One prominent contemporary retributivist theory is built on the notion that crime yields an “unfair advantage” over law-abiding citizens which punishment removes or nullifies. Michael Davis has defended this theory by constructing a market model of “unfair advantage” that he contends answers critics' objections to the retributivist enterprise. I seek to demonstrate the inadequacy of Davis's approach, arguing in particular that the market model rests on an incoherent notion of “demand” and would not, even if coherent, (...) link “unfair advantage” to the seriousness of crimes in any acceptable fashion. The salience of traditional objections to retributivism is thus unaffected by Davis's theory. (shrink)

Athletes who flout doping bans are generally thought to have gained an unfair advantage. In this paper, I critically examine this view. I begin by defending an effort-based account of desert in sport, explaining why it is preferable to the hybrid account that is favoured in the literature. Drawing on the effort-based account, I construct the Unfair Advantage Argument formally, in what I take to be its most plausible form. I then argue that the Unfair (...) Advantage Argument should be rejected, for two main reasons. First, I challenge its assumption that dopers have put in less effort than their opponents. Second, I explain why, even if dopers have put in less effort, they have still exerted a sufficient amount. Though doping is problematic from an institutional perspective, it is not – from a pre-institutional perspective – cause for moral concern. (shrink)

This article aims to effectuate a paradigm shift in the way we view cases involving pure advantage-taking in contract formation. By ‘pure advantage-taking’ it is meant that D in some sense took ‘unfair advantage of’ a special bargaining weakness or vulnerability that D found ‘ready-made’ in P: D neither caused P’s relevant weakness or vulnerability nor otherwise was legally responsible for relieving it.Certain undue influence and unconscionable dealing cases (for example) fit this scenario perfectly, yet senior (...) Commonwealth courts consistently assert (or imply) that the doctrines of undue influence and unconscionable dealing are ordered, ostensibly exclusively, by a common law precept against interpersonal exploitation, and that judges are, when they invoke those doctrines, responding precisely to that particular concern. It is argued here, however, that the exploitation concept serves, or ought to be seen as serving, no necessary justificatory function in relation to state-assisted rescission or suppression of contracts objectively formed at common law. Instead, a principle of (what I shall call) ‘transactional neglect’ should be seen to eclipse and subsume the exploitation concept as the prevailing justification for interference with apparent contracts in pure ‘unfair advantage’ situations. The advocated shift is thus away from ‘exploitation’ towards ‘transactional neglect’—D’s corrective liability for failure to take reasonable precautions against the risk of foreseeable transactional harm to P, when P and D were, knowingly to D at the time, bargaining under conditions that make ‘exploitation’ possible. (shrink)

Michael Ridge At one point in England it was a capital offense to “appear on a high road with a sooty face.”1 I do not know whether anyone was executed for this offense, but many people were sent to Australian penal colonies for such petty crimes as stealing a handkerchief. More recently, Kenneth Payne was sentenced to 16 years in prison for stealing a Snickers Bar in Texas. When the Assistant District Attorney in this case was asked how she could (...) justify putting a man in prison for 16 years for stealing a candy bar she replied, “It was a king size,” and indeed it was – value, $1.00.2 These punishments are vulnerable to many criticisms but the most obvious is that they do not fit the crime. Unfortunately, the idea that the punishment should fit the crime is as difficult to characterize precisely as it is plausible. The doctrine of lex talonis embodied in the slogan “an eye for an eye” provides the most obvious answer to this question but it has the unfortunate vice of being false. In some cases the problems with lex talonis are moral ones – we would debase ourselves if we were literally to rape rapists. In other cases the problems are conceptual – taken literally, the theory seems to have no intelligible application for a crime like treason, for example. These problems are familiar and defenders of lex talonis typically qualify the doctrine in ways that are supposed to avoid them. However these qualifications typically are either ad hoc or too metaphorical to be helpful. Intriguingly, Michael Davis argues that we can formulate a more precise and non-metaphorical account of proportionality by.. (shrink)

