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Economics, Ethics and the Environment: Syllabus Econ 4999 Edward Morey Spring 2009, last revised January 14, 2010 This syllabus is a work in progress. Course Description An intent is to answer four questions: 1. What is ethics? 2. What is economics? 3. What is the environment? 4. And, how do they all relate? Put simply, ethics are limitations a society imposes upon it members. I started to say constraints rather than limitations but ethics don’t always bind; rather, they sometimes only guide and suggest behavior. The presumption is that if most abide by the ethics, society will be better off. Ethics typically apply to behaviors, as in doing behavior A is ethical, doing behavior B is unethical. Is having sex with the World’s first sex robot (Daily Camera, Jan. 11, 2010) ethical? Said another way, ethics is a list of principles or rules to determine which behaviors are good, which are acceptable, and which are bad. For example, the ethics of a society might allow the killing of animals or slaves (because their preferences do not count in the societal calculus – they have no moral standing) but not allow the killing of citizens of the State, except, of course, by the State (executions). The 10 commandments are ten rules for ethical behavior accepted by Christians and Jews. Other ethical principles include stuff like “do no harm,” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The principle that increasing efficiency is good is an ethic; the principle that the market is a good way to allocate resources and distribute goods and services is an ethic.Quoting from Aldo Leopold (a famous, dead environmentalist) talking about an ecological ethic vs. a philosophical ethic An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. The ecologist calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content. (From the Land Ethic 1949) Note the expressions limitation on freedom, cooperation, symbioses. Ethics can stand alone or be based on philosophical, religious or historical principles. For example, sins are unethical acts, where what is and is not a sin is determined by religious beliefs – for example, some believe homosexuality is both sinful and unethical. There are many different, and often conflicting, foundations for ethics: religion, to increase happiness/decrease pain, inalienable rights, precedent/historical, etc. Simply put, the ethics of economics are efficiency, equity and sometimes sustainability.3 Economics is two things: (1) the development of models to explain the allocation of resources and distribution of goods, including how the allocation and distribution will change if things exogenous to the models change (e.g. government policy), And (2), Economics addresses whether one allocation and distribution is better or worse than another. The former is typically called positive economics because it is devoid of judgments, the latter called normative economics. The environment, simply put, is where everything comes from and where everything goes. All that we produce and consume has its origins in the environment. Commodities are arrangements of materials taken from the environment. We call the process of arrangement, production. Production produces three things: things we want (the stuff the producer will sell or self consume), waste, and pollution. In the process of production no matter is created or destroyed Consumption of the wanted things is, again, nothing more than a rearrangement – the stuff doesn’t disappear, rather most of it is discarded back into the environment as waste and pollution, a bit is recycled. When we investigate how economists think about good and bad (whether one allocation is better or worse than another), two or three words come to mind: always efficiency and equity, and sometimes sustainability. We will need to understand these concepts and why economists use them to determine good from bad. Put another way, what are the ethical and philosophical foundations of normative economics?4 Whether something is good or bad from an economist’s perspective typically comes down to whose preferences count and whose preference don’t count (white men? foreigners? women? future generations? animals?). We will return to this question of who is and who is not a member of society many times. For those of you wondering, there is nothing in neoclassical economics, as I read it, which precludes animals from being members of society; making them members (having moral standing) is an assumption one can choose to make, or not make. That said, most economists assume, without thinking about it, that only humans are members of society (maybe because few non-human animals choose careers in economics). As an aside, note that there is nothing that says all member of society need be treated equally; that would be an additional assumption. For example, most would consider U.S. citizens, independent of age, to be members of the U.S. society, but most would not advocate equal treatment for babies and adults.5 This is only my fifth time teaching this course; I am getting better at it but still have a ways to go. In my defense, I have been thinking and playing with the issues for quite a while. I need your input and suggestions in terms of topics and presentation. There is a lot of flexibility in terms of the material I present. I need your input and suggestions.6 My proposed objectives for the course (as of January 11, 2010) are pretty simple: 1. To make us think hard and long about economics and its foundations – make us think critically 2. To investigate the philosophical and ethical foundations of economics–think a philosophy course. Some of you will find this more a philosophy course than an economics course. If that is not to your liking… 3. To think about how economics defines “good” and “bad”. That is, how do we, as economists, decide whether some allocation of resources and distribution of goods is better or worse that some other allocation and distribution. Put


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CU-Boulder ECON 4999 - Syllabus

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