Saturday 19 December 2015

Research into Liberty (2) - Intermediate Status and Foward Links - Ethics and Finance

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Recently, I have noticed an invitation to apply for a PhD position whose research results are expected to be 
relevant to the projects overall goal of developing a philosophically sound ethical theory of systemic financial risk imposition and to work out ways in which such a conception can help to guide public policy.
In how far are my research results and prospective research interests likely to fit such a project?  

See Research into Liberty (1) - Paths of Renunciation, and Research into Liberty (3) - Applied Interests for a prologue spelling out more fully the history and background of my research findings.

I. Overlap - Political Theory and Ethics

The overlap area may enclose my interest in politics as a spontaneous order and a discovery procedure, in particular concerning the nature and role of
(a) political infrastructure,
(b) political competition, and
(c) the attendant (multilateral) democratic environment or processes of modus vivendi accommodating a diversity of (national or intra-national) parties.
How do national or international institutions tasked with conceptualising, measuring, monitoring, and directing factors affecting systemic financial risk imposition fit into (a), (b), and (c) above?

Do they? Should they? Can they? How? To what extent?

II. Overlap - Economic Reasoning and Policy

This might link up with another overlap area relating to
  • heterodox theories of the monetary order, like MMT and other theoretical approaches that - unlike the Neoclassical mainstream -, place banks, money, debt, and disequilibrium in the centre of their purview
and perhaps also
  • a broader spectrum of competing theories and policy regimes and their relationship with issues covered under overlap area I (Political Theory and Ethics).
The blended overall outcome of research may add insights into 
  • the emergence, presence, and prospects of existing regimes of systemic risk imposition,
  • the extent to which they are already conceptualised within a consistent ethical theory, 
  • what such a theory requires,
  • whether a credible and feasible regime of systemic financial risk imposition is amenable to a comprehensive ethic theory,
  • whether (in addition to attempts at ethical justification) such a regime may have to be / is being maintained by other pragmatic and evolutionary structures of public viability. 
Confronting the two overlap areas with one another shows promise to yield (tentative answers to) intriguing questions: 
  • Is the nature of modern fiat money and the corresponding monetary system a fundamental hindrance to enhanced multilateral democracy? 
  • Can there be a consistent ethical theory that encompasses rival and incompatible conceptions of the monetary system? 
  • What if a free, ethically authenticated demos tends to generate financial instability and the attendant systemic financial risk imposition?
  • Can financial instability be eliminated at all, and, if it can, would such an outcome be desirable? 

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