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An Absurd Tax on our Fellow Citizens: The Ethics of Rent Seeking in the Market Failures (or Self-Regulation) Approach

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  • Peter Jaworski

Abstract

Joseph Heath lumps in quotas and protectionist measures with cartelization, taking advantage of information asymmetries, seeking a monopoly position, and so on, as all instances of behavior that can lead to market failures in his market failures approach to business ethics. The problem is that this kind of rent and rent seeking, when they fail to deliver desirable outcomes, are better described as government failure. I suggest that this means we will have to expand Heath’s framework to a market and government failures approach. I then try to defuse objections that as a government failure, rent seeking may not appear relevant to what managers ought to do. Solving this conceptual issue will also give us an excuse to revisit a separate conceptual issue: the normatively thick conception of “rent” and rent seeking behavior that some use. This normatively thick conception is problematic, I argue, and I offer the beginnings of a novel, normatively neutral conception that is useful for our purposes in making the ethics of rent and rent seeking behavior more than a merely trivial exercise. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Jaworski, 2014. "An Absurd Tax on our Fellow Citizens: The Ethics of Rent Seeking in the Market Failures (or Self-Regulation) Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 467-476, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:121:y:2014:i:3:p:467-476
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1734-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Casey Carder Rockwell & David Crockett & Lenita Davis, 2020. "Mass incarceration and consumer financial harm: Critique of rent‐seeking by the carceral state," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 1062-1081, September.
    2. Matthew Sinnicks, 2022. "On the Analogy Between Business and Sport: Towards an Aristotelian Response to The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 49-61, April.
    3. Jeffrey Moriarty, 2020. "On the Origin, Content, and Relevance of the Market Failures Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 113-124, August.
    4. Panibratov, Andrei & Chen, Xinchuan, 2018. "The role of informal institutions in the internationalization process of Chinese and Russian firms," Working Papers 15115, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    5. Pierre-Yves Néron, 2016. "Rethinking the Ethics of Corporate Political Activities in a Post-Citizens United Era: Political Equality, Corporate Citizenship, and Market Failures," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(4), pages 715-728, July.

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