 Lauren Lamasky is the, I'm going to do the introductions first here, is the Corey Professor of Political Philosophy Policy and Law and the Director of the Political Philosophy Policy and Law Program at University of Virginia. He's best known for his work person's rights and moral community. For those of us who are in the public choice vein, Lauren also is famous for writing a book called Democracy and Decision, which developed the notion of expressive voting in a serious way along with Jeff Brennan. Lauren, before teaching at University of Virginia, taught at Bowling Green University and before that at University of Minnesota Duluth. Michael Clemens is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and he leads the Migration and Development Initiative. As many of you know, Michael's famous for identifying the trillion dollars line on the sidewalk and has been a major advocate for using migration as one of the great public policies for development and poverty alleviation that we haven't followed yet. And so we'll hear from Lauren. And then we have Jesse Kirkpatrick, who is the Assistant Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy here at George Mason. Before that, joining us here at George Mason, he was an assistant professor at Radford University and also a postdoctoral fellow at the United States Naval Academy. So with that, I will turn it over to Lauren and then you have 15 minutes to present and then we'll go across the board there. And I guess since the way you're sitting, we'll go exactly the way that you're seated there, okay? All right, so let's get started. I probably shouldn't ask, but what would you do if I took 17 minutes? Charge you. What are the incentives? Well, all right, go. Say, I wouldn't ask that if I were in my usual environment. I'm a philosopher, a unusual beast in this particular zoo, but it's one that I always appreciate coming to. George Mason to me is one of the most interesting places that I ever get to visit. Of course, maybe if I had a life, it would be different. But I will tell you that I'm quite sure that on my visits here, I always derive more benefits than I am part of. philosopher might say that's unjust, your economists deal with it. So in order to make sure that this helps true, and I do get more benefit than you do, I'm going to try to be quite brave here normally, if I stand up, I don't stop talking for 15 minutes. I will keep within the 15 today, because you scared me. I want to say a little bit about the project of this book. It's to offer a theory of global justice. Has it that been done before you might ask? And the answer is yes. But my co author, Fernando Tezon, who I'm sure he wishes that he could be here. He's in Florida, and he's done talks in New Orleans and in Texas, whereas I've gotten the northern part of the country. I'm not sure why it worked out that way. But most of the literature in Fossum, and I can't speak to other fields, most of the literature on global justice has basically viewed the issue as, well, imagine a chessboard representing the countries of the world. And on some, you have a very high pile of gold coins. Let's make it gold in honor of the setting. And then on other squares, you have a low pile of maybe Tarnus Copper coins. And in those places in which the wealth is piled high, people tend to live longer, healthier, happier lives in which their prospects, that of their children, etc. is pretty enviable. On the others, there are most people who are scrambling for subsistence, if lucky, and often not even that. They die younger and sicker. Well, I guess if you die, you're equally sick with anybody else who dies. I mean, that's dead. But you understand what I mean. Along the way, not so. Plus, their ability to partake of some of life's good is less than anybody in this room. And they probably care for their children as much as your mom and dad cared for you, but often are unable to provide for them what they would like. Isn't this unfair? Doesn't it almost leap out and saying something ought to be done about this? And in the global justice literature, what is done here, what's advocated is you take some of the coins that are piled up high and comfortable and move them to those who have little. That is to say, the issue of global justice or rather global injustice is one wrongful distribution. So what's called for is redistribution. If there's lead you to think about John Rawls' story, well, yeah, that's part of what theorists have brought up. If it leads to the think of utilitarians like Peter Singer, that's another strand of that. But basically, the idea is from those who have much more to be taken to give to those who have little. Now I want to come back to this in a bit, but let me just say that this book does not proceed with that as the starting point. That's more like the concluding point. There's more to justice than just distributive or redistributive justice. We can talk about the difference if you'd like. But in the tradition of with some air and to some partial justice involves respect for individuals rights. What kind of rights? Well, my boss at UVA phrased it as life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Probably those of you in economics program wish he had just followed John Locke and said property instead. But you know, he didn't. But he became president. Good luck for you trying to do that. So what we thought we ought to do is at least begin thinking about global justice in terms of whether individuals rise to the integrity of their bodies, their lives, their stuff is respected. And if it isn't, that's a signal injustice. That is to say to provide a genuinely liberal theory of global justice. Now, it might surprise you, but I think that before we wrote this, basically did not have a new in this particular litter. That's a philosophy literature. And I've been learning in my short time here today that economists have said other things that that are really useful in this regard. And that's part of what I mean by saying that I benefit more coming up here than I provide to others. But that's a, that's a digression. If it's the case that these vast disparities in well being are due to genuine rights violations, then there really is a strong case to be made that the uneven chessboard manifests great injustice across the globe. My co author and I, after examining this, come to the conclusion, yes, that's right. That glow that injustices of great disparities of wealth versus streams of