Capitalism,Liberty&Soc Justice

Catalog description

This course explores the role of capitalism in shaping our society. It aims to analyze the concepts of individual liberty and social justice, examine the role of democratic governance and capitalist economic systems to best achieve them, and consider the resulting implications in terms of a range of contemporary concerns such as poverty, health equity, education, worker’s rights, environmental degradation. The positions to be assessed span the political spectrum and will draw on interdisciplinary sources from political science, economics, and philosophy. Core questions of the course include: (i) “do free markets maximize prosperity, or do they produce wasteful and economically damaging outcomes that require some form of government intervention?”, (ii) “do the distributions of economic resources produced through the capitalist marketplace promote or violate important standards of justice and fairness?”, (iii) “is a society of free markets and minimal government most likely to promote or violate important democratic ideals?“.