Sufficientarianism

Este trabajo pretende mostrar las ventajas de tener en cuenta los aportes de diversas ciencias a la hora de pensar cuestiones complejas de filosofía política -y los falsos caminos en los que podemos caer por ignorarlos.
Repasaremos las investigaciones del economista Fred Hirsch sobre el funcionamiento de las economías posicionales y sus consecuencias para el bienestar de los ciudadanos, las de la socióloga Juliet Schor sobre el modo en que la actuales tendencias en publicidad promueven la competencia posicional, afectando negativamente el bienestar infantil, y las investigaciones del epidemiólogo Richard Wilkinson y la antropóloga Kate Pickett sobre cómo el grado de desigualdad económica de un país afecta la calidad de las relaciones sociales y, con ella, la prevalencia de un amplio conjunto de problemas sociales y de salud, que constituyen indicadores indirectos del bienestar.
Estas investigaciones permiten configurar una imagen científicamente informada de nuestra naturaleza como animales sociales y del modo en que nos vemos afectados por los fines que perseguimos y por las estructuras sociales en las que vivimos, que es importante tener en cuenta a la hora de definir las reglas que deberían regir la vida social, así como también a la hora de evaluar los costos en términos de bienestar de distintas políticas públicas, entre ellas las políticas medio-ambientales.
Mostraremos que estas investigaciones quitan plausibilidad a posturas muy influyentes en el debate sobre la justa distribución del ingreso, como son las posturas suficientista y prioritarista, al tiempo que ponen en evidencia la falsedad de la antinomia sustentabilidad ecológica-bienestar, de la idea ampliamente difundida de que el freno al crecimiento económico y al consumo -necesario para evitar una crisis ambiental- deba implicar necesariamente un sacrificio en términos del bienestar de los ciudadanos.

PALABRAS CLAVE Igualitarismo – Suficientismo –Prioritarismo –Bienestar – Sustentabilidad – Bienes Posicionales


ABSTRACT

This paper intends to demonstrate the advantages of taking into account relevant findings from different sciences when thinking about complex problems of political philosophy –and the false paths that can thus be averted.
We will go through research by economist Fred Hirsch on the functioning of positional economies and its impact on citizen’s well-being. We will continue by reviewing research by sociologist Juliet Schor on how current trends in advertising work to exacerbate posicional competition, negatively affecting children’s well-being. Finally, we will present reseca by epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson and antropologist Kate Pickett on how a country’s level of economic inequality affects the quality of social relationships and the prevalence of a broad range of social and health problems, which can be seen as indirect marker of well-being.
These findings provide input for delineating a scientifically informed image of our nature as social animals, shedding light on the way we are affected by the ends we pursue and by the social structures we live in. Such information is relevant both to the task of defining the rules that should govern social life, and to that of assessing the welfare costs environmental or other public policies.
We aim to show that these findings make influential positions on the just distribution of income –such as sufficientism or prioritarism- less plausible, while also uncovering the falseness of the purported clash between well-being and ecological sustainability –of the widespread idea that the brake on growth and consumption that is needed to prevent an environmental crisis should necessarily imply a sacrifice in terms of the well-being of the citizenry.

KEY WORDS Egalitarianism – Sufficientism –Prioritarism –Well-being – Sustainability – Positional Goods

It is widely recognized that Climate Change (CC) is a multidimensional, spatiotemporal and multi scale problem. These features raise an issue of framing: this means that it is difficult to conceptualize such a problem. Hence we shall discuss whether to approach it as a global or an international issue and whether or not it encompasses features of global justice. In order to do so we shall define a typical issue of Global Justice to see if CC falls into such a definition. The argument of this paper is that even though these two issues share some characteristics, the latter is a wicked problem that entails issues related to collective action and future generations. If the old paradigms have failed in recognizing such an aspect, then CC must be addressed through a new perspective into the larger framework of Sustainable Development (SD). Still a constructive debate on which actors should be involved is needed. The thesis of this paper is that if Global Governance has failed a new agent must be selected and this agent must be the community of people who is more efficient when pushing governments in acting against CC. At the end the problems related to our theory will be set forth.