Ethics, organ donation and tax: a proposal

Five arguments are presented in favour of the proposal that people who opt in as organ donors should receive a tax break. These arguments appeal to welfare, autonomy, fairness, distributive justice and self-ownership, respectively. Eight worries about the proposal are considered in this paper. These objections focus upon no-effect and counter-productiveness, the Titmuss concern about social meaning, exploitation of the poor, commodification, inequality and unequal status, the notion that there are better alternatives, unacceptable expense, and concerns about the veto of relatives. The paper argues that none of the objections to the proposal is very telling

Globalization of the German Automotive Industry: Where Does Added Value Occur? Bertelamann Policy Brief #2019/01

A central aspect of globalization is that companies not only sell their products all over the world, but the production of goods and services is divided into different stages of added value at home and abroad. While direct (bilateral) supplier relations can be understood reasonably well, the direct and indirect added value contributions of domestic and foreign suppliers often remain hidden. Using the German automotive industry as an example, we want to show the extent to which other countries contribute directly and indirectly to added value in this industry’s production

The environment as a challenge for governmental responsibility: The case of the European Water Framework Directive

The European Water Framework Directive is shaping a new conception of integrative water protection. In this article, the consequences of the Water Framework Directive in respect to national environmental policy will be discussed in referring to the notion of responsibility which is a central concept of political philosophy and theory. It will be shown that the new conception of integrative water protection entails a fundamental change in European water protection policy and also environmental policy at all. It implies that environmental policy has not only to prevent environmental damage but in particular has to warrant a good status of the environment, such that it must maintain a good status of water or even achieve it if this status does not exist. Achieving and maintaining a good status of the environment is, however, an encompassing task. Thereby, state power and will eventually be overexerted. The threat of such overexertion has to be kept in mind in discussing the perspective of the so called New Environmental Governance. It will be pointed out that the New Environmental Governance is not primarily a form of some sort of democratic participation but rather designed to improve state power in environmental politics. --Environmental politics,European Water Framework Directive,Responsibility,Environmental Governance

Braiding and fusion of non-Abelian vortex anyons

We demonstrate that certain vortices in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates are non-Abelian anyons and may be useful for topological quantum computation. We perform numerical experiments of controllable braiding and fusion of such vortices, implementing the actions required for manipulating topological qubits. Our results suggest that a new platform for topological quantum information processing could potentially be developed by harnessing non-Abelian vortex anyons in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 6 supplementary figures; added details of the H-charge, J. K. Slingerland added to author lis