Virtue rewards

Hollis (Chapter 4) offers a clever alternative to estimation. His Optional Reward system would let drug companies waive their normal patent rights in exchange for sharing in a fixed-prize fund. The size of each company s share would then be announced using predefined health metrics (e.g., DALYs ). The virtue of such a plan is that new companies would continue to join the plan, bidding down the value of each DALY saved, until... 

QUALITATIVE COMMENTS (with 40 mg) This is a powerful and complex intoxicant — I could not have coordinated any rational muscular activity. I could not walk I could not tie my shoe-laces. There is analgesia and an incoordination that I cannot shake. My menstrual flow started a bit ahead of time, but it was light. (with 50 mg) I felt that the body tensions outweighed the psychological and sensory rewards, in that I had a lot of dehydration and my sleep had a nightmare quality. This pretty much offset the few virtues that I felt I had obtained. ... 

Legitimate, reward, and coercive powers are powers of position, or formal power. Expert and charismatic powers are considered informal or personal powers, derived from personal interactions and not by virtue of position. 

The incentive problem is difficult to treat within the exploitation framework, since it presupposes that the entrepreneur has some non-producible managerial skills by virtue of which he earns more than the workers. As observed in 4.1.5 this allows us to compare his income with theirs, and to characterize the difference as unjust. It does not, however, allow us to compare the labour equivalent of his income with the labour he performs and characterize the discrepancy as exploitative, since there is no common standard that we can use for a comparison. I should repeat that a basic premise in the argument that the income difference is unjust is that skilled work is rewarding in itself, or at least does not have any greater disutility than other work. If this fails to hold, It may indeed be just to pay the skilled manager for the (to him) unpleasant task of putting his rare skills at the service of society. 

The inescapable conclusion is that safe and healthy workplaces are rationed in the same manner as any other desirable, scarce good. Those who by virtue of class, caste, or simple good luck are able to acquire safety do so they are also rewarded with jobs that are more interesting, skill-enhancing, and better paid. Danger and hardship are the lot of the poor and powerless. In this way, differences in the level of risk faced by workers correspond to the other differences in their life chances and thus compound them. 

Rules, regulations, sanctions and rewards certainly play a part in defining a safety culture. If you are rewarded for reporting a safety issue, you are more likely to do it again next time than if you were disciplined. Above all though, culture is socially mediated, a product of the relationships between people in the organization, particularly those who are influential in virtue of the position they hold or the respect they receive (ideally both). Weick and Sutcliffe (2001),... 

You can see, then, where you should look for the object of everyone s desire, whether they are learned or not. Many fail, through error or pride, to learn where to look for it, and where to receive it. Both types are criticised together in one of the divine psalms those who trust in their own virtue and who boast in the abundance of their riches [Ps 49(48).6, LXX]. This refers both to the philosophers of the present age and also to those who shun even such philosophy as that, saying that a people is blessed if they have sufficient earthly wealth. Therefore we should seek virtue from the Lord our God who made us, so that we can overcome the evils of this life we should also seek the life of blessedness, so that we may enjoy it after this life for eternity. Thus both in virtue and in the reward of virtue whoever boasts, to quote the apostle, should boast in the Lord [2 Cor 10.17]. 

One virtue alone will exist there both virtue and the reward of virtue. As the man who loves this says in the sacred discourse For me it is good to cling to God [Ps 73(72).28]. Both complete and eternal wisdom, and also a life now fully blessed will consist in this. Now we will have reached the everlasting and supreme good and it is the completion of our good to cling to this for ever. 

When anyone chooses this with sober discernment he is sensible. When hardships do not deter him he is brave when pleasures do not, he is moderate when self-esteem does not, he is just. We are divinely endowed with such virtues through the grace of the mediator, Christ Jesus, who is God with the Father, and human with us. Through him, we are reconciled with God in the spirit of love, after the enmity that wickedness created. Divinely endowed, then, with these virtues, we can lead a good life now and afterwards our reward will be paid, a blessed life, which can only be everlasting. 

Here we have the practice of the virtues, there their result here their labours, there their reward here their duties, there their goal. In this way all those who are good and holy can indeed be called blessed while suffering any torture you like, provided they rely on divine assistance in the hope of that end which will make them blessed. For if they were permanently to endure such tortures, or other agonising pains, no sane reasoning would hesitate to describe them as miserable, however virtuous they were. ... 

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