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Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns

Commentators believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals the inconveniences of capitalism and that the end of “neoliberalism” could be near. In this article we show that a capitalist ethics is capable to deal with the challenges of pandemics and comes with important advantages such as the prevention...

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Autores principales: Bagus, Philipp, Peña‐Ramos, José Antonio, Sánchez‐Bayón, Antonio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9111460/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/beer.12431
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author Bagus, Philipp
Peña‐Ramos, José Antonio
Sánchez‐Bayón, Antonio
author_facet Bagus, Philipp
Peña‐Ramos, José Antonio
Sánchez‐Bayón, Antonio
author_sort Bagus, Philipp
collection PubMed
description Commentators believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals the inconveniences of capitalism and that the end of “neoliberalism” could be near. In this article we show that a capitalist ethics is capable to deal with the challenges of pandemics and comes with important advantages such as the prevention of overreactions. We apply both utilitarian and rights‐based ethics to the case of epidemics in general and COVID‐19 in particular. First a libertarian natural law ethics is used to assess the government interventions in the Corona pandemic. We maintain that these interventions cannot be justified from a libertarian point of view despite of the possible objections that are discussed such as the “potential threat argument”. Moreover, the utilitarian argument in favor of government lockdowns is evaluated. The negative effects of lockdown on mental health, addictions, domestic violence, etc. have to be taken into account. The utilitarian argument in favor of lockdown is far from convincing, as economic calculation is not possible.
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spelling pubmed-91114602022-05-17 Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns Bagus, Philipp Peña‐Ramos, José Antonio Sánchez‐Bayón, Antonio Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility Special Issues Commentators believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals the inconveniences of capitalism and that the end of “neoliberalism” could be near. In this article we show that a capitalist ethics is capable to deal with the challenges of pandemics and comes with important advantages such as the prevention of overreactions. We apply both utilitarian and rights‐based ethics to the case of epidemics in general and COVID‐19 in particular. First a libertarian natural law ethics is used to assess the government interventions in the Corona pandemic. We maintain that these interventions cannot be justified from a libertarian point of view despite of the possible objections that are discussed such as the “potential threat argument”. Moreover, the utilitarian argument in favor of government lockdowns is evaluated. The negative effects of lockdown on mental health, addictions, domestic violence, etc. have to be taken into account. The utilitarian argument in favor of lockdown is far from convincing, as economic calculation is not possible. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-04-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9111460/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/beer.12431 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Special Issues
Bagus, Philipp
Peña‐Ramos, José Antonio
Sánchez‐Bayón, Antonio
Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title_full Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title_fullStr Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title_full_unstemmed Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title_short Capitalism, COVID‐19 and lockdowns
title_sort capitalism, covid‐19 and lockdowns
topic Special Issues
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9111460/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/beer.12431
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