There is a fundamental tension in many sports: human sex is not binary, but there are only two categories in which people can compete: male and female. Over the past 10 years, the International Association of Athletics Federations regulations have been at the centre of two notable legal disputes. The Court of Arbitration for Sport reached two contradictory rulings: in the first case, the IAAF regulations for the eligibility of athletes to compete in the female category were suspended on grounds (...) of "discrimination against the female category"; in the latter, the regulations were reaffirmed on grounds that although discriminatory, they are necessary to maintain a "level playing field" and to “protect” the female category. Although Semenya’s case has paved the way for questioning existing gender norms in sport, a new stable norm has yet to emerge from her case. The pharmacological solution put forward by IAAF to the tension between fairness and inclusivity of bodies non-conforming to two sexes is not, however, the only possible solution/resolution to the case, as I aim to show in this paper. Here I present some reflections on this topic and suggest how CAS should approach the case if it hopes to resolve it. (shrink)

The article discusses the relation between the concepts of unfair trade, exploitation, and below-subsistence wages with regard to individual economic transactions. Starting from the common notion that exploitation involves some kind of unfair advantage taking, it asks how “unfair” is to be understood, and what it is that is taken advantage of in exploitative exchanges. On this basis it then explores a line of argument for grounding the claim that below-subsistence wages are exploitative, focusing on (...) the condition of morally transformative voluntary consent to transactions. By analyzing the structure of coercion with regard to threats, offers, and circumstances it comes to the conclusion that consent to an offer is morally non-transformative with regard to legitimizing the outcome of a transaction if the person giving the “consent” has only unacceptable options in absolute terms to choose from, since this reduces “consent” to a mere act of rationality devoid of any normative content. Accordingly, it argues that insofar as below-subsistence wages are unacceptable options in absolute terms, they are to be considered exploitative and an instance of unfair trade. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to highlight the clientelistic strategies and informal practices that the ruling political parties in Albania use during the elections to ensure an unfair advantage in their favour over the opposition challengers. One of the main characteristics of the political developments of the transition period in Albania since 1991 has been the flourishing of informal practices and clientelist networks of political parties within state structures, which has produced an extreme politicization of these institutions. (...) These strategies that in general terms we label as “clientelistic” and that have been used to a large extent by the incumbent political parties have had a direct negative impact on the conduct of free and fair elections in Albania by distorting their main goal: to reflect the will of the people. This is because such clientelist strategies, together with the informal practices/mechanisms that accompany them, have influenced the creation of an unlevelled playing field, and have produced a hyperincumbency advantage in the electoral contests between political parties in Albania. The case of the recent elections held in Albania on 25 April 2021 will be the empirical case of this study, in which are evidenced the electoral containment strategies and practices that the ruling political party used to provide an unfair advantage in its favour and to secure its grip on power. (shrink)

In this sequel to his prize-winning book, The Eyes of the People, Jeffrey Edward Green draws on philosophy, history, social science, and literature to ask what democracy can mean in a world where it is understood that socioeconomic status to some degree will always determine opportunities for civic engagement and career advancement. Under this shadow of unfairness, Green argues that the most advantaged class are rightly subjected to compulsory public burdens, but he also attends to the uncomfortable aspects of ordinary, (...) “second-class” citizenship as well: above all, the “reasonable envy,” “principled vulgarity,” and need for “extrapolitical solace” that will inform everyday citizens’ efforts to seek democratic ends within a political landscape permanently darkened by plutocracy. Deeply engaged in the history of political thought, the book is still first and foremost an effort to illuminate present-day politics. With the plebeians of ancient Rome as his muse, Green develops a plebeian conception of contemporary liberal democracy, at once disenchanted yet idealistic in its insistence that the Few-Many distinction might be enlisted for progressive purpose. Green’s analysis is likely to unsettle all sides of the political spectrum, but its purpose looks beyond narrow partisan concerns and aims instead to understand what the ongoing quest for free and equal citizenship might require once it is accepted that our political and educational systems will always be tainted by economic inequality. (shrink)

This paper aims to bring a novel approach to the discussion of unfair advantages in sport by looking for a local criterion of fairness instead of a universal criterion. A local criterion of fairness would not solve the general dispute over what counts as an unfair advantage, but it would be beneficial in evaluating specific cases and could guide further discussion about them. We seek a local criterion of fairness by comparing the specific property advantages of Caster (...) Semenya and Eero Mäntyranta. South African Semenya is a middle‐distance runner whose right to compete in the female category has been challenged owing to her assumed difference of sex development and related high level of testosterone. Finnish Mäntyranta was a cross‐country skier with an exceptionally high haematocrit level. We examine whether there is a relevant difference between their advantages that would justify treating the athletes differently. We propose that the criterion ‘not attainable by other athletes in the same category’ could stand as a local criterion of fairness under certain conditions. However, its proper application requires further discussion on how to justify categories in sport. (shrink)

