State or Private Welfare: The Lesser of Two Evils?

    In Chapter 9 of Elizabeth Anderson's Hijacked, she defines neoliberalism as "an ideology that favors institutional arrangements that maximize the wealth and power of capital investments relative to labor" (272). In Hijacked, Anderson differentiates between a conservative and progressive work ethic. While a conservative work ethic, as developed in Chapter 8, demonstrates a conception of moral desert predicated on demonstrated labor, a progressive work ethic mandates background conditions of security in order to work at all. Specifically, she states that "the progressive work ethic, by contrast, urges us to consider how access to material goods may be a prerequisite to the ability to work and access other virtues" (262).

While a conservative work ethic justifies systemic injustice, neoliberalism operationalizes it. In Chapter 9, Anderson discusses how welfare policies and privatized corporations function to embody a conservative work ethic, and in doing so, stigmatize and criminalize those who are impoverished so as to enforce the ideology that their state is their own fault. In the case of state-run welfare policies like FAFSA,  Anderson points to the example of J.D. Vance enrolling in the military rather than fill out the over-complicated student aid form to illustrate how neoliberal welfare policies "embody all of the attitudes toward the poor characteristic of the conservative work ethic- suspicion, blame, contempt, fear, callousness, impatience, resentment- along with the policies that promote the precarity and suppress the agency of the poor" (264). However, it is not just state run institutions at fault. Anderson also claims in the same chapter that  neoliberalism, as an ideology, uses the concepts of the conservative work ethic to justify ongoing power imbalances. A key part of this, for Anderson, includes aiming "to replace state provision of goods with provision by private for-profit firms to the maximum feasible extent" (264). Here, she uses the example of private prisons, which profit off of exploiting individuals stuck in a system of injustice. 

    While Anderson criticizes state welfare institutions and the privatization of typically government-run welfare projects, readers are left at the end of Chapter 9 with the question of which is the lesser of two evils. In Chapter 10, she leaves readers with a call to action, making the case for economists to "expand their range of normative tools so that they can better address these normative concerns" (288). She asks of institutional design, 1) Do work and other institutional arrangements enhance or degrade individuals' capabilities and virtues? And (2) how do different ways of designing production and exchange... and social welfare policies affect how we relate to each other?" (288). However, this call to action does not guide individuals in deciding the less of the two evils. I'm left with the question: if both state-run programs and private services fail to enhance autonomy, can either ever truly embody a progressive work ethic? If not, how do we move forward? Anderson's progressive work ethic may call for background conditions of justice and meaningful security to enable work and virtue development, but given her past critiques, what institution is suited to provide that?  

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