RESOLVING LAND USE CONFLICTS

Land Economics/Use,

Left-Libertarianism and Global Justice

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/Vita_Revised.htm (#45)We defend a version of left-libertarianism, and discuss some of its implications for global justice (and economic justice among nations in particular). Like the better known right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that agents own themselves. Unlike right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that natural resources (land, oil, air, etc.) are owned in some egalitarian sense and can be legitimately appropriated by individuals or groups only when the appropriations are compatible with the specified form of egalitarian ownership. We defend the thesis of self-ownership on the grounds that it is required to protect individuals adequately from interference in their lives by others. We then defend a particular conception of egalitarian ownership of natural resources according to which those who appropriate unappropriated natural resources must pay competitive rent (determined by supply and demand) for the rights that they have claimed. We then go on to apply the principles to issues of global justice. We defend the view that countries owe payments to a global fund for the value of unimproved natural resources that they have appropriated, and that this fund is to be divided on some egalitarian basis among the citizens of the world. We disagree, however, on whether the global fund is to be divided equally among all (so that no net rent is paid if one appropriates only a per capita share) or to be divided so as to promote effective equality of opportunity for a good life. We discuss and debate these issues

The Legitimate Repudiation of a Nation's Debts

There is a need for an impartial international tribunal to consider requests for approval of repudiations of developing nations' debts. At present, debt relief is available as largess from the "Paris Club" of creditor nations or the "London Club" of commercial banks, but a nation that is treated unfairly has only the recourse of unilateral repudiation, which is subject to bias from self-interest. There is no impartial forum in which disagreements can be adjudicated. This paper explores the legal principles that might justify approval of repudiations of such debts, thereby advancing both economic efficiency and social justice.Debt

The Single Transferable Vote

The single transferable vote (STV) is a family of vote-counting procedures that use voters' rankings of candidates as input and achieve proportional representation. This paper compares STV with other types of voting procedures and discusses the history of STV, issues concerning the rules of STV, limitations of various versions of STV, and a new version of STV based on paired comparisons of sets of candidates. Each refinement of STV overcomes a limitation of previous versions but at some cost in either the difficulty of understanding the procedure, the cost of computing the outcome, or both.