 Well, thanks to Mercatus and everyone who worked hard to make this event happen for the invitation to be here. Thanks to the authors, one in absentia, the other present for writing a fabulous and extremely interesting book. It's a stipulated thanks because the book is so good that I struggle with finding things bad or critical to say about it. But I'm going to do my best. So one caveat is that I'm not an economist. I'm trained in political science and philosophy. So I am not well suited to critique the empirical literatures that were drawn upon. I really can't analyze the critically, critically analyze the validity of the selection of cases that they use to draw general principles and precepts like those from Singapore or Argentina. Although given my comparatively limited knowledge on the subject, from what I do know, their focus on the badness or goodness of institutions and institutional actors seems to me to be correct. It's the correct target of locus and concern and we just heard, I feel, somewhat validated and echoing the sentiment that was just expressed. So I want to, with all of this, is to say that I want to limit my comments to really two areas. The first is a very, very briefly situate the project and the current global justice scholarship in the literature and how it is. We heard a little bit from Lauren where he's coming from and I'll sort of round that out a little bit. I'll spend a little bit more time discussing the wrinkles I see in the very long chapter on war. That is my area of expertise, which is the ethics of peace and war, particularly humanitarian intervention and its relationship to the author's conception of the state. But I want to begin by way of anecdote, I think, to show what is the power of the core central thesis of the book. So I read a good bit of the book and prepared my comments over Thanksgiving. I have a nine-year-old son and it allowed me to spend some time with him and he has a pretty good sense of what my literary and scholarly tastes are, usually when he asks me what I'm reading or writing about has to do with war, political violence, famine, really kind of uplifting subjects that he's really into, but he saw the title and justice at a distance. So he asked me, what's the book about? And I said, well, what do you think it's about? And he said, I think I have a good idea, but I can tell you what I would want it to be about. And he said, I really would like it to be about superheroes that see objects in the air and they can bring justice at a distance. I said, okay, well, what it is about is justice at a distance. So you have another co-author for your next set, but he said that justice is primary. I knew it would expand our entire law. The second edition. But he says the sequel. So I told him justice is primarily about leaving people alone. That's the key thesis in page two. And he says to me, well, if justice is about leaving people alone, then it's really unjust that you have to do a book report on Thanksgiving. And I tried to say, well, it's voluntary, and he left. After that, it's like a parting shop, but not to make too much of the exchange, but I think it's demonstrative of the fact that the thesis resonates with common intuitions and principles. My son thought, well, his teacher assigns him a book report and says, read this, give it to me in three days, and it's highly coercive, right? I mean, it's a child. But it resonated with him that he thought that it was sort of a bummer to be coerced, especially during Thanksgiving. So in short, the principle of liberty as non-interference, I think, can be persuasive. And the authors have done a good job in showing that. So the general contribution of the book to the global justice literature is that I think that it adds a libertarian flavor to the vanilla ice cream of cosmopolitan scholarship. So as we heard from Lauren a moment, a few minutes ago, is that the focus on global justice is generally on positive assistance and massive redistributive schemes. And that's what the core of the literature calls for. The author terms this as a regulatory focus, doubling down in institutions, laws, and coercive measures, large-scale taxation, redistribution. So in contrast to the regulatory emphasis, the authors focus on the efficacy of institutions and the role they play in respecting individuals' rights. And this dovetails with the precept noted on page two, which I mentioned a moment ago that my son really found resonating, which is about leaving other people alone, not interfering in them. And that's what cosmopolitan justice requires, is people have the freedom to pursue their personal projects and to which this is a refreshing departure from the typical cosmopolitan approach. So I wrote my dissertation on a cosmopolitan approach to warfare ethics and I wish this book was around then. It's a refreshing compliment to the literature. More specifically, I was heartened by the use of empirical social science literature. So I'm speaking to a room full of primarily economists. And so you may or may not know that sort of the stock and trade of philosophers is often to try to elicit intuitions as part of the methodology. Elicit intuitions often by appealing to very cartoonish thought experiments. And then from the intuitions are elicited from these outlandish thought experiments to draw general moral principles which are then taken as objective fact. This isn't the approach that was taken in this book. Okay, so those are all the nice things that I'm going to say and now I want to turn and put on the hat of a critical commentator. So I want to focus here on the topic of war. But first I want to unpack the book's conception and role of the state vis-a-vis the relationship between citizen, compatriot, co-citizens, and distant others. So in my view, it bears on the permissibility of humanitarian intervention. So the end goal here is that I want to talk about humanitarian intervention and we're going to take a little tour through