The Moral Irrelevance of Global and International Inequality

SELEME, HUGO OMAR

The Journal Jurisprudence

Elis Clark Group

Lugar: Melbourne; Año: 2011 vol. 10 p. 271 - 326

1836-0955

There are at least three types of inequality: international, domestic and global. The purpose of the present work is to determine which of them is morally relevant. The answer I shall offer in this work is distinct both from statist positions – which maintain that only domestic inequality is morally relevant – and from cosmopolitan positions – which ascribe moral relevance not only to domestic but also to global and international inequality. Unlike cosmopolitan positions, the stance I shall present denies that either global or international inequality is morally relevant. Unlike both statist and cosmopolitan positions, I shall maintain that domestic inequality is morally relevant only when it occurs in particular types of states: those that are politically legitimate. The relative level of resources and rights that exists either between citizens of an illegitimate state or between individuals who inhabit different states – legitimate or not – or between different states, is not morally relevant.