Rethinking Ethics and Economics for a Just Future of Work

In this talk, Dr. Preiss will 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. 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 existing liberal democracies, then these values must play a central role in the discussion of inevitable tradeoffs in economic policy, even when they conflict with alternative measures of efficiency or justice.

 

Joshua Preiss is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He regularly teaches courses in business ethics, philosophy of race, class, and gender, philosophy of economics, and social and political philosophy. His recent monograph Just Work for All: The American Dream in the 21st Century, was published by Routledge in 2021. Preiss’ current research, including the book project The Ethics of Industrial Policy, centers on the ethics, politics, and economics of technological change and the future of work. His forthcoming articles include “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.