Competing Claims of Justice in Any Economic

¶ … competing claims of justice in any economic system almost inevitably revolve around questions of freedom and equality. The society must answer these questions: what constitutes a truly free system so that people can pursue their economic interests? And to what degree should equality of opportunities and outcomes be legislated?

Rawls' principle of the veil of ignorance is that in a just society, if you blindly selected any person, that person would be treated fairly, regardless of their inherited wealth or talents. Given the enormous advantage inherited wealth gives to people under capitalism, as well as the arbitrary prioritization of certain talents (professional basketball players make more money than nurses, for example), capitalism is unjust. Socialism would theoretically be more just, but that is only assuming that the state genuinely can objectively select the optimal manner to redistribute wealth through taxes and government controls.

Q3. Socialism suggests that everyone is entitled to certain basic economic resources such as healthcare, education, and a living wage. It upholds the principle that society has a right to redistribute wealth from the 'haves' to the 'have-nots.' Morally speaking, this seems superior to 'pure' forms of capitalism, which can allow people who are born to wealth to use their social advantage to profit.

Q4. CEOs and CFOs must now take individual responsibility for financial reports. This is intended to prevent CEOs using fraudulent tactics and hiding behind the fact that corporations are fictional persons under the law. This has meant that corporate leaders were not personally responsible for accounting negligence until the passage of SOX.

Q5. According to Sarbanes-Oxley: "independence occurs when a board member has not been and is not currently employed by the company or its auditor and the board member's employer doesn't do a significant amount of business with the company" (Board independence, 2011, Investment & Finance Definition). This ensures that board members can objectively evaluate the company and do not have a vested interest when evaluating its auditing procedures, executive compensation packages, or selecting its board members.

Q6. Insider trading penalizes individuals for trading upon information the general public is not privy to. In this case, "Boesky went straight to the source - the mergers and acquisitions arms of the major investment banks. Boesky paid Levine and Siegel for pre-takeover information that guided his prescient buys. When Boesky hit home runs on nearly every major deal in the 1980s - Getty Oil, Nabisco, Gulf Oil, Chevron...the people at the SEC became suspicious" (The 4 most scandalous insider trading debacles, 2011, Investopedia). While some argue that such information is part of the research that everyone should put into buying stock, the Boesky case was a particularly egregious example of using bribery to profit off of insider knowledge in an unethical fashion.

Q7. At bare minimum, there should be no 'golden parachutes' or large severance packages for CEOs, regardless of the performance of the company. The CEO should have to demonstrate that the company has shown a profit to secure a bonus and employees of the company whose labor also contributes to the success of the company should share in the wealth of any corporate profits.

Q8. In this instance, it does seem fair, given that corporations must often cut personnel to show a profit. While these situations are unfortunate, on the other hand, it would not be fair to bar a CEO from the ability to cut unneeded employees. While it might seem charitable to retain as many employees as possible, on the other hand, if the company goes bankrupt due to high labor costs, this does not 'help' either the majority of employees or shareholders.