poverty are unjust. And that these injustices can be identified not simply in terms of these outcomes, but the inputs to this, what brings it about and that the works poor have been hard done. Not however, by the usual conference who are hauled out in millennium conferences and in the pages of the social justice theories, but overwhelmingly by their own governments and institutions. If you, if you do even a cursory examination of the really unfortunate environment, the world, overwhelmingly, those who suffer these burdens are the victimized by domestic forces. Some are obvious. How could North Korea say not be on such a list? But, but even in countries that are not quite so violent, violations of liberty and life are manifest. Now, we can go into details of this later if you want. But let me turn away from that to us do and by the way in this literature, when the first person plural is used, we have a duty always. It means citizen to governments of wealthy Western countries, especially of course, the United States. Are we complicit in injustices done across borders? And the answer I'm afraid is yes. Yes, we are. It is a gross mistake. We suppose we are the primary perpetrators, but we make bad situation worse than that the misery of the world's least well off at the margin. I love being around place where I could say the margin is enhanced by the policies of OECD countries and the like. In this book, we talk about several ways in which that's great. Let me just mention, maybe three of them, there are others that could go into also one concerns harms done by restrictive trade policies. We believe that capitalistic acts between consenting adults as Robert Nozick put it in his wonderful phrase involves a, a just liberty of all people. And that's true whether or not these acts cross borders. And so restrictions on trade, things like, you know, like quotas, tariffs and so on, are by the very nature, unjust. And so, for example, to the extent that, that we hold up such barriers that, yep, this constitutes an injustice. Now, of course, as you know, just recently, a pretty significant trade pact was realized well, was agreed to whether it'll be signed off by all parties across the Pacific remains to be seen. I thought at the time this was probably a good thing to do. But then I saw that it was rejected by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And one of the chances that they could both be wrong about an important thing. I don't have to rethink this. But before that happened, my view was that this, this is the sort of the sort of increase of others that we ought to be kind of ashamed of. Okay. Second, talk about aid. Since the war, and I mean, since World War Two, large amounts of resources haven't even transferred from, from global haves to global have not. And I understand that among the experts in the field, there's significant debate as to whether unbalanced this has done good. Some say, yeah, it really has others and no more harm than good. Well, I'm not so interested in that. But the fact that even, you know, with these very large sums of ammunition, there's even a debate as to whether British value is the real salient point here. Note, though, that these sorts of transfers are not compassionate gifts from those who have to those who don't, but they too are coercively extracted from some to others. Maybe coercive extraction to avert genuine harm and to really provide notable goods, maybe it's justifiable. But in cases where even whether unbalanced it's a benefit, this too is illiberal in the old fashioned sense of this. Finally, let me mention two of people moving, not goods and services, but their bodies across barriers, restrictions on mobility. It's one of the great injustices that liberals from Locke to Adam Smith to people in this room have have criticized. And yet, we find that we take this routine that people crossing borders can be properly stopped by governmental officials from doing so based on their policy determination. Look, we would think that's outrageous if when you wanted anybody come here today for Maryland. No one. Oh, that's pathetic. I need another example. Anybody come here today. Well, you get the idea. If anybody here ever go to Maryland. Great. All right. When you cross that border, do they stop you, check your visa, ask you if what distance you're about. You know, we would find we would find state border. This is smaller state, I guess, that are used in this way to stop people from going to school, seeing the friends who've been taking a job. We would find it intolerable. Why it becomes more tolerable across national borders, kind of taken for granted, or maybe not so much taken for granted, but a prime occasion for demagoguery. Now, normally, that would be the case. Since this is now turning into a presidential year, public figures are more measured and prudent in their statements. And so would not dream of appealing to the basis to emotions of the citizenry. But if they did, they would. Did somebody really suggest a wall at the Mexican border would be a good idea? Or was I just Saturday Night Live skit? Yeah, well, you get the idea that that restrictions on the individual mobility are alive and well in our public discourse. And this too is something that we take issue with. I think events of recent weeks have fueled this issue, like taking a special late of the latest massacre in Paris. And unfortunately, one has to say the latest massacre, because you know, the Charlie Hebdo one for a while seemed to be pretty big stuff until it got displaced by the events of what is it now three weeks ago. But this has produced an enormous amount of meritorious comment. And I think that well, this would be an interesting thing to talk about. Let me just say one thing about this one. One, eventually, I find really negative is that it's very common now to distinguish between genuine asylum seekers, refugees, and mere economic migrants. Now, maybe I'm pretty good to acquire here. But why economic migrant would be a pejorative strikes may as bizarre after a refugee, you know, you shouldn't feel sorry for refugees, they're fleeing from something. But an economic migrant is somebody who who is moving to something to a valued outcome. And that this should be a second class form of activity, I think is pretty discouraging. But I think I've got many, many more things, like to say, but I think I'll stop here. So I can listen to my to the commenters and to all of you. Thank you.