It turns out that the expected disutility of driving to the polling station (in terms of the harm a driver might cause to others) is higher than the expected utility of a good vote. This is not hyperbole.Read more at location 458
CHAPTER TWO Civic Virtue without PoliticsRead more at location 898
Note: riconciliando beni pubblici e privati otteniamo una sorprendente teoria della virtù civica 3 teorie del voto la teoria tradizionale(repubblicana)della virtù civica cos è il bene comune e come si xsegue. il privato conta quanto il pubblico anti hobbes: come sarebbe la vita comune senza sfera privata phillies il genio della medicina che si butta in politica sia le attività private che quelle politiche creano potenziale bene pubblico. il virtuoso compie una CBA soppesando i costi opportunità nb: esiste anche il male pubblico e si realizza nel privato (obbedendo a leggi sbagliate) e nel pubblico (facendo scelte sbagliate) contributo indiretto: chi ha sfamato martin luther king la virtù civica esiste solo se si soffre x la comunità? e gli entusiasti della politica? non equivochiamo: chi pensa solo al profitto nn è un buon cittadino essere un buon cittadino può essere oneroso: bisogna cercare e sfruttare i propri talenti (arricchirsi a volte è faticoso) Edit
The Agency Argument held that citizens should bear some causal responsibility in helping to produce and maintain a just social order with adequate levels of welfare. The Agency Argument asserts that voting is necessary to do this.Read more at location 905
The Public Goods Argument holds that nonvoters unfairly free-ride on the provision of good governance. Failing to vote is like failing to pay taxes—Read more at location 907
The Civic Virtue Argument holds that voting is an essential way to exercise civic virtue, and civic virtue is an important moral virtue.Read more at location 909
In this chapter, I outline a theory of civic virtue and of paying debts to society.Read more at location 910
The most popular views of civic virtue hold that active political participation and community-based volunteering are essential to civic virtue. In this chapter, I argue instead that a person of exceptional civic virtue can exercise civic virtue through stereotypically private activitiesRead more at location 915
Note: TESI: LE VIRTÙ CIVICHE SI ESERCITANO ANCHE IN PRIVATO. IL BRAVO CITTADINO NN PARTECIPA ALLA VITA PUBBLICA Edit
We should distinguish between the political virtues and the civic virtues more generally.5Read more at location 931
many activities stereotypically considered private, such as being a conscientious employee, making art, running a for-profit business, or pursuing scientific discoveries, can also be exercises of civic virtue. For many people, in fact, these are better ways to exercise civic virtue.Read more at location 935
insofar as we think of citizens as having debts to pay to society, there are many ways to pay these debts;Read more at location 938
I argue that political participation is not built into the concept of civic virtue.Read more at location 941
Shelley Burtt defines “civic virtue” as the “disposition to further public over private good in action and deliberation.”9 Richard Dagger uses this same definition in his defense of republican liberalism.Read more at location 959
William Galston defines a civic virtue as “a trait that disposes its possessors to contribute to the well-being of the community and enhances their ability to do so.”Read more at location 961
Jack Crittenden says that to be “civic-minded” is to “care about the welfare of the community (the commonweal or civitas) and not simply about [one’s] own individual well-being.”Read more at location 962
Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin analyze civic virtue as being able to determine the common good and having the motivation to act appropriately toward it.Read more at location 964
many seem just to assume that civic virtue requires political participation. For instance, almost immediately after Dagger says that civic virtue is the disposition to further public over private good, he concludes that a person of civic virtue will want to participate in government in order to help maintain the liberties needed for a good society.Read more at location 977
Similarly, Crittenden says, “Civic education, whenever and however undertaken, prepares people of a country, especially the young, to carry out their roles as citizens. Civic education is, therefore, political education or, as Amy Gutmann describes it, ‘the cultivation of the virtues, knowledge, and skills necessary for political participation.”Read more at location 983
Many agree that to exercise civic virtue requires that one engage in activities that contribute to the common good of the community. This prompts a question: what activities contribute to the common good?Read more at location 992
I argue instead that the common good is often best promoted through extrapolitical means, through activities that do not fit the stereotype of civic virtue. Exercising civic virtue need not involve politics.Read more at location 1001