the conception of the state and the individual as it's laid out at the beginning of the book. Okay, so the authors begin with a primacy, putting a primacy on personal value in projects. A defense of personal value, things that are primarily of value to the individual. Personal value in turn underpins the author's defense of personal partiality. Because you can prioritize personal value, that is that you're going to be partial to oneself. We heard this quote from Adam Smith just a moment ago. You can be partial to your projects, commitments to one's family, friends, compatriots. But this is not sort of unbridled partiality. It's constrained by rights such as life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, and a reciprocal respect for other's own partiality. So you leave people alone, let them do their thing, and they will do the same for you. Now this connects with the twin importance of the primacy of liberty. That is the conception of liberty as non-interference. I should be left alone to pursue my projects and personal prerogative via personal valuation. I should be free to value my personal projects as I see fit. And so if I want to go home and play Nintendo and eat chips, I should be free to do so. If I want to pursue philosophy and have an interesting conversation like the one that's about to ensue, I should be free to do that as well. And I should be free to prioritize that project within reasonable constraints. Okay, now this is in part supported by appeal to Smith and Siegwick's observations on what philosophers call associated preferences. That's that individuals are partial to themselves and they're close associates. This is what we just heard from Smith and from the quote from Smith, and that since each is master of her own personal valuations, then she has the prerogative to order her priorities accordingly. Okay, so this is justified. So in turn, so we have the beginning. We all have these personal projects that we're partial to. Yeah, no big surprise there. And it's justified by a rights theory of Locke and liberalism. We find this on page 56. So despite or perhaps because of this moral sentimentalism, the fact that we have these deep attachments to our own projects and those that are close to us, we are motivated to prefer those close to us, but also to effectuate our duty of non-interference for compatriots and foreigners alike. Now the authors argue that this theory of rights is pre-political and universal. That means it's cosmopolitan, right? It's effectively a natural right, this sort of Lockean sense. So what this does is it both delineates the limits of our duties for compatriots and foreigners. Beginning of the book talks about the guy who prefers to spend his $4 on a skim vanilla. Is it you that prefers the coffee, the $4 on the latte? Is the coffee drinker in the... My deductive powers. I owe you $4. So it's not unjust to prefer the $4 on the latte. You're not violating the rights of the poor, okay? But it also is calling for reciprocation, right? Yours and other rights to non-interference must be respected, too. It's a two-way street. Okay, fine. But if the main principle of justice is to leave people alone and we can prioritize our own projects and those of our associates and if the rights are universal, how do we navigate the very great needs of those less fortunate like those living under tyranny whose rights are being violated who are being interfered with on a daily basis? So what do we do when their right not to be interfered with is violated? And that's the core question here, okay? So how do we tame the potential for cosmopolitan mission creep, right? This cosmopolitanism that is interfering in all of our lives. Put it another way, how do we ensure that individuals can pursue their personal projects while respecting the cosmopolitan rights of distant others but not owing onerous positive assistance, right? You should be free to buy your latte and not have to contribute that $4 to the jar for UNICEF every day, okay? But so how do we have these sort of this tension if we think it's a tension? So here the authors make an interesting move is they rely on the fiduciary duty of the state to its citizens in drawing the distinction between a duty to interfere in domestic freedom deniers. And so if you're living in a state then the police or the government has a co-citizens have a duty to interfere when you're interfered with, right? We talked about Kant and all of this. And there is a mere permission to do so when considering foreigners. So we have a duty that is entailed in the domestic situation and it is a mere permission when thinking about foreigners. Now we have a quote here on page 209 which says, the reason for this is that the state owes a fiduciary duty to its citizens. The state has an obligation to protect its own citizens against one another but only a permission to protect strangers. It's not a duty, right? That's why you can drink your latte and spend your four bucks while not donating that money to those that are being interfered with in distant lands. Okay, so the criticism that I have is that this conclusion is made via fiat and not argument. I'm sure you'll find it persuasive. I find the intuition persuasive. And to be fair the authors do note previously published works where they address topics such as this one but at risk of trotting out a likely familiar objection which I'm going to do anyways. This libertarian view of the state is challenged. For example, Alan Buchanan writes in his piece The Internal Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention. He says that the view is afflicted by a deep incoherence if not an outright inconsistency. It justifies the state as a coercive apparatus by appeal to the need to protect universal interests while at the same time limiting the right of the state to use its coercive power to the protection of a particular group of persons identified by the purely contingent characteristic of happening