May, 2008

Clean Hands in the Global Market

So far the conversation here has centered on the principled arguments for ending our support for some of the most oppressive authoritarian regimes in the world, in countries like Burma, Libya, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea. Because of a flaw in the system of global commerce, money we spend on our everyday purchases goes back to [...]

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Moving from Deep Theory to the Real World

by Christopher Wellman
The Conversation
May 30th, 2008

John Ghazvinian and Andrei Illarionov have expressed concerns that implementing Wenar’s proposed plan might have considerable unintended consequences. Wenar has responded that his plan will actually trigger incentives to make the world more just. I must confess that, as a philosopher, I am in no position to adjudicate this dispute. It is worth asking, though, [...]

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Enforce Rights, Progress Will Follow

All of us writing for Cato Unbound this month agree that the political and economic conditions in resource-exporting countries like Equatorial Guinea are intolerable, and that the activities of dictators like Teodoro Obiang in perpetuating these conditions are criminal. It will be worthwhile to remind ourselves of the realities of life in a country like [...]

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Sound Policy Is Based on Sound Principles

by Andrei Illarionov
The Conversation
May 30th, 2008

The discussion of Leif Wenar’s lead essay, “We All Own Stolen Goods,” and his follow-up comment, “Living Up to Our Principles,” have clearly exposed some problems with the principles (referred to regularly in both entries, and even in the title of one of them) used as the basis for his policy proposals. I think this [...]

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Who Are We Punishing?

by John Ghazvinian
The Conversation
May 29th, 2008

Since I haven’t heard much response, either positive or negative, to Christopher Wellman’s suggestion that we have multiple tariffs for multiple thefts, I will make the assumption that everyone accepts this would be a natural outcome of the original Leif Wenar proposal. In other words, I think we can all agree that we are likely [...]

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Multiple Thefts, Multiple Tariffs

by Christopher Wellman
The Conversation
May 27th, 2008

I agree with John Ghazvinian’s claim that Teodoro Obiang deserves to be punished for his tyrannical rule over the citizens of Equatorial Guinea. Indeed, given that these citizens are obviously in no position to do so themselves, Obiang strikes me as an ideal candidate for international criminal prosecution and punishment. But one can concede all [...]

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Inviting an Endless Cycle of Tit-for-Tat Tariffs?

by John Ghazvinian
The Conversation
May 27th, 2008

There are some fascinating discussions going on here, and an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potential directions to take the conversation. One barely knows where to jump in. At the risk of being unimaginative, I’d like to return to a couple of the nuts-and-bolts practical questions I raised in my original reply. In [...]

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Stolen Goods and Dirty Hands

by Christopher Wellman
The Conversation
May 26th, 2008

In his recent post, Leif Wenar explains why he thinks I have misunderstood his proposal. In particular, he contests my view that the trust is designed to clean our dirty hands. He writes,
the point of the trust is to prevent American consumers’ hands from becoming dirty, not to wash the stains out thereafter. With the [...]

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Living Up to Our Principles

Many proposals for reforming the global order ask us to accept new legal principles — for example, to accept that countries have the legal right to launch preventive wars when they believe their security is threatened. Other proposals ask us to build new international institutions — for example, to create a world court with [...]

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To Punish the Guilty

by Andrei Illarionov
Reaction Essay
May 21st, 2008

Cato senior fellow Andrei Illarionov, a former chief economic advisor to then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, argues that there is nothing special about the “resource curse,” which represents just one among many kinds of theft by corrupt political elites. According to Illarionov, Wenar fails to make a principled distinction between the actions of the political leaders of Equatorial Guinea and those of Russia that would motivate restricting trade in goods from the former but not the latter. Illarionov argues that the precedent of treating a country’s natural resources as belonging to its people is the problem, not the beginning of a solution. In practical political reality, the idea of collective national ownership of resources often translates directly into nationalization and control by political elites. Additionally, Illarionov argues that the trade sanctions Wenar proposes would punish innocent citizens who already suffer under corrupt rulers. The issue, he argues, is not a matter of what is stolen, but how we will treat those responsible for theft.

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The Resource Curse and Leif Wenar’s “Clean Hands Trust”

by Christopher Wellman
Reaction Essay
May 16th, 2008

Washington University political philosopher Christopher Wellman praises Wenar’s proposal for fighting the resource curse, but he criticizes the idea of a “Clean Hands Trust” on the ground that it “requires too LITTLE, not too much” of those of us involved in the market for natural resources “stolen” from their rightful owners. Wellman argues that the “Clean Hands Trust” is analogous to a slave-owner attempting to rectify his wrongdoing by offering the slave a large sum in compensation. “If the slave owner cannot clean her hands by paying the slave after the fact,” Wellman asks, “then why should we presume that the person who buys slave-produced cotton from a slave owner can clean her hands by paying the slave after the fact? And if the person who buys morally-tainted cotton cannot clean her hands in this way, why think that those who buy inexpensive shirts constructed from slave-produced cotton can clean their hands by subsequently reimbursing the slaves?” Similarly, he argues a Clean Hands Trust would fail really to clean our hands.

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The Wenar Proposal vs. Realpolitik

by John Ghazvinian
Reaction Essay
May 14th, 2008

While lauding the goal of Leif Wenar’s proposal for fighting the effects of the resource curse, John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil, questions its practicability. When it comes to determining which governments meet the threshold of a “minimally decent and unified government,” Ghazvinian worries about the possibility that “this process will become deeply politicized” or “simply reduced to who has the best PR apparatus.” Ghazvinian suggests that requiring a government to be unified, though intended to stave off civil war, may “have the opposite effect” by providing “any aggrieved minority the power of an instant veto-risking destabilization in what are often already unstable countries.” Wenar’s “anti-theft” tariff, Ghazvinian argues, seems unlikely really to be seen as distinct from other tariffs and so will introduce just another complicating factor into the realpolitik of trade negotiation.

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We All Own Stolen Goods — and How Defending Property Rights Can Help the World’s Most Oppressed People

Developing countries with massive oil or mineral reserves are often wracked by corruption and strife as their would-be rulers jockey for control of the resources that can make them immensely wealthy. But these resources, argues political philosopher Leif Wenar in this month’s provocative lead essay, belong to the people of these countries — some of the poorest people in the world — not their rulers. So trade in these resources amounts to trade in stolen goods. Wenar argues that we must “enforce property rights directly” by taking “legal action in U.S. jurisdictions against the middlemen who trade Americans’ dollars to the worst regimes in exchange for stolen resources.” Because this cannot stop “resource cursed” countries from trading with less enlightened countries, such as China, Wenar additionally proposes a tariff on imports from China (or from whatever country is receiving “stolen” resources), the proceeds of which are to be held in trust for the rightful owners of the resources, and disbursed to those people in the event of their government’s reform. “The priority in reforming global trade,” Wenar argues, “must be to lock in the rights that define the market order. The first step in improving the prospects of poor people is to enforce the rights they already have.”

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