In my view, something is presumed to be in the common good if it promotes the interests of most people either without harming others’ interests or, if it does harm them, without exploiting them.21 I do not assume there is some common good over and apart from the interests of individuals in society.Read more at location 1006
Suppose one pounds that table and insists that to exercise civic virtue, by definition, requires significant political engagement.Read more at location 1020
A public-spirited person who promotes the common good through nonpolitical means might lack civic virtue but instead have “schlivic” virtue. Schlivic virtue is the disposition and ability to promote the common good by nonpolitical activity. So, not much is gained by insisting that civic virtue requires political engagement as a matter of logic.Read more at location 1023
In this section, I outline the extrapolitical theory of civic virtue and argue that it is superior to the republican view.Read more at location 1030
Schmidtz says that “any decent car mechanic does more for society by fixing cars than by paying taxes.”27 By extension, we can add that a decent mechanic typically does more for society by fixing cars than by voting or writing senators. By fixing cars, she is helping to create and sustain the cooperative networks that promote the common good.Read more at location 1072
My point is not to deny that governments help promote and sustain the common good or to assert that extended cooperative networks do not need governmental support. Rather, just as it would be mistake to discount the role of politics in promoting the common good, it would be a mistake to discount the role of nonpolitical activities in promoting the common good.Read more at location 1075
However, we can also imagine an “inverse state of nature”—a political society that lacks private, nonpolitical activity. In the inverse state of nature, people try to gather together for public deliberation, voting, and law creation, but no one engages in private actions. In the inverse state of nature, life would also be nasty, poor, brutish, and short, because there would be no food, music, science, shelter, or art.Read more at location 1080
When you write with a pencil, you benefit from the input of millions of people around the world. Most of them have no idea that they have helped produced a pencil and that, in virtue of doing so, they are helping you write or draw.Read more at location 1094
A citizen of a liberal society receives a bundle of goods: economic, cultural, social, political, and the like. Most liberal citizens contribute to the bundle others receive, but they do it in different ways. Liberalism encourages a division of labor in how citizens contribute to creating this bundle.Read more at location 1097
Some citizens provide political goods by voting, rallying, supporting causes, fighting in just wars, writing to senators, writing letters to editors, running for office, and so on. Others attempt to provide for the public welfare by volunteering or community organizing. These sorts of activities more or less exhaust the republican conception of civic virtue. However, one can also contribute to the social surplus by working at a productive job that provides goods and services others want. One makes society more interesting, more worthwhile, by creating culture or counterculture. One promotes the common good by raising one’s children well (and not just by instilling in them the democratic or political virtues). And so on. Consider artists, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, venture capitalists, teachers, physicians, intellectuals, stock traders, stay-at-home parents, working parents, chefs, janitors, grocery clerks, and others. Each of these kinds of people in one way or another contributes to fostering a worthwhile society.Read more at location 1099
Suppose for the sake of argument that citizens have debts to pay to society for the goods they receive. Even if so, there are many ways of paying those debts. Some citizens pay by providing good governance, others by providing good culture, and others by providing economic opportunity. Citizens who provide these other kinds of goods are not free-ridingRead more at location 1113
Suppose Michelangelo, Louis Pasteur, or Thomas Edison never voted, never participated in politics, never volunteered, and, by clerical error, never paid any taxes. This alone would not imply he failed to contribute to the common good. On the contrary, each contributed far more to the common good than the average political officeholder or active, participatory democrat.Read more at location 1116
In his famous funeral oration, Pericles says that private actions can be harmful to the polity, but one can compensate by performing useful public service. If so, there seems to be little reason not to accept something like the inverse.Read more at location 1121
