Choice Group Seminar by Daniel Guillery (LSE): ‘Transport, movement, and equality: Private property and the justifiability of road systems’

Abstract: Roads (understood broadly as the public strips of land between parcels of private property that allow for the circulation of people and goods) are central to our ability to move from place to place. They are also highly dangerous and unequal places: the risks associated with travel through these spaces are substantial and usually very unequally distributed (as are the benefits). This paper aims to argue that roads have a significance such that certain sorts of inequalities within them are as such pro tanto morally objectionable, and that it follows from this that there are standards a justified organisation of road space must meet (and which appear quite frequently not to be met in existing roadways). Arthur Ripstein has argued that a system of roads is required as a precondition of the justifiability of claims to private property in land. I make a similar claim, but instead of appealing to the formal structure of equal freedom, I argue from an empirically grounded assumption of a basic interest in adequate movement. I then build on this claim by arguing that the use of these roads by heavy motorised vehicles can only be rendered consistent with the justifiability of the surrounding private property regime if the roads are governed by conventions that meet certain egalitarian conditions. Finally, I sketch some reasons to suspect that these conditions are often not met by contemporary road systems.

Daniel Guillery is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at LSE.

This event will take place in person on LSE’s campus. However, those unable to attend in person will have the option of taking part online.

To join online just follow these instructions:

• Download Zoom
• Zoom link for this for this meeting: https://lse.zoom.us/j/6613924533 

Please note that these events are routinely recorded, with the edited footage being made publicly available on our website and YouTube channel. We will only record the audio, the slides and the speaker and will not include the Q&A section. However, any question asked during the talk itself will feature in the final edit.