No abstract

The author makes an effort to rehabilitate the classical concept of the equality in exchange which lies in the foundations of the theory of just price and the scholastic criticism of usury. The author supplies a proof that the non-equivalent contract of “exchange” is 1) a contradiction in terms because it represents a combination of a basic contract and a super-contract which contradict each other; and 2) an act of commutative injustice because the contractor negates implicitly within the super-contract what he declares explicitly in the basic contract. The following objections are being settled dialectically: objection of an isolated exchange, objection of voluntariness, objection of Paretovian efficiency, objection of rating, objection of greater evil. The author presents a proof that the just price in an isolated exchange is equal to the reservation price of the seller. The author contends that requiring a transfer from anyone becomes commutative injustice if this requirement is accompanied by 1) external direct pressure or 2) external indirect pressure or 3) deception. The external indirect pressure is defined by the author as a situation when a subject makes a transfer a condition for his consent to a basic contract within the super-contract. The contractor consents to the non-equality in “exchange” only if he wants to give a gift anyway. Since the injustice originates in the agent and benevolence of the sufferer does not cancel the injustice, the non-equivalent contract of “exchange” is an act of commutative injustice even if the sufferer wants to give a gift out of his benevolence. The author claims that the state can adopt four different positions in the question of non-equivalent contracts of “exchange”: 1) to prosecute the perpetrator, 2) to declare the unenforceability, 3) to tolerate the private enforcement, 4) to enforce. Since the enforcement and toleration go against the purpose of the state, the author puts forward the following legal solution: the state declares the non-equivalent contracts of “exchange” unenforceable, nevertheless, it does not automatically prosecute the subjects which commit injustice for making such contracts but, on the other hand, it protects the subjects which suffer injustice if they ask for it.

The author deals with a question of the just wage, its rationale and practical implementation from the perspective of classical philosophy and Catholic social teaching. In the methodological section, the author argues that because moral and political philosophy stands higher than economics in the hierarchy of sciences, the wage-justice perspective should take precedence over the just-wage perspective. In the section on education, the author calls for a real inter-disciplinarity in education which would eliminate the arrogance of a one-discipline approach and establish a relevant-discipline approach. This paper wants to be an example of such a relevant-discipline approach. The author contends that the term “just wage” can be perceived in two meanings: 1) in the meaning of legal or social justice as a family wage; 2) in the meaning of commutative justice as a value of the employee’s performance which contributes to the production of the total physical product. Where the value of the labor performance cannot be estimated lower than the cost of authentically human living. This paper provides micro- and macroeconomic reasons for the conclusion that the legal minimum wage is not an effective instrument to make an employer pay a just wage and presents the conclusion that the only way to make the employer pay a just wage is a creation of such an institutional environment in which the owners and managers will want to pay just wages on their own, at the expense of their own profit. The author contends that a distributist vision of “restoration of property could provide a functional solution to this. The reason why popes before and during the industrial revolution didn’t criticize low incomes of peasants is, according to the author, that the family life and working life were not separated in the institutional environment of the countryside economy which is why the incomes of the peasants allowed the man to fulfill his obligations in relation to his family.

In this paper, the author follows a discussion of two post-Keynesian economists, Paul Davidson and Rod O'Donnell, about the nature of uncertainty in economics. The author focuses on two points of this discussion: a controversy about possibility/impossibility of such a proof and a criticism of Davidson's allegedly split definition of ergodicity. In a controversy about possibility/impossibility, the author puts O'Donnell to criticism for the latter's reduction of proving to providing empirical evidence and, in effect, omission of extra-empirical cognition. The author accepts O'Donnell's argument of Davidson's split definition and infers his own conclusion: the reason why Davidson keeps ignoring the incompatibility of both definitions of ergodicity is that he does not distinguish cumulative and theoretical probability. The author contends that Davidson's claim about predetermination of long-run outcomes in ergodic processes draws its persuasiveness from the ambiguity of the concept "long run": according to the author, Davidson perceives "long-run" in the meaning of "finitely long" while O'Donnell perceives "long-run" in the meaning of "limit infinity".

In this paper, the author summarizes key arguments in a discussion of two post-Keynesian economists, Paul Davidson and Rod O'Donnell, about the nature of uncertainty in economics. The author focuses on a controversy about necessity/unnecessity to supply a proof of ergodicity/non-ergodicity of economic processes. The author draws a conclusion that O'Donnell perceives the difference between probabilistic and non-probabilistic uncertainty as quantitative rather than qualitative in opposition to Davidson who perceives this difference as qualitative. In a controversy about necessity/unnecessity, the author sides with O'Donnell and supports O'Donnell's argumentation by pointing to baselessness of the burden-of-proof argument, as long as both parties of the controversy have an interest in finding the truth.