World Athletics have introduced regulations preventing female athletes with certain differences in sex development from competing in the female category. We argue these regulations are not justified and should be removed. Firstly, we examine the reasoning and evidence underlying the position that these athletes have a substantial mean difference in performance from other female athletes such that it constitutes an advantage, and argue it is not sufficient. Secondly, if an advantage does exist, it needs to be demonstrated it (...) is unfair. We argue the advantage would not be unfair because to say otherwise relies on a presupposition about whether these athletes are female, which involves contradictory and inconsistent definitions of sex. Thirdly, we contend that even if it is established that there is an advantage and it is unfair, the response of requiring athletes to take testosterone-suppressing medication is not appropriate and is unfair. (shrink)

Structural Injustice advances a theory of what structural injustice is and how it works. Powers and Faden present both a philosophically powerful, integrated theory about human rights violations and structural unfairness, alongside practical insights into how to improve them.

When the assertion that some agent is exploiting a person connotes that the exploitation is morally wrong, what is this wrong? Some maintain that exploitation need not involve unfair division of advantages, but instead is essentially domination for self-enrichment. This essay denies this claim and upholds the idea that exploitation claims concern unfair distribution. Some maintain that the hypothetical fully competitive market exchange price can serve, at least in some contexts, as the standard for assessing whether voluntary interaction (...) is exploitative. This essay denies that the idea of the fully competitive market price can serve in this role. Nor should we accept a pure luck egalitarian claim that would identify fair distribution with the outcome of ideally competitive markets proceeding from fair initial distribution. (shrink)

The aim of the Directive 2005/29 on unfair commercial practices is to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market and achieve a high level of consumer protection by way of approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of Member States relating to the elimination of these practices. As announced to the European Commission’s Green Paper, the Commission felt that the existing regulations in the Member States in that the regard to show significant differences causes legal uncertainty (...) and barriers to the operation of the internal market, including building consumer confidence in cross-border transactions. The advantage of the full unification of the law is to strengthen the autonomy of Community law, the achievement of effectiveness. It is questionable whether it is due to the subject matter which is the maximum harmonization discussed act will actually serve to protect economic interests of the consumer. In particular, it undermines the treaty-legal basis, which clearly is aimed at strengthening the single market. Also changes in the Lisbon Treaty, particularly Article 3 TEU, are aimed at establishing the internal market. In the last judgments, like on 9 November 2010 we find that Directive 2005/29 must be interpreted as precluding a national provision, which lays down a general prohibition on sales with bonuses and is not only designed to protect consumers but also pursues other objectives. Does the new act in consequence of the implementation of the national member states give great scope for the flexible operation and may become an effective instrument of pressure to improve business practices? (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse the relationship that exists between state capture, party patronage, and the conduct of electoral processes in the settings of post-communist countries, of which Albania is one. A characteristic of the political developments of the transition period in many post-communist countries has been the phenomenon of state capture, which has occurred mainly through the endemic party patronage and politicization of state institutions. The phenomenon of state capture by the ruling political parties has had a negative conditional (...) impact on the conduct of competitive, free and fair elections in these countries, leading to distrust regarding the credibility and integrity of the process. This study argues that phenomena such as state capture and extensive party patronage as informal practices/mechanisms in the hands of the ruling political parties affect the creation of a skewed playing field and the production of hyper-incumbency advantages in holding electoral contests between political parties, making the possibility of political power rotations difficult. Albania, in the case of its last parliamentary elections, held on 25th April 2021, constitutes the case study (Section IV) to which the theoretical framework of the paper is applied, by identifying the informal practices and methods through state capture that the ruling political party used to provide structural, institutional, and financial advantages in its favour regarding elections. (shrink)

