Salience, Imagination, and Moral Luck

One key desideratum of a theory of blame is that it be able to explain why we typically have differing blaming responses in cases involving significant degrees of luck. T.M. Scanlon has proposed a relational account of blame, and he has argued that his account succeeds in this regard and that this success makes his view preferable to reactive attitude accounts of blame. In this paper, I aim to show that Scanlon's view is open to a different kind of luck-based objection. I then offer a way of understanding moral luck cases which allows for a plausible explanation of our differential blaming responses by appealing to the salience of certain relevant features of the action in question

My First Days in Australia

Postcard from Natalie Stout, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at James Cook University in Cairns, Australi

Human Trafficking in the Wake of Natural Disasters: is the United States Any Different Than Third World Countries?

This research compares the impacts of devastating natural disasters on levels of human trafficking in developed countries to the impacts experienced in third world countries. The two disasters selected for this study were Hurricane Isaac in Louisiana and the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. Factors selected to measure the impacts of the natural disaster include income level, homelessness, and unemployment rates. Human trafficking is a crime that touches nearly every country around the world. It is known that human trafficking levels are impacted by factors including poverty levels of regions, political unrest, and even natural disasters. There is a common misconception that human trafficking is an issue for developing countries and more developed countries, like the United States, are not as impacted by this industry. However, in the chaos following a natural disaster and the break down of government control, even developed countries can become susceptible to increases in human trafficking. Unfavorable changes in the economy, such as declining income levels, increases in homelessness, and higher unemployment rates, that occur in the aftermath of natural disasters attract human traffickers to target the vulnerable population of that region. This research will aim to compare, through statistical analysis, the changes in levels of human trafficking post-natural disaster in the United States to the levels experienced in Indonesia. This comparison will be done in an effort to find if the United States is just as susceptible to increases in human trafficking following natural disasters as third world countries. Included in my research is a discussion of literature currently existing on the subject matter, the experimental design including the hypothesis and methodology used. This will be followed by an analysis of the results. A conclusion, discussion of the limitations of this study, as well as areas for future research will conclude this study

Eminent Domain & Bank Boycotts: The Tri-State Strategy in Pittsburgh

[Excerpt] American steel corporations are currently in the process of cutting as much as 20 to 25 per cent of their productive capacity, much of it in the Pittsburgh area. With U.S. Steel\u27s recent move to buy steel slabs from overseas steel companies, the snowball effect on other companies could eliminate more than 50 per cent of the hot-metal producing end of steelmaking in America

Reindustrialization From Below: The Steel Valley Authority

[Excerpt] Trade unionists and community residents determined to save the Monongahela Valley have succeeded in forging an effective instrument for waging their struggle. In January 1986 the Steel Valley Authority was officially incorporated by the State of Pennsylvania. Its board includes representatives of nine municipalities, including the city of Pittsburgh. In the months since the Authority was launched, its power, including the power of eminent domain, has been used to pressure corporations not to abandon manufacturing plants in the Mon Valley region. The fight to reindustrialize the Pittsburgh area is fairly joined, and victory is a real possibility. It took nearly five years of education and patient organizing to establish the Steel Valley Authority (SVA). Other communities around the country, suffering similar problems of capital flight, have much to learn from the story of the campaign to establish the SVA. But the most important lessons are easy to tell: You can win community support for the idea that deindustrialization is not inevitable. You can mount a viable struggle to preserve your community\u27s industrial base. In this article, I will describe our five-year campaign to win public support for our approach to reindustrialization

Why the Law Hates Speculators: Regulation and Private Ordering in the Market for OTC Derivatives

A wide variety of statutory and common law doctrines in American law evidence hostility towards speculation. Conventional economic theory, however, generally views speculation as an efficient form of trading that shifts risk to those who can bear it most easily and improves the accuracy of market prices. This Article reconciles the apparent conflict between legal tradition and economic theory by explaining why some forms of speculative trading may be inefficient. It presents a heterogeneous expectations model of speculative trading that offers important insights into antispeculation laws in general, and the ongoing debate concerning over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives in particular. Although trading in OTC derivatives is presently largely unregulated, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently announced its intention to consider substantively regulating OTC derivatives under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). Because the CEA is at heart an antispeculation law, the heterogeneous expectations model of speculation offers policy support for the CFTC\u27s claim of regulatory jurisdiction. This model also, however, suggests an alternative to the apparently binary choice now available to lawmakers (i. e., either regulate OTC derivatives under the CEA, or exempt them). That alternative would be to regulate OTC derivatives in the same manner that the common law traditionally regulated speculative contracts: as permitted, but legally unenforceable, agreements. By requiring derivatives traders to rely on private ordering to ensure the performance of their agreements, this strategy may offer significant advantages in discouraging welfare-reducing speculation based on heterogeneous expectations while protecting more beneficial forms of derivatives trading