Economic Limitarianism

= "economic limitarianism holds the view that no one should hold surplus money, which is defined as the money one has over and above what one needs for a fully flourishing life".

Contextual Quote

In answering the multidisciplinary question what, if anything, is wrong with a society in which some are very wealthy, I would like to propose a view in this literature on the pattern of distributive justice, called Economic Limitarianism (Robeyns 2017). In a nutshell, economic limitarianism holds the view that no one should hold surplus money, which is defined as the money one has over and above what one needs for a fully flourishing life. Limitarianism as an ethical or political view is, in a certain sense, symmetrical to the view that there is a poverty line and that no one should fall below this line. Limitarianism claims that one can theoretically construct a riches line and that a world in which no one would be above the riches line would be a better world."

- Ingrid Robeyns [1]

Discussion

Ingrid Robeyns:

"why would we think that limitarianism is a plausible view? Why would a world without superrich people be a better or more just world? What is bad or wrong with holding onto one’s surplus money?

In answering these questions, I will proceed as follows. I will offer several pro tanto reasons3 why there is something wrong with superriches. I will focus on two such arguments: the argument from urgent unmet needs and the democratic argument. Note that there are other arguments in defence of the view that a world without superrich people would be a better world. Danielle Zwarthoed (2018) has defended limitarianism based on the value of autonomy. There are likely more argumentative strategies to defend limitarianism. For example, one could start from the relational egalitarian point of view, arguing that citizens cannot relate to each other as equals if their financial differences are too large, or from the value of freedom as non-domination, arguing that securing non-domination requires that no one should have too much money to allow them to exert genuine and structural power over other citizens. However, rather than trying to be exhaustive in the reasons for a world without superwealthy people, I also wish to analyse one objection—that economic limitarianism will lead to levelling down the living standards of a large group of people, since the economically most productive will lack the proper economic incentives, which will negatively impact aggregate production.

Section 2 offers the first argument for economic limitarianism—the democratic argument. Section 3 presents the argument from urgent unmet needs, and section 4 discusses a specific case of that argument, namely climate action financing. Section 5 addresses the objection that economic limitarianism will destroy incentives to contribute to the economic production and that the Rawlsian difference principle, or else optimal taxation theory, would, therefore, be superior in answering the question of how much of the surplus money should be taxed. The final section will offer my arguments’ implications for society and the fields of human development and capability analyses.

This paper draws significantly on a book chapter in which I introduced limitarianism for a philosophical audience (Robeyns 2017).4 The reasons to reproduce large parts of it here are twofold. First, to bring a philosophical argument to an interdisciplinary audience. Most scholars tend to read articles and books mainly published in the discipline in which they are institutionally embedded, and as a consequence, we need additional efforts to bring work in one discipline to the attention of students and scholars of other disciplines. Second, it allows me to do two things that I believe to be important for scholars and students of human development and the capability approach: to argue for the moral justification of using surplus money for the funding of climate action financing (section 4) and discuss the implications of the literature on economic limitarianism for the human development paradigm and the capability approach (section 6)."

(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2019.1633734)