Parents typically favour their own children over others’. For example, most parents invest more time and money in their own children than in other children. This parental partiality is usually regarded as morally permissible, or even obligatory, but it can have undesirable distributive effects. For example, it may create unfair or otherwise undesirable advantages for the favoured child. A number of authors have found it necessary to justify parental partiality in the face of these distributive concerns, and they have (...) typically done so by appealing to features of the parent–child relationship. Parental partiality is said to be justified, despite its undesirable distributive effects, in part because the parent enjoys a special kind of relationship with her child. In this paper, I raise a problem for such relational defences of parental partiality. I report empirical findings suggesting that parental partiality will frequently create advantages—sometimes undesirable—not only for one’s children, but also for one’s more distant descendants; I argue that the creation of these latter advantages stands as much in need of justification as does the creation of advantages for one’s own children; and I claim that existing relational defences do not clearly contain the resources necessary to deliver such a justification. I then examine three possible responses to this problem. (shrink)

The evidence is clear and consistent that African Americans and Hispanics are treated differently depending on their skin color within their racial or ethnic group, and yet the surveys that show these results also show very few political or political-psychological patterns as a result of skin color. To investigate why this is so, this paper uses the fact that discriminatory treatment by skin color does not necessarily result in political action or perceptions around that discrimination to raise the larger question (...) of when racial or ethnic groups see and protest unfairness, and when they do not. My hypotheses about why this occurs differ for blacks and Latinos. In the former case, the ideology of group consciousness is strong enough, and embarrassment about internal skin-color hierarchy is powerful enough, that blacks don't want to recognize differences by skin color. Light-skinned blacks, in fact, may be more racially identified than dark-skinned blacks — so their economic and social advantages are offset by their commitments to their race as a whole, and they behave politically like dark-skinned blacks do. The case of Hispanics may be better explained in terms of a weak sense of group consciousness rather than a strong one. That is, Latinos may not think of themselves as a group, such that they see skin color differentiation as a consequence of being members of different races rather than as a form of discrimination against some members of "their" group. (shrink)

The evidence is clear and consistent that African Americans and Hispanics are treated differently depending on their skin color within their racial or ethnic group, and yet the surveys that show these results also show very few political or political-psychological patterns as a result of skin color. To investigate why this is so, this paper uses the fact that discriminatory treatment by skin color does not necessarily result in political action or perceptions around that discrimination to raise the larger question (...) of when racial or ethnic groups see and protest unfairness, and when they do not. My hypotheses about why this occurs differ for blacks and Latinos. In the former case, the ideology of group consciousness is strong enough, and embarrassment about internal skin-color hierarchy is powerful enough, that blacks don't want to recognize differences by skin color. Light-skinned blacks, in fact, may be more racially identified than dark-skinned blacks — so their economic and social advantages are offset by their commitments to their race as a whole, and they behave politically like dark-skinned blacks do. The case of Hispanics may be better explained in terms of a weak sense of group consciousness rather than a strong one. That is, Latinos may not think of themselves as a group, such that they see skin color differentiation as a consequence of being members of different races rather than as a form of discrimination against some members of "their" group. (shrink)

George Sher's theory of deserved punishment is unable to account for cases in which wrongdoing does not result in unfair advantages. Sher attempts to connect punishment with distributive justice by suggesting that punishment is deserved inasmuch as the unfair advantage gained by wrongdoing is offset. According to Sher's diachronic theory of fairness, punishment is also deserved when it occurs in response to transgression of a first-order ethical norm. A problem for the theory concerns the justification it provides (...) for disparate treatment of wrongdoers who are morally indistinguishable. (shrink)

George Sher's theory of deserved punishment is unable to account for cases in which wrongdoing does not result in unfair advantages. Sher attempts to connect punishment with distributive justice by suggesting that punishment is deserved inasmuch as the unfair advantage gained by wrongdoing is offset. According to Sher's diachronic theory of fairness, punishment is also deserved when it occurs in response to transgression of a first-order ethical norm. A problem for the theory concerns the justification it provides (...) for disparate treatment of wrongdoers who are morally indistinguishable. (shrink)

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important (...) topic from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited. Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

Researchers appear to take unfair advantage of those who live in the developing world by using placebo-controlled trials to test the efficacy of drugs. This type of trial would not be permitted in developed countries, since in these countries treatment is available for the conditions that the drugs aim to treat. But if researchers are required to conduct active-controlled trials, the cost of doing research would increase, making research in developing countries inefficient and robbing these countries of the (...) benefits of participation. Contributors to Exploitation and Developing Countries, edited by Jennifer S. Hawkins and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, try to balance these concerns. (shrink)