Citizens’ investing time and effort into political activities can potentially come at the expense of the common good.29 Consider, as a hypothetical case, Phyllis the Physician. Phyllis is a genius. She produces new medical breakthroughs hourly. Society may want Phyllis to contribute to the common good but not by taking time away from medicine—not even by volunteering at the local free clinic.Read more at location 1125
Engaging in politics always has some opportunity cost, and sometimes this opportunity cost will mean that engagement produces a net loss for the common good.Read more at location 1130
Someone stubbornly clinging to the republican conception of civic virtue could, perhaps, insist that civic virtue is about promoting not merely the common good but the political part of the common good. Suppose we grant this claim. It still would not follow that citizens should promote the political part of the common good directly through political means.Read more at location 1146
Peter’s specializing in apple growing enables Quentin to specialize in fish catching, and vice versa. Peter produces apples directly, but he indirectly contributes to the production of fish. Quentin produces fish directly, but he indirectly contributes to the production of apples.Read more at location 1154
Those who focus on directly producing good governance receive assistance from those who provide the goods that make this focus possible (and vice versa). Martin Luther King Jr. had exceptional civic virtue. But he could not have rallied for political reform if others had not provided food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and even much of the basic philosophy underlying his movement.Read more at location 1157
A citizen does not have to repay cultural goods with cultural goods or political goods with political goods;Read more at location 1175
That said, I am not arguing that you can make up for murder by raising the GDP,Read more at location 1176
I am discussing what it takes, in general, to avoid free-ridingRead more at location 1177
At first glance, one might think that if some more strongly collectivist notion of the common good were correct, this would vindicate the republican conception of civic virtue over the extrapolitical conception. Not so.Read more at location 1183
For instance, both liberals and republicans can accept that certain public goods—that is, non-rivalrous, non-excludable goods like military defense—can promote the common good.Read more at location 1186
is said to be a strongly irreducible common good for some society S just in case X is good for S, and X’s being good for S is not conditional upon S’s being good for any member of S. For instance, perhaps ancient Sparta’s exceptional military prowess was a strongly irreducible common good. Maintaining its military prowess impoverished the city and stunted the moral development of its citizens, but perhaps it was good for Sparta, if not for any of the Spartans. Liberals tend to think that no such strongly irreducible common goods exist.Read more at location 1191
However, suppose one believes (I think mistakenly) that there are strongly irreducible common goods, that these goods ought to be pursued, and that these goods can be achieved only through politics. Even this would not imply that an extrapolitical conception of civic virtue is incorrect or that the republican conception is correct. As I have already argued, citizens who engage in nonpolitical activities can thereby indirectly promote political goods.Read more at location 1198
One reason it is easy to overlook private contributions to the common good is that such contributions are often very obviously profitable, or at least of low cost, to the contributors. Yet, there is a difference between the benefit conferred by an activity and the cost the agent bears for that activity.Read more at location 1208
One cannot measure the value of a contribution by the cost of making it. Jane might spend $100 to buy a gift for Kelly that Kelly values at only $40. Or Jane might spend $10 for a gift that Kelly values at $40. Jane might spend $10 making a gift that Kelly values at $40, but Jane might have so enjoyed making the gift that she would gladly have paid $80 for the experience of making it. In each case, the value of the gift to the receiver is $40, though the cost to the giver varies. If Luke decides to contribute to society by becoming a policeman rather than an investment banker, he will probably bear higher personal costs, given the differences in pay and risk. However, it does not follow that society gains more from Luke’s choosing to become a policeman, or even that the average policeman does more good for society than the average investment banker.Read more at location 1211
At the extreme, consider the soldier who “dies in vain.” This soldier has sacrificed everything for his country, but that does not mean his country benefited from the sacrifice.Read more at location 1218
The amount one suffers is not a reliable measure of how much civic virtue one has.Read more at location 1224
