IT-Enabled Globalization and the Environment

Problems of environmental ethics transcend global justice. We can behave ethically and justly toward each other across the globe, but at the same time let the environment deteriorate in catastrophic ways. I believe principles of environmental ethics have to be treated as of higher order, and therefore of greater priority than even principles of global justice.1 The environment is not a person and therefore cannot be a participant in a social contract. So the different basis for its priority is that if the environment deteriorates, it makes all of our lives difficult or even impossible. Challenges to the priority of the environment sometimes come from corporations when their own interests in profitability would be harmed. Very often a focus on profit maximization will make the point of view of a corporation shortsighted. Notoriously, corporate stock prices tend to value short-term financial results over longer term results. And corporate financial results do not include externalities, impacts on the environment that are not directly reflected in their balance sheets. Carbon emissions are an excellent example. Developing nations sometimes object to constraints on their development for economic reasons. Their argument is that developed nations have had the benefit of unconstrained economic development, and it is unreasonable to expect them to curtail their development at its current stage. This objection was incorporated into the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 for carbon emissions: Developed countries were required to reduce emissions by 5 percent by 2012, but developing countries had no requirements but could be compensated for voluntary reduction. This feature of the protocols led to their rejection by the US Congress, although every other developed country adopted them. (Sachs 2008) The value of corporations is their ability to achieve economic development. But is economic development itself always a good thing? To what extent should development be constrained by environmental concerns?

Ethical Implications for IT

In this chapter, I will examine the ethical consequences for IT of the International Social Contract and the Global Economy Social Contract. I began considering ethical responses to global ethical problems of IT in Chapter 9, IT and Globalized Ethics, and continued the discussion in Chapter 11, Globalized Ethics and Current Institutions. Here I will examine the impact of the two social contracts on those ethical responses.

The Value of IT-Enabled Globalization

This chapter, like the previous one, also deals with issues that go beyond ethics as principles for social cooperation. We just saw that the environment raises issues that go beyond social cooperation. Likewise, value does not depend directly on social cooperation but rather on interest and point of view. In Chapter 4, The Basis of Ethical Principles, I characterized a good or valuable object as one that, to a greater degree than average, answers to the interests one has in the object from a certain point of view.1 Thus a good disk drive is one that answers to the interests of a computer user in safely storing information. When an object is defined in terms of its function, the value of that object simply consists in its performing that function to a greater degree than average. That is, good antivirus software must prevent and destroy viruses well; good keyboard cleaner must clean keyboards well.

Globalized Ethics and Current Institutions

In this chapter, I will examine the extent to which current institutions might be able to implement the principles of global justice. I will begin with a few remarks about a market economy and continue with the two major institutions involved in the global economy--states and multinational corporations. Then I will consider other current transnational institutions such as world financial and economic institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO), the United Nations and World Court, and other transnational NGOs. Finally, a number of practices have transnational impacts, and the Global Principles of Justice require changes to those practices. These are: Property and intellectual property, taxes, and Internet regulation.

Current Ethically Globalized Institutions

As I noted in the previous chapter, the world is currently not organized into a single economy sharing benefits and burdens. But at the same time, institutions have developed which transcend national boundaries. We are looking for ethically globalized institutions, those which raise ethical problems which cannot be divided into pieces belonging to different nations. I will begin with a list of international organizations. International organizations are those which have an official presence in more than one nation. Among these, we will separate out those which are ethically globalized institutions and therefore the concern of this book.

IT-Enabled Global Ethical Problems

Problems of IT-enabled globalization are a new kind of ethical problem and require new ethical principles for their solution. I will first discuss two examples to demonstrate this: these examples are the World Bank and its IT development, and Yahoo in China. These institutions are what I will call ethically globalized institutions, institutions which raise ethical problems that cannot be handled as problems belonging to existing nation-states. Then I will discuss some other recognized ethical problems of ITenabled globalization which, at first sight, involve only older ethical principles. It will turn out that these problems also have globalized aspects. In Section 1, this section, I will be using intuitive ethical principles in evaluating the cases. These evaluations are provisional and the reader should feel free to have other opinions. In Sections 2 and 3, I will develop and defend an ethical theory which will provide a firmer foundation for my evaluations.

IT's Contribution to Globalization

In this chapter we will consider this question: To what extent is IT responsible for globalization? But before we can address this question, we need more clarity on what globalization is. Some authors, for example, Thomas Friedman, view globalization very broadly. Friedman uses an invented term, flattening, to include a wide range of phenomena both social as well as economic.1 (Friedman 2005) Friedman’s flattening is always a good thing. The danger in this approach is that there cannot be bad cases of flattening; good and bad aspects of globalization can seem to be completely linked when in fact they are not. For example, I believe that Friedman may tend to view negative features of offshoring to be compensated for just by offshoring’s contribution to “flattening.”

The Basis of Ethical Principles

My aim in Section 1 was to locate and describe areas of ethical concern in IT-enabled globalization. Yet in doing so, I was not ethically neutral in my judgements. The reader, especially the reader who disagreed with some of those judgements, may wonder how they are justified. In this section, Section 2, I will address precisely that question. I will begin by showing that ethical judgments can be justified. Then I will state a theory of ethical development which I think allows great insight into conflicts of ethical principles. Next I will describe a method for justifying ethical principles called reflective equilibrium. Finally, the rest of Section 2 will examine ethical theories relevant to ethical problems of globalization.

Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is the view that the relevant ethical community is all of humanity. In this chapter, I will examine three somewhat different cosmopolitan theories: The pluralist theory of Thomas Pogge (2002), the social contract theory of Charles Beitz (1979 and 1999), and the utilitarian theory of Peter Singer (2004). All theories hold that humanity as a whole is the relevant ethical community for global ethics. All theories also hold that ethical principles are essentially principles for individuals. Taking the individual as ethically primary may be what makes cosmopolitanism plausible. Human reality for these theorists is just individual human beings endowed with moral principles. But it is not an accidental fact that human beings live in society. Like ants, termites, lions and chimpanzees, they have evolved so that living in groups is not optional for them. The many benefits produced by social institutions, whether formal or informal, depend on our human ability to forgo self-interest in the interest of the relevant group. The group principles—ethical, political, economic—allowing us to do this are not optional either, especially those having to do with nations. So to begin with it seems that cosmopolitan theories may have too limited a view of human reality. However, I will give these theories a chance. The main questions I will ask of each theory are: The rationale for basing ethics on individuals as members of the group all of humanity; and the plausibility of each theory as a basis for transnational ethics.

Elements of a Global Contract

We saw in Section 2, Theories of Globalized Ethics, that there is a need for institutions with transnational ethical authority. Such authority would be needed for: Preventing war; dealing with genocides; dealing with transnational legal problems; and a global economic authority would be needed to deal with problems such as fairness in transnational economic distribution, transnational competition, multinational tax avoidance, and common tax policies to deal with global warming. Without ethical oversight, transnational authority can easily be misused. Thus the World Trade Organization prevents effective environmental regulation of transnational trade and economic action against repressive states, and there are no channels to consider changing these policies other than street demonstrations. But just creating another authority with enough power to oversee transnational institutions effectively will also create the same oversight problem. That is, who oversees the new, more powerful authority? One way around this apparent paradox is a social contract. A social contract is a way for parties to acknowledge that they need to limit their own interests in order to achieve greater cooperative benefits, and can assume that others will do so.1 Oversight may still be necessary if a social contract exists, but the bulk of compliance will rest with observance of the contract for mutual benefit. So much less oversight will be required, and the overseeing institution will need that much less power.