November 21, 2024, 7:00 p.m.
The Gallery, Sidney Martin Library
Professor Joshua Preiss
Dr Joshua Preiss is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His recent monograph was Just Work for All: The American Dream in the 21st Century (2021) and his current research includes the book project The Ethics of Industrial Policy, which centres on the ethics, politics, and economics of technological change and the future of work. His forthcoming articles include “Community, Care, and Social Recognition in a Post-Covid World of Work” in Moral Challenges in a Pandemic Age (Routledge) “Freedom and Financial Market Reform” in the Anthology The Philosophy of Money and Finance (Oxford) “The Moral and Political Importance of Good Jobs” in The Oxford Handbook on Philosophy and Work, “Opportunity Issues: Which American Dream?” in the Routledge Handbook on the American Dream, and “Global Value Chains: A Moral Cost-Benefit Analysis” in The Cambridge Handbook on the Economics of Global Value Chains.
Keynote Lecture: Rethinking Ethics and Economics for a Just Future of Work
Abstract
In this talk, I articulate and defend four categories of value: (1) Place, in the form of community and country (2) Status, particularly the status of workers without “high-end human capital” (3) Freedom as control or non-domination, and (4) economic and physical Security. These values, though frequently ignored or cast aside in economic models of efficiency and philosophical models of justice, are essential to understanding the significant costs of labor market and geographical economic polarization. In addition, the sustained failure to address these costs plays a central role in the rise right-wing populist parties and candidates and declining support for liberal and democratic norms and institutions. If a free and inclusively prosperous future depends on the ongoing health of liberal democracy, then these values must play a central role in the discussion of inevitable tradeoffs in economic and business policy, even when they conflict with alternative measures of efficiency or justice.