Moving People and Shifting Technologies: A Socioethical Heuristic Approach

We develop a socioethical reasoning scheme that highlights dilemmas in juxtaposing resources and mobility. Offering an ethically guided perspective on value-driven policy-making, our thoughts develop with an eye on (a) the definition and implementation of a moral baseline regarding health, happiness, and human fulfillment, (b) the rationalization dilemma of moral cost trade-offs, (c) the scoping of common and public goods, and (d) the weighing of externalities, particularly in light of technological promises. In the center of our argument is the stipulation of an inclusive notion of Pareto efficiency that explicitly recognizes marginal utility, and rights and entitlements as limited resources. We underline our heuristic matrix with a discussion of the notion of the commons and synopsis of data that capture asset inflation in the condominium market. Private real estate functions here as a symbol for the commodification of what could be seen as a common good that happens to be increasingly withdrawn from playing a part in social mobility.