George Klosko, ‘Presumptive Benefit

Fairness and Political

Obligation,

YEAR II | TRIMESTER I |
SOCIOLOGY II
JATIN CHAUHAN

I.D. NO. 2657/2020

 INTRODUCTION

The nature of our duty to comply with the law has always been an essential subject of
philosophical debate. The obligation theory based on fair play shows that it is unfair for us to
gain from organizational plans (such as the state) without putting up our fair share of the
supply of goods.1 One of the major proponents of this fair play theory is George Klosko.

This Paper critically evaluates George Klosko’s argument for settling political obligation in
the principle of fair play. Further, It will check the effectiveness of his plan to extend this
obligation of “presumptively beneficial assets” to also provide “discretionary goods.”.2 This
Paper argues that a theory on political commitment can be constructed based on Klosko’s
position by addressing the objections raised.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Klosko followed H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls to describe the origin of the political
obligations for the cooperation plan based on the principle of fair play. In short, when the
benefits of the collaborative efforts of various people are actively enjoyed by us, we are
obligated (towards these people) to bear the necessary work or costs that we share fairly.
Klosko distinguishes into two types of goods that a plan can provide: “Excludable or
Discretionary” goods are which can be provided to specific people but refused to be provided
to others (for example, are electricity and water services); On the other hand, “Non-
excludable or Presumptive” products cannot be far from specific ones.3 People can’t help but
benefit from non-excludable products. For example, if a country only relates to national
defense, it can be interpreted as a plan to provide a unique non-exclusive product. While it is
not complicated to apply the principle of fair play to cooperative programs that provide
exclusive goods, because individuals must actively seek to become its participants to benefit
from it, it is unclear when it provides non-exclusive goods. In the concluding case, we must

1
Klosko, George. “Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation.” <i>Philosophy &amp; Public
Affairs</i>, vol. 16, no. 3, 1987, pp. 241–259. <i>JSTOR</i>, www.jstor.org/stable/2265266. Accessed 7 Aug.
2021.
2
Ibid
3
Ibid
differentiate between those who actively seek benefits and what Robert Nozick calls
“innocent bystanders” who benefit from the goods despite attempting to avoid them.4

This is where the presumptive goods ties into the argument. According to Klosko, we can, by
definition, assume that everyone wants hypothetical goods, regardless of what they want from
the cooperative Program. He argued that in the case of a plan that provides alleged assets, the
importance of the benefits provided exceeds the normal right of potential participants to
choose whether to join the plan.5 For example, we can assume that all members of a country
want national defense. Therefore, even if we do not accept the benefits of national defense,
the country (as a cooperative program) can assume that it is important enough, and we all
accept its provisions. Thus, Klosko was able to avoid the problem of the plan to provide non-
exclusive goods that plagued the idea of obligations. Now we can complete the definition of
the cooperation plan. According to him, this will prevent everyone from participating in the
principle of fair competition. The plan must provide nonexclusive benefits that (i) are
worthwhile to the recipient, (ii) the presumed benefit, 6 and (iii) are fairly balanced with the
burden and are fairly distributed within the plan. 7Just for the sake of argument, I accept it as
a sound explanation. When considering discretionary commodities, the discussion becomes
more complicated because the importance argument does not apply.

Klosko rightly pointed out that the obligation to provide a presumed commodity plan is
insufficient to describe a political obligation because the government provides countless
products that do not meet this definition. Imagine a country that only strives to defend its
territory from an external invasion. As mentioned above, this would be a solution to provide
hypothetical non-exclusive products, but it is philosophically dull because it is completely
incompatible with the modern state. Modern countries (in most cases) provide what Klosko
calls discretionary goods, which may be desirable, but “should not be perceived as crucial to
the welfare of the people.”8 How can a fair-play commitment to participate in plans that
create non-excludable goods be extended to schemes that provide excludable goods? In my
example, Klosko explained why we might be required to file to guarantee border patrols, but
he did not explain why we should pay taxes to public schools.

