MINDING OTHERS' BUSINESS

What do we do when a loved one is seriously messing up her life? While Kantianism describes the predicament nicely as a tension between love and respect, it is not well‐suited to resolving it. Kantian respect prevents minding another's business in cases where love demands it. Virtue ethics can readily explain the predicament as a tension between the virtues of sympathy and humility. Moreover, by changing the focus away from the other as a setter of ends and toward the would‐be‐benefactor's own degree of practical wisdom, virtue ethics permits a more nuanced set of loving responses to self‐destructive people.     

The Problem of Social Cost: Coase's economics versus ethics

ABSTRACT Coase's now famous paper, 'The Problem of Social Cost', argues that social harms caused by industry are best addressed through a policy which would be optimal in terms of market efficiency. I argue that this narrowly based policy represents a classic example of the failure of many welfare economists to consider adequately the ethical implications of their recommendations. I also indicate the manner in which Coase's recommendations conflict with intuitively well-established ethical principles. I conclude that only an approach that considers many more features than market efficiency can produce an optimal policy for dealing with the social costs of production.