Search results for ""Author Michael C. Munger""

Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that ‘place’ was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades these physical locations have increasingly been replaced by their virtual counterparts – online platforms. Here, author Michael C. Munger demonstrates how these platforms act as matchmakers or middlemen, a role traders have adopted since the very first exchanges thousands of years ago. The difference today is that the matchmakers often play no direct part in buying or selling anything – they just help buyers and sellers find each other. Their major contribution has been to reduce the costs of organising and completing purchases, rentals or exchanges. The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises contends that the key role of online platforms is to create reductions in transaction costs and it highlights the importance of three ‘Ts’ - triangulation, transfer and trust – in bringing down those costs.

Read more less

“Anyone concerned with social justice will find this book makes him question his assumptions, rethink his premises, and think!" —Andrew P. Morriss, professor, Bush School of Government and Public Service, School of Law, Texas A&M UniversityWhat is social justice? In these pages, twenty-one accomplished academics seek to do justice to “social justice.” Inequality exists and it obviously causes rifts in societies. But it’s not obvious how the government should address those rifts, or if it should address them at all. Have we forgotten the perhaps more efficient power of personal choice—and the corollary obligation: to serve our neighbors—to make our society more humane? Beginning with the first political philosophers in ancient Athens, and continuing right through Marx into our post-modern era, men have wrestled with the question of justice; and the answers have been as earnest as they have been varied. Today, our “expert” class also claim to have answers—updated answers, more “equitable” answers, more technological answers ... in short, answers that are simply better suited to our times.But are those answers in any way correct? Do they work? Are they—just? In these elegant, nuanced essays, the authors use the wisdom of ancient and modern philosophers to shed light on these important questions—and the answers are revealing. Armed with ample evidence from real-world experiences, lessons from history, the wisdom of the classics, modern philosophers, and even the teachings of the world religions, the contributors of Is Social Justice Just? Illuminate the central role of the individual in achieving justice in all its aspects. Read Is Social Justice Just? And discover: how to do social justice wrong with the poison of resentment, envy, and ignorance; how to do social justice right with the insights of philosophers and theologians; how to respect people’s rights and liberties without sacrificing true equality; and how to reform flawed public policies that just make everything worse. In a world of partisanship, hysteria, maliciousness, and good intentions attached to hellish outcomes, this landmark book enters the public discourse at a critical time. With a foreword by Jordan B. Peterson, a preface by Nicholas Rescher, and a collection of essays by some of the best and brightest scholars of our time, Is Social Justice Just? is a timely and urgent work. Read it, and you will begin to think about “social justice,” and justice, in some surprising new ways.

Read more less

Inequality is an exceptionally beautiful thing. Or maybe it’s a terribly ugly thing. It depends on what is unequal and why it is unequal. Love it or loathe it, this collection is full of insights about the connections among fairness, liberty, equality and the quest for human dignity. With egalitarian sentiments and concerns about inequality on the rise, In All Fairness proves to be incredibly timely. In this collection of essays, authors challenge recent misbegotten egalitarian ideas, exposing the quicksand on which they rest and the self-serving interests they often promote. While each chapter offers unique insights, the overriding theme is that fairness must rest on a conception of humanity that recognizes the dignity of each person—a dignity that requires everyone to respect individual choices and voluntary transactions.

Read more less