One frequently used argument in the discussion on human enhancement is that enhancement is a form of cheating. This argument is well-known in relation to doping in sports, but recently it has also been used with regard to cognitive enhancement in the context of education and exams. This paper analyses the enhancement-is-cheating argument by comparing sports and education, and by evaluating how the argument can be interpreted in both contexts. If cheating is understood as breaking the rules in order to (...) gain an unfair advantage over others, it can be argued that some enhancements are a form of cheating. This problem of cheating is, however, relatively easy to remedy by either changing the rules, or by instituting controls and sanctions. This does not, therefore, constitute a categorical objection to enhancement. A further analysis of the intuitions behind the enhancement-is-cheating argument, however, shows that if sports and education are understood as “practices”, with their own internal goods and standards of excellence, some potential problems of enhancement can be articulated. These concern the internal goods and standards of excellence that are characteristic of specific practices. Seen from this perspective, the important question is how enhancement technologies might be embedded in specific practices—or how they might corrode them. (shrink)

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the (...) powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed. (shrink)

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important (...) topic from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited.Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

This paper considers whether transgender women should be permitted to compete in female categories in sports. Trans* women are often criticized for competing in female categories because they are seen as having an unfair advantage. Specifically, they are seen as having high levels of testosterone that unfairly enhance their performance in comparison to cisgender competitors. In this paper, I argue that trans* women should be permitted to compete in female categories. I suggest that if we want to maintain (...) the skill thesis as a guiding principle of sports and allow trans* women to compete in female categories, then we need to take relevant genetic advantages into consideration by introducing a handicap system. I claim that a handicap system should consider both cisgender and transgender women’s effective testosterone levels. (shrink)

The concept of exploitation brings many of our ordinary moral intuitions into conflict. Exploitation—or to use the commonly accepted ordinary language definition, taking unfair advantage—is often thought to be morally impermissible. In order to be permissible, transactions must not be unfair. The claim that engaging in mutually beneficial transactions is morally better than not transacting is also quite compelling. However, when combined with the claim that morally permissible transactions are better than impermissible transactions, these three imply the (...) counterintuitive claim that it is obligatory to engage in mutually beneficial transactions. In this paper I outline the conditions that comprise this ‘paradox of exploitation’ along with a solution that involves replacing one of the original conditions with a condition I call Weak Non-worseness. The solution captures the priority of our concerns about exploitation by making a concern for the fairness of a transaction subsidiary to a concern for the welfare of the would-be exploited. (shrink)

The fair-play theory of punishment claims that the state is justified in imposing additional burdens on law-breakers, to remove the unfair advantage the latter have enjoyed by disobeying the law. From this perspective, punishment reestablishes a fair distribution of benefits and burdens among all citizens. In this paper, I object to this view by focusing on the case of civil disobedience. I argue that the mere illegality of this conduct is insufficient to establish the agent’s unfair (...) class='Hi'>advantage over his lawabiding fellows, hence the imposition of additional burdens upon him through legal punishment. I articulate a broader account of citizens’ fair-play duties, able to capture disobedience as well as obedience to the law. While claiming that some law-breakers may not be treated as free-riders, I also gesture at the fact that some law-obeying citizens may not be ‘playing fair’: in some cases, a failure to engage in civil disobedience represents a failure to do one’s own part within the cooperative scheme of society. (shrink)

The ‘working poor’ are paid below‐subsistence wages for full‐time employment. What, if anything, is wrong with this? The extant philosophical literature offers two kinds of answers. The first says that failing to pay workers enough to live on takes unfair advantage of them; the workers are exploited. The second says that employers who fail to pay living wages default on a duty of care grounded in a special relationship; the workers are neglected. These arguments, though generally sound, provide (...) an incomplete picture of the wrongdoing involved. Neither adequately captures the intuition that a firm treats its employees not just badly, but disdainfully, by failing to pay them a living wage. My goal is to bring this particular feature of the relationship to salience. Working full‐time in return for below‐subsistence, I will argue, is an arrangement under which the worker is demeaned or insulted. This becomes apparent once we appreciate the expressive power of wages, and the intimate connection between one's labour and one's self. (shrink)