4
Ibid
5
Ibid
6
Ibid
7
Ibid
8
Ibid
Klosko advocated such an extension. It tried to extend the function of the cooperative plan
that has produced presumptive assets to, including freely disposed assets. The idea is that
both need to be differentiated the requirement to cooperate with a plan that provides
presumption and discretionary assets and the requirement that an individual makes additional
contributions to a plan that already requires them. 9Therefore, individual A has an apparent
preliminary obligation to cooperate with the plan to provide types of assets that are presumed
beneficial, and the plan subsequently began to provide freely available assets. In my example,
a citizen who is already obliged to pay defense expenses can also assume the obligation to
pay taxes for public education in the second moment. In this case, Klosko wrote that a
maximum of A indicates that once the plan assumes that in addition to the alleged initial
goods, it also provides freely available goods, it will no more meet the standards required as a
whole. On fair competition. Obligation. Therefore, plan X providing presumed goods and
discretionary goods a, b and c must be by A himself to prove (i) the cost is too high or (ii)
unfair to A to deny her contributions to the scheme justifiably.10

Two key criticisms of this argument. First, Klosko appears to imply that when members of
the Program decide to adopt other forms of cooperation, they are adding to the package of
benefits provided by the Program in which they are participating, But maybe this is not the
right way to think Maybe assuming that the result of the new form of cooperation is divided
into multiple plans, one of which provides the original hypothetical assets and the other new
discretionary assets. This means that individual A can freely subscribe to the old plan (such
as defensive borders) without being a member of the last plan (such as public education).
Klosko may rebut that because it provides presumptive and discretionary products with the
same cooperating members, though it doesn’t make any sense to say that there are two
different plans. But this is not unlikely: for example, and a credit card company provides its
long-term (or wealthy) members with very obvious benefits compared to ordinary customers.

So we have a problem. How do we link the additional discretionary assets written by Klosko
with the original hypothetical assets so that they can be collectively regarded as part of the
same “benefits package”? We can promise to show that the provision of national defense will
inevitably depend on the accompanying supply of commodities such as public education.
However, the way Klosko structured his argument seems to exclude this approach. In
chronological order, assume that asset is earlier than disposable assets. When we consider the
9
Ibid
10
Ibid
process by which the members of the plan should decide to cooperate in providing additional
discretionary commodities, the more reasonable method becomes apparent, which leads us to
raise a second objection to the general argument.

The second counterargument raises the question of how the members of the Cooperative
Program should decide what other discretionary benefits the Program should provide in
addition to the presumed benefits. Consider country X, which provides its citizens with only
hypothetical defense assets and physical security. According to Klosko’s position, officials of
the state can justify adding any tasks to their duties as long as the total amount of goods
delivered meets the three necessary conditions for generating the obligation, although they
may be harmful to individuals. Suppose that country X now issues a decree that all citizens
must receive three hours of forced labor everyday general plan (assuming it still has only
one) may well meet all three Klosko criteria for some of the collaborative “commodities”
currently offered are not beneficial for at all. Therefore, the extension of the obligation
requires at least a legal process to increase the cooperative enterprise.

Then, in what way should the members of the plan choose to undertake the supply of specific
discretionary commodities? In my opinion, the most sustainable method will involve a
democratic process: plan members should vote on the freely available commodities that they
cooperate in providing. As part of the cooperation plan, people can get shares in the plan
itself; it would be unfair if any prisoner had no say in the direction of their plan. Therefore,
the fairness principle applies not only to the distribution of goods but also to the process of
deciding which freely disposable goods should be provided in the plan. According to my
position, if we live in a state that only provides defense, we can meet at the City Hall in the
future and democratically choose what we want the state to do for us (as the plan). Note that
we now treat the product as a single package containing benefits - the “scheme diversity”
argument loses momentum. This addition process will also ensure that harmful
“commodities” are not added to the plan as in the forced labor example, thus refuting the
second objection. So, in my opinion, a democratic addition process is necessary for
obligations based on fairness.

