common good

Latest Posts in common good

GREEN ROUNDUP - “The Future Lies Ahead”

For a species that literally owes its remarkable evolutionary success over time to its social behavior and its many innovations (we have rightly been called “The Self-Made Man” by the anthropologist Jonathan Kingdon), we have been very slow to recognize, much less respond to what can fairly be called an existential survival crisis.  Some 99 percent of all the species that have ever evolved are now extinct. We may soon join them. Unless…


The Coronavirus and the “Common Good”

The Coronavirus and the “Common Good” The coronavirus could be called a “common bad.”  It reminds us that there are positive alternatives as well.


The Public Trust:  How It Trumps Capitalism and Property Rights

In an argument that goes back to the philosopher John Locke, many conservative and libertarian theorists claim that freedom (as in free market capitalism) and property rights have moral priority as inherent human rights (and there is a huge body of laws and legal precedents that support this claim), while the concept of the “common good” has no legal standing, or has a weaker claim.  This argument is flatly wrong.  In fact, the idea of a collective (societal) responsibility for the common good has a sturdy foundation in the ancient legal principle of the public trust.