Caster Semenya is done with track and field. At 29, her hopes for a continued career as a professional middle-distance runner are dashed. After her case against International Association for Athletics Federation 1 was dismissed by the Court for Arbitration of Sport on 1 May 2019, she has switched to football later in the year.1 Semenya’s case may have come to its legal conclusion, however it has generated an aporia regarding the binary classification in athletics, which has yet to be (...) solved.2 It is time the implications of the fair equality of opportunity principle as a normative basis for the construction of categories in sport are taken seriously to move forward the debate on unfair advantages in sport. Loland conditionally justifies restricting the women’s category to athletes with testosterone levels below a certain threshold, on the basis of the FEO principle, and of a distinction between stable and dynamic inequalities between athletes. …. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the idea that under one way of understanding cheating, Armstrong did not fulfill any of the three necessary conditions: that cheating violates a rule—I will make the case that though doping was against the official rules, it was not against the rules the athletes used; that it is cheating if the intent is to obtain an unfair advantage—I will argue that dopers were not attempting to obtain an unfair advantage, at least (...) on one plausible understanding of fairness; and that cheating requires fair enforcement of the rules—I will show that the official rules against doping were hardly enforced at all, much less fairly enforced, and thus lacked enough sufficient normative force to deem breaking them cheating. (shrink)

In May 2011, more than a decade after the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) abandoned sex testing, they devised new policies in response to the IAAF's treatment of Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose sex was challenged because of her spectacular win and powerful physique that fueled an international frenzy questioning her sex and legitimacy to compete as female. These policies claim that atypically high levels of endogenous testosterone in women (caused by (...) various medical conditions) create an unfair advantage and must be regulated. Against the backdrop of Semenya's case and the scientific and historical complexity of ?gender verification? in elite sports, we question the new policies on three grounds: (1) the underlying scientific assumptions; (2) the policymaking process; and (3) the potential to achieve fairness for female athletes. We find the policies in each of these domains significantly flawed and therefore argue they should be withdrawn. (shrink)

Despite the fact that a number of economists and philosophers of late defend insider trading both as a viable and useful practice in a free market and as not immoral, I shall question the value of insider trading both from a moral and an economic point of view. I shall argue that insider trading both in its present illegal form and as a legalized market mechanism undermines the efficient and proper functioning of a free market, thereby bringing into question its (...) own raison d'etre. It does so and is economically inefficient for the very reason that it is immoral. Thus this practice cannot be justified either from an economic or a moral point of view. Insider trading is the reverse of speculation. It is reward without risk, wealth generated — and injury done to others — by an unfair advantage in information ... [T]he core principle is clear: no one should profit from exploitation of important information not available to the public. (shrink)

Incentive schemes, which offer recipients benefits if they meet particular requirements, are being used across the world to encourage healthier behaviours. From the perspective of equality, an important concern about such schemes is that since people often do not have equal opportunity to fulfil the stipulated conditions, incentives create opportunity for further unfair advantage. Are incentive schemes that are available only to disadvantaged groups less susceptible to such egalitarian concerns? While targeted schemes may at first glance seem well (...) placed to help improve outcomes among disadvantaged groups and thus reduce inequalities, I argue in this paper that they are susceptible to significant problems. At the same time, incentive schemes may be less problematic when they operate in ways that differ from the ‘standard’ incentive mechanism; I discuss three such mechanisms. (shrink)

Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This (...) paper offers a framework to identify exploitation in mutually beneficial exchange, focusing on the case of sweatshop labor. It argues that an employer can be viewed as taking unfair advantage of an underlying injustice if and only if the employer’s surplus from the exchange in the unjust state of affairs exceeds the surplus it could maximally obtain in a just state of affairs. The paper illustrates the applicability of this framework using three different conceptions of justice and argues that it is superior to microlevel accounts of exploitation that regard background justice as irrelevant. The paper concludes by describing some normative implications that follow from judging an exchange exploitative. (shrink)

