National Character

Lebron believes that the US possesses a "flawed national character" and seeks to develop a theory that might "remake" it by focusing on the deconstruction of the systematic racial injustice that has plagued our society (2). In constructing what might constitute our "national character" he gestures to all of racial justice, consistency, moral equality, and social value especially as it relates to the "black identity" (4). That all people should be afforded equal, just treatment is not a new nor controversial idea, yet while it seems as though the US has largely moved on from its severely prejudiced history - one would be hard-pressed to find someone who makes their racism blatant and obvious within the realms of acceptable social behavior - Lebron is concerned that even with this "relative disappearance of explicit racism" we fail to account for the "continued marginalization of blacks and black identity" (2). In this way, as a nation, our general pattern of attitudes and actions and the normative importance we place on our relationships with others are argued to fall dishearteningly short in regard to social justice, staining our national character. 

We see the grim results, but we need a better understanding of what this means. While "black suffering has become much more difficult to catalog," that systematic racial injustice exists poses an "existential threat" to Black Americans by exposing America's "lack of consistency to the idea of moral equality," which, as Lebron points out, "has real cost for black lives" (2). From this we understand two important aspects of national character: it deals in part with internal consistency (we claim to uphold certain values as a society that are not at all translated in our attitudes and actions) and with equality (as inequality "consistently and persistently diminishes the ability of blacks to conceive and/or pursue a good life" (2)). His conception of national character presupposes the moral value of equality, which I personally find no fault with, given the inherent value it holds in a democratic society (which he in fact argues contains the resources for redemption) and the power it holds over the social and political well-being of individuals. In our society, he argues, we have a problem with social value, for "blacks do not occupy an equal place in the scheme of normative attention and concern" that is used to justify the distribution of benefits and their recipients. It follows that our current conception of distributive justice is harmfully limited, as it presumes an equality of social value that we do not possess by failing to acknowledge the "value we fail to accord black identity" (4). Our failure to account for social value in our conception of justice is certainly reflected in our poor national character. 

It seems universally accepted that people can have character. Can institutions have it as well? Lebron feels that in the same way people hold values, our democratic society too holds values such as "fairness, equality, and basic social, political, and civic reciprocity" (9). He goes further, however, claiming that while people come and go, institutions "precede and outlast generations" and lend to a sense of identity in profound ways. Yet people make up institutions, so where does the change come from? Where is social value derived from? If we find that source we will surely find what actually determines our national character beyond a list of values. 

Some Self Reflection

"'You know, the guys in the hood driving the cars with the big rims'. Everyone had a good laugh at that one. Not me. Trading easy stereotypes, the teaching assistant's comment unthoughtful remark only served to embarrass me"(7).  Lebron writes that if he had shared this event with the teacher's assistant, he or she would have been deeply ashamed. Lebron will later go one to explain that this shame comes from an incontinence between values and actions.
This exchange made me think about how we, a class with no black students, are to discuss The Color of Shame . If we said something that was shameful (incontinence between our values and actions), we might not realize. Of course, it is incredibly valuable to read and discuss this work, because this topic is valuable to many Black Americans, and thus is important to all Americans.
CMC and most of American higher education is an institution where "we learn a good deal of our moral lessons"(11). Many institutions have financially benefited from the exploitation of other classes, whether historically or presently. Our discussion of race is taking place in such an institution. With that in mind, I think we have to be conscious about how talk about Lebron. It is one thing to intellectualize the logic and premises of his account, but it is another, an arguably more comprehensive method to read a philosopher, to understand why and for whom Lebron is writing this piece.  

Nigerian Americans?

Loved this. Lebron is clearly very sociologically informed, and a terrific writer to boot.

One thing that’d come across my mind when reading this was the circumstances of Nigerian Americans. I remember hearing anecdotally that Nigerian Americans do very well, and Wikipedia appears to corroborate this: "Nigerian immigrants have the highest education attainment level in the United States, surpassing every other ethnic group in the country, according to U.S Bureau Census data. Harvard University, for example, has estimated that more than one-third of its black student body consists of recent immigrants or their children, or were mixed-race.” if there are indeed groups of black people that do well in the United States, that seems to be a problem for Lebron’s social value theory (and a boost for the goods begets goods conception). But then he brings up the case of the West Indian immigrants. It seems clear to me that when Lebron refers to blacks he is referring to “American blacks,” or people who identify as American blacks (2nd generation W.I. immigrants, or maybe 2nd gen. Nigerian immigrants too.) Through the W.I. immigrants you can see plainly how race diffracts life experience.

Sentiments in Philosophy

LeBron defines shame as the "moral response we should and tend to have when we fail to uphold principles we affirm on our own account in the face of conditions that cannot possibly be thought to justify that failure" (18). Shame, he argues, is what citizens ought to feel for permitting the continuation of implicit racial inequality in our country when we are supposed to be committed to the principles of equality.

Like Smith and Baier, LeBron appeals to human sentiment in making a philosophical argument for evaluating our actions. Baier centers around the power of trust in determining our relationships and uses this feeling as a starting place for evaluating exploitative relationships. Smith devotes much of his Theory of Moral Sentiments to discussing the importance of sympathy and similar to LeBron, suggests that individuals must assess the morality of their actions from an outsiders view (Smith's impartial spectator).