to be members of the same political society. So if the triumvirate of rights that is life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are universal what's the moral basis for protecting only those who possess the contingent property of being members of the same political community? Now I don't necessarily hold this view the one that I just articulated is an incoherent position and the authors obviously reject it but fully addressing such a critique such a critique would have strengthened the chapter in my view. Now let's assume, arguably, that the state does have a fiduciary duty and it is limited to said citizens. Okay? Here's where I want to turn to the topic of just war and particularly humanitarian intervention. I lost my... Where am I in terms of time? Because I can sort of... I'm good. Okay, yeah. I could go on and on but I'm not going to... I don't want to steal anyone's time. So on this subject, the author's state, by man, it's perfect. And I'm quoting, a government has a fiduciary duty towards its subjects. Fair enough. This includes the obligation to respect human rights at home but because morality is universal and all persons have rights a good government also has an obligation to respect human rights abroad. They don't interfere in others' projects abroad. And from this, the authors derive, and I'm quoting, an obligation to not cooperate with tyranny. I'm in agreement so far. Then they go on to note that quote, this purely negative obligation can be reinforced by adding a softer obligation to promote human rights globally provided, of course, that this can be done at a reasonable cost. That the government can, in theory, tax citizens for such a purpose to fulfill this soft obligation. I'm done quoting here. So if such taxation is legitimate then a government couldn't, in theory, tax for humanitarian intervention according to the authors. There is no difference with respect to taxation between taxing for funds for your human rights court or for a humanitarian intervention. The two are the same. Those are two analogous cases. So consequently the authors conclude, and I quote, sometimes taxing people for war is justified. They agree. And this includes sometimes humanitarian intervention. End quote. The question I have is, why? So if the state does have an obligation to protect its own citizens against one another but only a permission to protect strangers then where does the softer obligation to promote rights globally come from? Is moral permission to effectuate the soft obligation through coercive measure of taxation? So where does the soft obligation come from if we have a limited state that's only duty is fiduciary responsibilities to its citizens? Where does the softer obligation to say being taxed to provide for humanitarian wars? Where does this extra sort of bit of coercion come into? And I couldn't find it in the chapter so I was looking for it. Okay. So taxation for some... Oh, all right. So to sum up here in this point is that my view is that this tension between the fiduciary model of the state to act solely in citizens' interests those are the author's words and the cosmopolitan tenant of universality of rights come into tension. So it's one that the authors could have done a better job at attempting to resolve if it is all resolvable. I don't know if it is. All right. So my last point is that taxation for some humanitarian interventions is permissible in the author's stated view. All right. But what about asking citizens to fight humanitarian wars on behalf of distant others? All right. So my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law is in the Air Force and he's had to go to Afghanistan a bunch and I sort of was like, hey, how's Afghanistan? Not a great, you know, sort of like a conversation stopper. Like how's he, you know? And she said, well, I'm sick of my husband having to go and build nations abroad when it is not what he signed up for. So that's the objection that is trying to be answered here. Okay. It's an end of one, so, you know, but still. So what about asking citizens to fight humanitarian wars on behalf of distant others? The authors restrict the state's permission to two categories of people. The first is volunteer soldiers that we have in the United States and mercenaries. The mercenaries is an interesting one but I was, when thinking about it, I ran out of time to get into it. So we're going to go with just volunteers and this will be two more minutes. So the authors endorse the proposition that a volunteer member of the armed services could be required to fight a war of humanitarian intervention by asserting that the enlistee has contractually authorized the government to decide on the justice of the cause of particular wars and the contract between soldier and state cannot be read reasonably to circumscribe the scope of permissible wars to only wars of self-defense. So there's this sort of hypothetical contract between soldier and the state and it cannot be reasonably read to be limited only to wars of self-defense. That's the argument here. My question when reading this was, well, why not? Can we not imagine a state that limits itself to only its fiduciary role? Not the kind of softer obligation. So not the model of fiduciary duty plus softer obligation to promote human rights. Especially when the stakes are so high as to asking people to fight, kill, become maimed, injured, and possibly die. So could we not imagine a model of armed forces that says something like join us, footnote, we will not engage in humanitarian intervention, right? It's only wars of self-defense. I have a few more points, but I think I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop there. All this to say is that I in fact am... I agree with the author's contention that humanitarian wars and taxation for humanitarian wars could be justifiable, but I think it needed better support and consistency with the particular theory. So with that, I'll stop. Thanks.