For much of its modern history, the notion of talent has been associated with the idea of ‘careers open to talent’. Its emancipatory promise of upward social mobility has radically transformed the distribution of advantaged social positions and has had a lasting influence on the very idea of social status itself. Nevertheless, unlike concepts traditionally associated with distributive justice, e.g. fairness, (in)equality, desert, equality of opportunity as well as justice itself, the notion of talent has received only limited examination. This (...) article discusses some of the most pressing problems and challenges arising out of a reductionist understanding of talents’ anatomy and a distorted characterization of their overall distributive value. In particular, it aims to address those issues revolving around talents’ anatomy existing conceptions of distributive justice leave either neglected or outrightly ignored. The introductory part outlines the basic egalitarian conception of equal opportunities and then proceed with the examination of fairness embedded in it. The central part of the paper identifies the key elements of talents’ anatomy. We then discuss some of the implications egalitarianism either leaves out of the discussion or neglects. In particular, we challenge the idea of moral arbitrariness as the key mechanism to discard talents as a form of unfair advantage in the process of competition for advantaged social positions. In the final part, we outline two fundamental problems that call into question the cogency of egalitarian conceptions of talent(s) as a form of unfair disadvantage. (shrink)

Reports in the popular press suggest that smart drugs or “nootropics” such as methylphenidate, modafinil and piracetam are increasingly being used by the healthy to augment cognitive ability. Although current nootropics offer only modest improvements in cognitive performance, it appears likely that more effective compounds will be developed in the future and that their off-label use will increase. One sphere in which the use of these drugs may be commonplace is by healthy students within academia. This article reviews the ethical (...) and pragmatic implications of nootropic use in academia by drawing parallels with issues relevant to the drugs in sport debate. It is often argued that performance-enhancing drugs should be prohibited because they create an uneven playing field. However, this appears dubious given that “unfair” advantages are already ubiquitous and generally tolerated by society. There are concerns that widespread use will indirectly coerce non-users also to employ nootropics in order to remain competitive. However, to restrict the autonomy of all people for fear that it may influence the actions of some is untenable. The use of potentially harmful drugs for the purposes of enhancement rather than treatment is often seen as unjustified, and libertarian approaches generally champion the rights of the individual in deciding if these risks are acceptable. Finally, whether the prohibition of nootropics can be effectively enforced is doubtful. As nootropics use becomes widespread among students in the future, discussion of this issue will become more pressing in the years to come. (shrink)

This paper uses the example of payday loans to identify two standards of exploitation that better accord with intuitions about taking unfair advantage than neoclassical or neo-Marxian exploitation theory. These two standards are derived from ongoing policy debates about the regulation of payday loans. The sufficiency standard is more restrictive than relative-advantage theory, but the latter indicates when exceptions to the prohibition on exploitation should be made for the sake of the disadvantaged party.

In this article, we critically discuss different versions of the fairness objection to the legalisation of neuro-doping. According to this objection, legalising neuro-doping will result in some enjoying an unfair advantage over others. Basically, we assess four versions. These focus on: 1) the unequal opportunities of winning for athletes who use neuro-doping and for those who do not; 2) the unfair advantages specifically for wealthy athletes; 3) the unfairness of athletic advantages not derived from athletes’ own training (...) ; and 4) the unfair health care costs imposed on everyone as a result of athletes’ use of neuro-doping. We conclude that none of these versions offer a convincing principled fairness-based objection to legalising neuro-doping. (shrink)

The traditional way of drawing the a priori/a posteriori distinction, bequeathed to us by Kant, leads to overestimating the role that experience plays in justifying ourbeliefs. There is an irony in this: though Kant was in the rationalist camp, his way of drawing the distinction gives an unfair advantage to radical empiricism. I offer an alternative way of drawing the distinction, one that does not bias the rationalist/empiricist debate.

Is a government required or permitted to redistribute the gains and losses that differences in biological endowments generate? In particular, does the fact that individuals possess different biological endowments lead to unfair advantages within a market economy? These are questions on which some people are apt to have strong intuitions and ready arguments. Egalitarians may say yes and argue that as unearned, undeserved advantages and disadvantages, biological endowments are never fair, and that the market simply exacerbates these inequities. Libertarians (...) may say no, holding that the possession of such endowments deprives no one of an entitlement and that any system but a market would deprive agents of the rights to their endowments. Biological endowments may well lead to advantages or disadvantages on their view, but not to unfair ones.I do not have strong intuitions about answers to these questions, in part because I believe that they are questions of great difficulty. To begin, alternative answers rest on substantial assumptions in moral philosophy that seem insufficiently grounded. Moreover, the questions involve several problematical assumptions about the nature of biological endowments. Finally, I find the questions to be academic, in the pejorative sense of this term. For aside from a number of highly debilitating endowments, the overall moral significance of differences between people seems so small, so I interdependent and so hard to measure, that these differences really will 1 not enter into practical redistributive calculations, even if it is theoretically i permissible that they do so.Before turning to a detailed discussion of biological endowments and their moral significance, I sketch my doubts about the fundamental moral theories that dictate either the impermissibility or the obligation to compensate for different biological endowments. (shrink)

