Joseph Heath (born 1967) is a Canadian
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
. He is
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
of philosophy at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
, where he was formerly the director of the ''
Centre for Ethics''. He also teaches at the
School of Public Policy and Governance. Heath's webpage at the University of Toronto declares his work "is all related, in one way or another, to
critical social theory in the tradition of the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...
." He has published both academic and popular writings, including the bestselling ''
The Rebel Sell,'' which he coauthored with
Andrew Potter. His philosophical work includes papers and books in political philosophy, business ethics, rational choice theory, action theory, and critical theory. His stepmother is
June Clark.
He received his
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
from
McGill University
McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...
in 1990, where his teachers included
Charles Taylor, and his
Master of Arts
A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...
and
Doctor of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
(1995) degrees are from
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
, where he studied under Thomas A. McCarthy and
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
.
[Biography - Trudeau Fondation]
''www.trudeaufoundation.ca''
Heath is the recipient of the
Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship (2012). In 2013, Heath was named to the
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...
. His popular book ''Enlightenment 2.0'' won the 2014
Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. In 2021 Heath published an op-ed in the
Globe and Mail which argued that the acronym BIPOC is problematic in the Canadian context, suggesting instead the acronym FIVM for "Francophone, Indigenous, and Visible Minority".
Ideas
The central claim of ''
The Rebel Sell'' is that
counter-cultural movements have failed and that they all share a common fatal error in the way they understand society; hence, counter-culture is not a threat to "the system". For example, it is suggested by
Adbusters'
Blackspot campaign that the shoe's existence proves that "no rational person could possibly believe that there is any tension between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' culture."
In the book ''
Filthy Lucre'', Joseph Heath criticizes the idea that tax-paying is inherently different from consumption and argues that the concept of a
tax freedom day is flawed:
It would make just as much sense to declare an annual "mortgage freedom day" to let mortgage owners know what day they "stop working for the bank and start working for themselves". ...But who cares? Homeowners are not really "working for the bank"; they're merely financing their own consumption. After all, they're the ones living in the house, not the bank manager.
"Market failures" or "Paretian" approach to business ethics
In
business ethics
Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business c ...
, Heath advances a new theory, what he calls a "
market failure
In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006 ...
s" or "
Paretian" approach, which states that "the market is essentially a staged competition, designed to promote
Pareto efficiency
In welfare economics, a Pareto improvement formalizes the idea of an outcome being "better in every possible way". A change is called a Pareto improvement if it leaves at least one person in society better off without leaving anyone else worse ...
, and in cases where the explicit rules governing the competition are insufficient to secure the class of favoured outcomes, economic actors should respect the spirit of these rules and refrain from pursuing strategies that run contrary to the point of the competition". The approach is neither akin to the
shareholder theory, the
stakeholder theory
The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that accounts for multiple constituencies impacted by business entities like employees, suppliers, local communities, creditors, and others. It addresses morals ...
, or a personal ethics framework.
Heath's
market failure
In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006 ...
s approach follows from his work in
political economy
Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...
. According to Heath, the market is not a system of natural justice. Instead, it is an imperfect but efficient institutional arrangement designed to maximize
social welfare
Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance p ...
by way of an unresolved
collective action problem
A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action. The collective action proble ...
. In other words, markets are "special-purpose institutions designed to promote efficiency", that need to be "embedded within the broader context of a
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
, which engages in both market-complementing and redistributive policies to claim to be just."
[Heath, 2014, p. 10]
Since these structured competitions are implemented "for the narrow reason" that, in a reasonably competitive market, they generate social benefits through
positive externalities, "adversarial ethics" are acceptable in the circumscribed and limited role of markets. Indeed, economic actors engaged in market transactions "must be given a fairly broad exemption from the norms of equality or fairness".
However, they must be held accountable to the fundamental principles required for a competitive and efficiency-promoting market. Therefore, "the central role of
business ethics
Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business c ...
is
��not to bring in 'outside' moral considerations to condemn the latest outrage, but to clarify and to correct the self-understanding of participants in the market economy
�� In order to do so, it has no need to appeal to normative standards beyond those that are already implicit in the institutions of a market economy."
Hence, "the overall set of profit-maximizing strategies is partitioned into three categories, separating out the immoral and the illegal strategies from the normatively acceptable ones. The efficiency standard can be used to make both cuts. The 'acceptable/unacceptable' distinction is imposed by the efficiency properties of the market system as a whole. The set of unacceptable strategies can then be subdivided into 'immoral/illegal' using a transaction cost or regulatory cost analysis." In other words, the "basic thrust of '
business ethics
Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business c ...
' is
��to discourage firms from taking advantage of market imperfections, even in cases where legal regulation is not feasible."
Thus, "the firm should behave as though market conditions were perfectly competitive, even though they may not in fact be. The following list of imperatives provides some examples of the restrictions that this would imply :
# Minimize
negative externalities
# Compete only through price and quality
# Reduce
information asymmetries between firm and customers
# Do not exploit diffusion of ownership
# Avoid erecting
barriers to entry
In theories of Competition (economics), competition in economics, a barrier to entry, or an economic barrier to entry, is a fixed cost that must be incurred by a new entrant, regardless of production or sales activities, into a Market (economics) ...
