Waheed Hussain
University of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor | The Wharton School

El seminario se dictará en idioma inglés, sin taducción.

Abstract: Freedom figures prominently in the defense of free-market arrangements—especially in the United States.  But libertarian-styled arguments greatly oversimplify the relationship between freedom and economic life.  My aim in this presentation is to defend a more compelling account of the relationship between freedom and economic life.  According to what I call the “social democratic conception,” respect for freedom is not just a matter of ensuring that people can exercise choice-based control over their property and labor.  What matters fundamentally is how well an economic arrangement contributes to the broader aim of ensuring that that people reflectively pursue a pattern of conduct that is (objectively) reasonable.  I argue that freedom, properly understood, would be best served by a market arrangement, such as the codetermination system in Germany, where capital and labor essentially share control of the corporation.