The question of whether transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in accordance with their gender identity is an evolving debate. Most competitive sports have male and female categories. One of the primary challenges with this categorization system, however, is that some transgender athletes (and especially transgender women) may be prevented from competing in accordance with their gender identity. The reason for this restriction is because of the idea that transgender women have an unfair advantage over their cisgender (...) counterparts; this is seen as a problem since sports are typically guided a principle called ‘the skill thesis’, which suggests that sports are supposed to determine who is most skillful by maintaining a fair starting point. In this paper, I argue that if the skill thesis ought to be maintained and there continues to exist no conclusive evidence in support of unfair advantages possessed by trans women, then we may want to re-consider the gender binary in sport. Rather than having male/female categories, it may make more sense to categorize athletes based other sport-specific factors (e.g., height, weight, etc.). This may help to maintain the skill thesis while at the same time removing potentially unfair and discriminatory barriers against transgender athletes. (shrink)

Sustainable practices are commended to us both out of prudential regard for our own future and out of principled concern for the ‘right to life’ of endangered species, ecosystems and ways of life and for intergenerational justice among our own kind. The larger point of the ‘sustainability ethic’ might be more political, however. Insisting that any practice we adopt now must be sustainable into the indefinite future constitutes an institutional check preventing us from taking unfair advantage of our (...) privileged temporal position vis‐a‐vis our successors. (shrink)

This paper attempts to establish that, and explain why, the practice of punishing offenders is in principle morally permissible. My account is a nonstandard version of the fair play view, according to which punishment 's permissibility derives from reciprocal obligations shared by members of a political community, understood as a mutually beneficial, cooperative venture. Most fair play views portray punishment as an appropriate means of removing the unfair advantage an offender gains relative to law-abiding members of the community. (...) Such views struggle, however, to provide a plausible account of this unfairly gained benefit. By contrast, on my account punishment 's permissibility follows more straightforwardly from the fair play view of political obligation: Specifically, the rule instituting punishment is itself among those rules with which members of the political community are obliged to comply. For criminal offenders, compliance requires submitting to the prospect of punishment. (shrink)

Sethi focuses on multinational corporations in developing countries and the unfair advantage they have in expropriating a greater share of gains from efficiency and productivity from international trade than would be possible if labor had greater mobility or bargaining power.

In this thesis I present a rights-based theory of exploitation. I argue that successful conceptions of exploitation should begin with the ordinary language claim that exploitation involves `taking unfair advantage'. Consequently, they must combine an account of what it means to take advantage of another with an account of when transactions are unfair. Existing conceptions of exploitation fail to provide adequate accounts of both aspects of exploitation. -/- Hillel Steiner and John Roemer provide convincing accounts of (...) the unfairness involved in exploitation, but because they fail to provide restrictive `advantage taking' conditions, their theories of exploitation include cases that we would not ordinarily describe as exploitations. Ruth Sample and Robert Goodin provide accounts that place a stronger emphasis on the attitudes involved in exploitation and the processes that bring it about. Unfortunately, these theories do not properly incorporate the unfairness aspect of exploitation. Consequently, they are either self-frustrating or incomplete. -/- I provide a conception of exploitation that combines both aspects. I claim that a bilateral, strictly Pareto improving, and voluntary transaction t between A and B is exploitative just in case (1) there exists an unrectified property rights violation at some point in the history of exchanges leading to t that (2) reduces B's bargaining power by altering her status quo point, and (3) the degree to which B's preferences are satisfied in t is less than it would be had B's bargaining power not been reduced (by the alteration of her status quo point). Further, (4a) A's egoistic preferences are better satisfied in t because B's bargaining power is limited, and (4b) if the previous conditions also hold for A, then the reduction in A's bargaining power is less than the reduction in B's bargaining power. Finally, (5) A truly believes the previous conditions hold. (shrink)