In my opinion, there are arguments against that support the inclusion of democratic standards
in the cooperation program to preserve the principles of fair competition, but I hope to
exclude them. First of all, it can be said that the collaboration program is vulnerable to the
problem of majority tyranny. If the constant majority voted against the minority
systematically, the opposition stems from the fact that the minority is in a de facto state of
power obedience. However, I think the intuitive power of its rebuttal is wrong in this case:
the increased discretionary benefits should be worthwhile for its recipients. Once this is
remembered, the opposition loses considerable power: A long-standing minority will not be
disrespected or exploited because it will actually benefit from the majority’s decree, but it
will not be envisaged by—way to benefit.
The second objection recognizes that the inclusion of democratic ideals in the process of
increasing discretionary interests will constitute a sufficient basis for political obligations.
However, it seems that we are only supplementing the principle of fair competition with
another source of obligations rather than expanding its influence. If we accept this rebuttal,
we have to admit that fair competition itself does not create political obligations and must be
supported by another theory. I believe we can overcome this conceptual obstacle by writing a
fair addition process under the same conditions that the plan must meet to create a political
obligation. Therefore, we can add a fourth (iv) criterion: There must be a fair decision
method that determines which discretionary benefits are added to the plan. Please note that
while this is a minor modification of reason in our plan subject to fair competition principles,
it is not an independent source of fair competition obligations. We are not obliged to
participate in the plan because we have the right to vote, but because under certain conditions
( is one of them to vote) it is conducive to generating benefits that are not exclusive, we are
not a plan that provides these benefits.

CONCLUSION

We can confirm that Klosko’s plan to extend the fair competition obligations of the provision
of presumptive assets to another plan to provide discretionary assets is intuitive. However, his
argument ran into some difficulties, which changed his premise and conclusion to some
extent. For example, Klosko mistakenly believes that the three conditions required to create a
fair competition obligation only apply to the entire plan. I have already said that it is more
reasonable to think that they also apply to personal well-being itself. With the addition of
democratic ideals, this is the only possible way to assume that the plan provides a benefits
package instead of, regardless of each product produced by a different plan. Finally, we can
avoid criticism that the argument is no longer similar to 68 George Klosko’s Critical
Evaluation George Klosko’s Critical Evaluation Adding Disposable Goods in Initial
Conditions by Writing The voting practice produced required for political obligations. All in
all, we may be politically constrained by a plan that meets these four criteria: (i) it provides
recipients with value-for-money benefits, (ii) at least one of these benefits is presumed to be
beneficial, (iii) burdens and benefits are fairly distributed among them, and (iv) the
discretionary benefits provided are fairly determined.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Klosko, George. “Presumptive Benefit, Fairness, and Political Obligation.” <i>Philosophy

&amp; Public Affairs</i>, vol. 16, no. 3, 1987, pp. 241–259. <i>JSTOR</i>,
www.jstor.org/stable/2265266. Accessed 7 Aug. 2021.

Klosko, George. “The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation.” <i>Ethics</i>, vol. 97,
no. 2, 1987, pp. 353–362. <i>JSTOR</i>, www.jstor.org/stable/2381353. Accessed 7 Aug.
2021.

Abbott, Philip. <i>Political Theory</i>, vol. 8, no. 4, 1980, pp. 568–570. <i>JSTOR</i>,
www.jstor.org/stable/190666. Accessed 7 Aug. 2021.

Serhiy Pukas .“On Klosko’s Account Of Political Obligation,” Central European University,
Political Science Department. ,
<https://politicalscience.ceu.edu/sites/politicalscience.ceu.hu/files/basic_page/field_attachme
nt/serhiypukasphdthesis.pdf> Accessed on 7 Aug. 2021