Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

Greco, Daniel

Abstract

This dissertation develops a theory of economic justice. It begins with an economic state of nature, much like Hobbes’s political state of nature. In the economic state of nature, there is no economic cooperation through the division of labor and specialization, and everyone is very poor. The purpose of the dissertation is to identify the conditions for just economic cooperation. I argue that each participant in economic cooperation should be rewarded according to their contributions. The first chapter draws on Henry George to argue that there is a fundamental difference between land and the other two factors of production, labor and capital. Private property over natural resources leads to economic exploitation, but private property over labor and capital facilitate equitable cooperation. Instead, there should be public appropriation of natural resource rents through a land value tax. The second chapter identifies the phenomenon of collective incoherence: a group of people whose ends are incompatible are subject to an inter-personal Dutch book. Such groups are disposed to waste resources and cannot economically cooperate. I argue that land value taxes and progressive consumption taxes are institutions adaptive to collective incoherence, penalizing people for pursuing ends incompatible with the ends of others. In the final chapter, I argue that perfect markets are the ideal for justice in exchange because they can lead to Pareto-optimal distributions. I spend most of the chapter identifying the obligations of participants in imperfect, real world markets.

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