----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- My name is Thom Swanke and I'm an assistant professor of economics at Chadron State College in northwest Nebraska. I have presented a couple of papers on economic justice (April 2000 at AFIT and this past January at AFEE). I agree with Moser that much of the treatment of the just price is in Aquinas, yet I think that caution is in order if we accept the idea that the market determines the just price. The essence of commutative justice is that all parties to the transaction are equal in power. In other words, like the Neoclassical vision of the market, either buyer or seller can walk away from the transaction. If the market determined price comes from such a perfectly competitive market, then the market price is the just price. If anyone can remove some other party's choice, then the result is unjust. The question to be considered before accepting the market price as the just price is whether the market's structure allows all participants free choice. I am not sure whether markets in Aquinas's time had equal power for all participants, but I think it is easy to believe that modern markets do not approximate perfect competition. Aquinas's treatment of justice also includes a catagory of justice for situations where there is an imbalance of power (according to my father, a retired Thomistic philosopher). Aquinas called this variety, distributive justice and he applied it mostly to determining just relations between parents and offspring. The essence of distributive justice is that the more powerful party can exercise their power, as long as that exercise did not deprive the weaker party of their basic human rights. Aquinas defined basic human rights as the right to life, to property necessary to sustain that life and an education allowing someone to maintain their earning power over a lifetime (enough necessary to maintain their life sustaining property). Although Aquinas used distributive justice for family relations, I think that it is also useful for determining just prices, particularly in modern markets which seem not to be perfectly competitive. So, if I approach a firm with market power in the labor market (when I'm seeking a job), they can justly deny me a job, or provide a job for me that requires me to work harder than other people (even if we both earn the same pay), as long as that denial, or provision of work doesn't threaten my life, my life sustaining property (i.e., house, clothing, car, etc.) or my right to an education. Obviously, if they provide me with a life threatening job, they require that I use my own tools, or materials to do the job, or expose me to something that, while not killing me, causes me to lose my ability to earn a living, these are all unjust acts. It is very difficult to tritely determine whether a modern market price is just, or unjust. For example, if I do get a job that doesn't overtly threaten my life (using toxic chemicals, or dangerous fires, etc.), but if its pay is low, is it an unjust wage? That all depends on whether the worker can sustain his or her life on that wage. What if the wage earner is supporting a family? Is it just to have a single person's wage be different than a family supporting wage earner? Again, it depends on what lifestyle is the minimum necessary to maintain life. I think that the application of distributive justice to many areas confronting the modern economy (such as the distribution of health care, retirement insurance, energy, environmental pollution or cleanliness, public infrastructure, and many more) will help determine the moral action. This would follow in Adam Smith's tradition of creating a society pursuing perfect liberty, as well as in Alfred Marshall's areas of concern. Lastly, I think that applying Aquinas's distributive justice idea would be fruitful in determining whether the rebuilding after the London Fire done was justly. I suspect that there was no choice for those seeking to rebuild and that those who sold into this market may not have been concerned with the basic human rights of those rebuilders. Hence, the market prices at that time (if what I suspect is true) were unjust by Aquinas's scheme of distributive justice. Thom Swanke ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]