Summary and Conclusions: Distributive Justice in the Knowledge Economy

The liveliest debates and the most contentious disputes in political economy revolve around the question of how we ought to divide societal output. What is the appropriate criterion to use for distributive justice? Is it efficiency, need, contribution, entitlement, equality, effort, or ability? Globalization has only compounded the complexity of these unresolved questions. Discourse on globalization and distributive justice can be particularly frustrating because of two extremes. On the one hand we have a highly abstract and formalistic body of literature that is too far removed from what people actually experience in the marketplace. This type of scholarship suffers such a disconnect from reality on the ground that it is often either irrelevant or useless for policy or ethical guidance. On the other hand we have literature that makes sweeping pronouncements on globalization based on selected anecdotal evidence without the benefit of a sustained critical examination of the larger picture of its outcomes and processes. Personal narratives are important, but they cannot fully replace hard evidence and objective analysis. This approach generally fails to take into account the nature of both the market and the knowledge economy seriously.