Appealing to human emotion aligns with the importance LeBron places on creating a political theory. These nonideal theories must adequately search for the solution to a problem by starting from within, as opposed to creating a theory of morality or justice without consideration of contemporary societal issues. In the same way, evoking real sentiments forces individuals to directly face the problem; we cannot escape the feelings of shame, sympathy, nor trust. Nonetheless, I understand that LeBron is taking a less conventional approach so I'd like to hear how others feel about his account.

Moral Markets?

Public regulation and structuring of incentives can align private interests with morality, to produce moral outcomes. What is the relationship between government regulations and the free market? The two are not ontologically opposed. Government regulations incentivize market outcomes, for better or for worse. Pogge writes the “the root of the evil lies not in how corporations do business, but how we regulate and incentivize them” (28). The shape and form of the free market is the product of government regulation. A more apt comparison might be how a stream’s current is the product of the rocks and terrain in the riverbed. Our current government structure imbeds incentives for producing drugs geared toward affluent consumers. Pogge’s solution is pull programs--prize money awarded based on impact--which can foster a market competition:  “A full-pull market scheme replaces a central planning solution with a competitive-market solution”(22). Companies are part of the solution to GDB because “the immense powers of free enterprise will be marshaled against the great diseases that bring so much misery”(29). If you are an opponent of the free market (What’s up, Marx?), believing that the free market caused or magnified the world’s ills, then you acknowledge the immense power of the free market, for better or worse.  But the powers of the market can be harnessed.  Can capitalism be used to eradicate the world's most fatal diseases?

In blog post on his website, Robert Reich explains, “In reality, the ‘free market’ is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded… (2) on what terms (equal access to the internet? the right to organize unions?... (3) under what conditions… (4) what’s private and what’s public… (5) how to pay for what”. The free market is a written, constructed set of rules. Mr. Reich continues, “These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t ‘intrude’ on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t “free” of rules; the rules define them.”  Markets are the rules that define them. If the rules create the right incentives,  the market can be guided to produce the moral outcomes. 

http://robertreich.org/post/61406074983

Pogge's Poor

Pogge certainly does not agree that medicine and medical advancements should be treated in the same way that we treat things such as software and fashion. In these instances, excluding people from goods that "cost nothing at the margin" is justifiable and therefore morally permissible to him, as extending access to such innovations imposes a cost on those who would "otherwise be exclusive beneficiaries of the innovation" (5). Grace's post highlights why medical advancements and products do not enjoy the same treatment in Pogge's argument, as while he does advocate for the practical necessity of extending access to these innovations ("we have reason to want dangerous diseases to be decimated... rather thank kept around... as [they are] a massive burden on the poor and a threat to all") his true argument rests on the moral significance he sees in the fulfillment of human rights. While being unable to access the latest handbag design won't kill you, denying the world's poor access to medicine due to a similar kind of patent is "morally problematic" as it denies them their basic "right to life" (6). 

Pogge then outlines the difficulties associated with the idea that inventors enjoy some sort of transcendent "natural right" over the use of their inventions with this conception of moral justification in mind. His first point is somewhat weak, questioning the legitimacy of extensive intellectual property rights by questioning the specific "contours enshrined in the TRIPS agreements" (6). It seems easy to question the grounds upon which an international agreement is made with respect to its content and legitimacy, and so further exploring this point seems unnecessary. I am more interested in his later points, where he expands on this idea of moral justification within the context of human rights. He asks how to weigh the "natural right of inventors" in preserving exclusive access to their medical invention versus the "right to life of poor people," and seems upset that "such a person's entitlement to the products of his labor trumps the needs of others, no matter how desperate" (6). This again reinforces what I see to be his claims towards human rights, and the basis upon which actions that detract from them can be morally justified. 

To further this examination, Pogge calls upon Robert Nozick, and claims that even with his libertarian ideologies he would "require that other [inventors] be left free to replicate the latter's invention" as by depriving others of the opportunity to "invent the medicine without having to prove that they did so independently" that inventor would be creating scarcity and would not be leaving "enough and as good" for others (8). What confuses me, however, is whether Pogge is more concerned with types of inventions or the processes that lead to them. While it would seem that his argument mainly concerns the former, he states that the inventor "cannot acquire veto powers over third parties who synthesize medicine of the same type on their own - even if they heard about his prior invention or found a sample of it lost or abandoned," suggesting that the process by which a product is invented holds similar weight in this consideration. I would like to explore, along with Pogge's arguments regarding moral justifications and human rights, his ideas of type versus process in intellectual property rights (and whether that distinction is important) as it relates to Nozick and other political philosophers. 

Monopoly is Better as a Board Game

When it comes to monopolies, Pogge argues that the problem is "the monopoly pricing power [corporations] employ, even in the case of essential medicines, to incentivize pharmaceutical research." (31). Moreover, corporations find themselves in the moral quandary that "To engage in sustainable research and development of essential medicines, they must actively prevent poor people from gaining access to such medicines near marginal cost." (31). As the paper is written, however, it makes it seem as though there is a binary choice between changing the incentive structure and letting poor people die from preventable diseases. There seems to be other options, though. For instance, states could subsidize the first $X amount of sales in poor countries, allowing the company its profit while ensuring that poor people have access to the medicine.

More importantly perhaps, Pogge’s solution seems to replace one monopoly with a different one. If the central defect of the current system is the “monopoly pricing power they employ,” then how does replacing one monopoly for another actually improve everything. Perhaps the poor will have more access to medicine, but, if states (the other monopoly) opt to spend a low amount of money on drugs, pharmaceutical companies could easily begin to run into financial trouble. Any thoughts on the best way to deal with one of the two monopolies that seem necessary to exist?