Introduction

Karl Widerquist

Chapter Chapter 1 in Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income, 2013, pp 9-24 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The prologue’s representation of the economy as a casino is partly derived Milton and Rose Friedman’s example of “an evening at baccarat. He concedes that a capitalist economy contains unfairness and leads to inequality, but justifies it on grounds that many such differences follow from choice and people ought to be free to choose what they do.1 Using the example of the Big Casino, I concede that freedom has the potential to justify a great deal of unfairness and inequality, but I hope to illustrate how a modern economy (both in practice and in the visions of many political theorists of different political views) fails to deliver sufficient freedom to be justified on the grounds of choice or anything else. All economies (that we know how to create) contain what we might call a casino element: they are persistently affected by systemic unfairness, such as nepotism, brute luck, irrelevant requirements, and odds stacked in favor of people with past advantages.

Keywords: Effective Power; Basic Income; Voluntary Exchange; Decent Life; Brute Luck (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:etbchp:978-1-137-31309-6_2

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137313096_2

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