When we try to determine how justice can be advanced, there is a basic need for public reasoning, involving arguments coming from different quarters … - Amartya Sen

The position of welfare economics in modern economic theory has been a rather precarious one. In classical political economy there were no sharp boundaries drawn between welfare economic analysis and other types of economic investigation. But as the suspicion of the use of ethics in economics has grown, welfare economics has appeared to be increasingly dubious, It has been put into an arbitrarily narrow box, separated from the rest of economics.

I personally have great skepticism about the theories extolling the wonders of "Asian values." They are often based on badly researched generalizations and frequently uttered by governmental spokesmen countering accusations of authoritarianism and violations of human rights (as happened spectacularly at the in Vienna in 1993).

Globalization is not in itself a folly: It has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well.