# Do not use
cross-subsidization to eliminate competitors
# Do not oppose regulation aimed at correcting market imperfections
# Do not seek
tariffs or other
protectionist measures
# Treat price levels as exogenously determined
# Do not engage in opportunistic behaviour toward customers or others firms"
"Public-economic" normative model of the welfare state
Heath advocates the "public-economic" normative model of the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
, that is to say, a
normative
Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (philosophy), norm in this sense means a standard for evaluatin ...
standard of the appropriate division of labor between the public and the private sector, as superior to the "
redistributive" or "
Communitarianism" models. According to Heath, the "public-economic" normative model "provides both the best theoretical reconstruction of the existing configuration of
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
services, as well as the most useful set of principles to guide any proposed expansion or modification of these services."
[Heath (2011). Three Normative Models of the Welfare State, Public Reason 3 (2): 13-43]
Heath describes the three models as such: "The three normative purposes most commonly cited as providing a justification for the scope of
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
activity are equality, community, or efficiency. These give rise to a corresponding set of models, which I refer to as the redistributive, the communitarian, and the public-economic models of the welfare state. The first sees the central function of the welfare state to be the redistribution of resources, with the goal of making the outcomes produced by the market economy less unequal. The second considers the central problem, central function of the welfare state to be that of imposing limits on the scope of the market, in order to resist the commodification of certain domains of interaction. The last model regards the welfare state as playing a role essentially complementary to that of the market. According to this view, the welfare state corrects market failure, either through regulation, subsidization and taxation, or the direct provision of goods and services."
Heath further explains the "public-economic" model this way: "The “classical liberal” state creates the market economy through the institution of
property rights
The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership), is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their Possession (law), possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely ...
and civil contract. The “welfare state” then emerges in those areas where liberal markets fail to produce optimal outcomes. This can take the form of
regulatory agencies (in cases where the rules of marketplace competition need to be adjusted),
state-owned enterprise
A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a business entity created or owned by a national or local government, either through an executive order or legislation. SOEs aim to generate profit for the government, prevent private sector monopolies, provide goo ...
s (typically in sectors where efficient competition cannot be organized), and public services (in cases where a system of effective property rights cannot be instituted, or where the transaction costs associated with a system of voluntary exchange would be prohibitive). According to this view, the welfare state essentially does the same thing as the market – both are in the business of enabling mutually beneficial forms of
cooperation
Cooperation (written as co-operation in British English and, with a varied usage along time, coöperation) takes place when a group of organisms works or acts together for a collective benefit to the group as opposed to working in competition ...
to emerge – it merely organizes the transactions under somewhat different terms.
..The economic model of the welfare state should therefore be interpreted as the view that the state should strive to resolve
collective action problem
A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action. The collective action proble ...
s in cases where it can do so more efficiently than other institutional forms."
Heath advances that this model has "considerable explanatory power" for these state activities: 1) control of natural
monopolies, 2) control of imperfections in existing markets, 3) public provision, 4) the
social safety net
A social safety net (SSN) consists of non-contributory assistance existing to improve lives of vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution. Examples of SSNs are previously-contributory social pensions, in-kind and foo ...
, 5) minority public goods and 6)
governance
Governance is the overall complex system or framework of Process, processes, functions, structures, Social norm, rules, Law, laws and Norms (sociology), norms born out of the Interpersonal relationship, relationships, Social interaction, intera ...
failures.
Heath notes that "there is nothing incoherent about a hybrid “redistribution and public goods” view of the
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
. However, the amount of egalitarian redistribution in a typical
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
is often dramatically overestimated. This is because many theorists treat the
social safety net, which is essentially a set of government-run insurance programs, as a system of redistribution, and hence as governed by an egalitarian logic."
Publications
Popular books
* Heath, Joseph ''
The Efficient Society: Why Canada is as Close to Utopia as it Gets'' Viking, 2001.
* Heath, Joseph & Potter, Andrew ''
The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed'' Capstone, 2005.
* Heath, Joseph ''
Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism'' HarperCollins, 2009. . Also published under the title ''Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism'' Crown Publishing Group, 2010.
* Heath, Joseph ''Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives'' HarperCollins, 2014.
Academic books
* Heath, Joseph ''Communicative Action and Rational Choice'' MIT, 2003.
* Heath, Joseph ''Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint'' Oxford University Press, 2008.
* Heath, Joseph ''Morality, Competition, and The Firm: The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics'' Oxford University Press, 2014.
* Heath, Joseph ''The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State'' Oxford University Press, 2020.
* Heath, Joseph ''Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy'' Oxford University Press, 2021.
* Heath, Joseph ''Cooperation and Social Justice'' University of Toronto Press, 2022.
* Heath, Joseph ''Ethics for Capitalists: A Systematic Approach to Business Ethics, Competition, and Market Failure'' FriesenPress, 2023.
Blog
Heath blogged at ''In Due Course'' from 2014 until 2019 (last post). Some time after that he lost the original domain name, but the site was backed up and is accessible at the University of Toronto. Despite that, he chose to switch publishing to Substack in 2023 allowing free access.
References
Sources
* Heath, Joseph (2014). ''Morality, Competition, and the Firm : The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics''. Oxford University Press.
External links
University of Toronto profileAcademia.edu profileVideo (with mp3 available) of conversation between Heathand Will Wilkinson on
Bloggingheads.tv
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heath, Joseph
1967 births
Living people
McGill University alumni
Northwestern University alumni
Academic staff of the University of Toronto Munk School
20th-century Canadian philosophers
21st-century Canadian philosophers
Critical theorists