There is a possible view that holds that whether citizens have paid their debts is determined not by the value of their contributions but by the costs they incur in making contributions. This view leads to some perverse results. It implies that an altruistic, ambitious, motivated person who enjoys politics, volunteering, working a productive job, and being a good neighbor would have to do a lot to repay her debts.Read more at location 1235
Civic virtue has a motivational component. One can greatly contribute to the common good but still lack civic virtue.Read more at location 1246
For instance, a person who helps others merely out a desire for personal profit is not benevolent.Read more at location 1247
So, if Michelangelo turns out to have been indifferent to making the world better for others and cared about art only for art’s sake or only about getting paid, then his artistic endeavors, however valuable, would not be exercises of civic virtue.Read more at location 1252
Thus, the extrapolitical conception of civic virtue implies that a wide array of publicly beneficial private activities could be exercises of civic virtue provided that people have the right motivations. The extrapolitical conception does not have the silly implication that anyone who promotes the common good has civic virtue.Read more at location 1256
HOW DEMANDING IS THE EXTRAPOLITICAL CONCEPTION OF CIVIC VIRTUE?Read more at location 1259
Readers might be tempted to conclude that the extrapolitical conception of civic virtue is not sufficiently demanding.Read more at location 1266
suppose instead we discover that civic virtue does not require a citizen continually to subvert her interests for society. (I think this conclusion is correct, though I have not argued for it here.) If so, the extrapolitical conception of civic virtue would have some attractive features, which I now discuss.Read more at location 1285
Pocock, favorably citing Polybius, says that modern liberal societies tend to undermine civic virtue by pulling people toward private ends.40Read more at location 1327
Modern liberalism’s success is that it finds many ways of reconciling the private and common good (at least, more so than competing regimes) and so lowers the personal cost of benevolence.Read more at location 1330
Michael Walzer asks, “What was citizenship?”42 He says citizenship was possible only in classical republican societies. He contends that contemporary hand-wringing over citizenship comes from the feeling that something has been lost, because citizens seem to care so little about politics. He says this feeling of loss inspires many to try to resurrect the republican conception.43 However, he adds that citizenship so described was not really lost, because it never really could find a home in liberal societies.Read more at location 1340
Rather, it may be that liberalism encourages a different, more diverse, and better kind of citizenship than republican societies ever could.Read more at location 1345
Recall the Agency Argument: 1. You should be a good citizen. 2. In order for you to be a good citizen, it is not enough that other citizens obtain adequate levels of welfare and live under a reasonably just social order. Rather, in addition, you need to be an agent who helps to cause other citizens to have these adequate levels of welfare, etc. 3. In order to do this, you must vote. 4. Therefore, you must vote.Read more at location 1350
Recall the Public Goods Argument: 1. Good governance is a public good. 2. No one should free-ride on the provision of such goods. Those who benefit from such goods should reciprocate. 3. Citizens who abstain from voting free-ride on the provision of good governance. 4. Therefore, each citizen should vote.Read more at location 1358
Premise 3 is false. Citizens can contribute in other ways and thus not be guilty of free-riding.Read more at location 1363
Consider again the Civic Virtue Argument: 1. Civic virtue is a moral virtue. 2. Civic virtue requires voting. 3. Therefore, citizens who do not vote thereby exhibit a lack of civic virtue and are, to that extent, morally vicious.Read more at location 1375
It is consistent with my view to hold that, under special circumstances, a duty to vote might arise. I have not argued that there can never be a duty to vote. Instead, I have argued that a citizen in a modern democratic polity generally has no civic duty to vote, or even to participate in politics.Read more at location 1402
Even if a person in fact lacks a duty to X, if she believes she has a duty to do X but does not do it, this can be evidence of bad character. Even though I think there is no duty to vote, I suspect that most people who abstain do so either because it is too costly for them, given their circumstances, or because they have somewhat deficient character.Read more at location 1407
It is also consistent with my view to hold that for some citizens, voting, even if it is not obligatory, is at least a good idea, morally speaking.Read more at location 1410
