Say I am walking down a street in a large city and come across a homeless person on the sidewalk, and I ask myself if that could have been my fate. If I think that I could have been that person—except for different circumstances—then we share a common humanity. Our differences are basically social. If I say that I would never become such a person, then I take our social differences—class, race, religion, and so on—as essential. We have nothing in common.
In memory of W. Barnett Pearce
A commonsense way of thinking about disagreements is that they arise when people have opposing opinions, they have an invested interest in maintaining them, and they have to make a decision. In this framework, our positions are seen as things we own—as our property.
Libertarians come in different stripes, and the differences largely depend on their foundation. Some have their origin in the peculiar Anglo-American tradition of grounding liberty in property. Some others see liberty as a civic right guaranteed by the Constitution.
Marvin T. Brown, Ph.D teaches business and organizational ethics at the University of San Francisco and Saybrook University in San Francisco.
This book is the culmination of 30 years of teaching and writing on business and society from a communicative perspective. Visit workingethics.com for more information.
Adam Smith American Dream Atlantic trade banks biosphere citizen Citizens United civic civic conversations civic economy Civicism civic membership civilizing the economy Commons corporate citizen corporations democracy disagreement economics of property economics of provision Egypt health care reform human dignity invisible hand John Locke libertarianism Libya living wage membership money moral equality property property relations protection Scotland slavery slaves Smith and slavery Smithian economics sports sustainability system of provision the civic tobacco trade Wall Street