts exist in many academic fields, and some of these will be accessible to newcomers.
Many academic institutions, museums and so on have made their archives available to view online.
For a collection of free resources (or at least free during the current Pandemic) you could look at this "Curious Minds" collection of recommended online materials.
Free online courses
You need to pay a small fee for the courses I teach. This is to cover the cost of putting the course together, the administrative support, and obviously to pay me for my time.
However, there are sometimes free courses available via various providers.
The Open University lists its free courses via Open Learn.
You can find these listed on sites like Coursera and EdEx (alongside paid courses). Some of these are MOOCS - Massive Open Online Courses, which provide online content for people to work through in their own time.
The idea with these is often that you can view the content (or the first part of a course) for free in the hope that you then pay to get the qualification in it.
A lot of these free online courses won't have the same active input from a tutor as a paid course would, but they could provide you with a useful introduction to a topic.
Have I missed any? Let me know!
As time goes on I hope that more and more academic work will be available without paywalls. "Open access" is becoming more common.
Academics want their work to be read and influence society after all!
Of course, publishers want to make money from this work, which is the reason for the limits; if things are free they don't make any money back on their investments.
Nevertheless, in the shorter term, there are many resources available without becoming a University Student.
I've listed some above, but do feel free to add further links in the comments below.
Learning takes time and effort, but it need not necessarily require a lot of money.
