Microfinancing: a gap in the moral and political philosophy of poverty

小额信贷是一种向那些没有资产作为贷款抵押品的人提供小规模信贷的做法。对于全球穷人中最贫穷的人，小额融资通常采取为期6个月的250美元以下贷款的形式，以建立一个微型企业，例如一个人的自动售货机企业，或小型农业投资。尽管发展专家普遍承认，小额融资是减少有机会获得小额融资的赤贫者的有效工具，而且尽管它有很强的表面说服力，根据国际捐助界的希望，它可以增强受援者的能力，道德和政治哲学家很少或根本没有注意到这一点，他们在全球正义理论中把救济贫穷作为北方对南方的义务之一。对这一差距的一种可能解释是，小额融资机构不在罗尔斯主义的国内或全球社会契约的结果之列，罗尔斯主义框架在托马斯·博格于20世纪80年代末创立、贝茨等人在90年代扩大的全球司法文献中占据主导地位。由罗尔斯社会契约产生的制度，要么是沿着自由民主路线的国家立法机构，其税收和再分配部门，要么是超国家或全球的类似机构。然而，就目前情况而言，小额融资机构往往远离立法机构，远离税收征收或再分配。它们不是或通常不是国家行为者，小额信贷的有影响力的推动者不希望小额融资成为一项国家职能。小额融资实体是私营或非政府的，有时由北方提供资金。该项目旨在让自由全球正义理论的理论工具--元伦理和规范--与小额融资机构及其所做的善事恰当地接触。还有必要评估小额融资在实践中的道德问题。例如，有时有人声称，小额融资计划惠及的是全球贫困线以下的人，而不是最底层的人。这是真的吗？如果是真的，这是对这种贷款的重要批评吗？如果这在总体上是正确的，或者对于特定计划是正确的，比如南美的Accion计划，那么这是一个重要的道德批评，还是仅仅表明，对于被算作“穷人”的五花八门的群体来说，没有单一的贷款解决方案？也许穷人中最贫穷的人需要一个补贴的小额信贷计划；或者也许最好的补贴是直接支付教育费用，而不是支持贷款活动。在男性主导的传统社会中，女性商业赋权的副产品包括家庭暴力。在对其进行道德评估时，这一事实算不算小额信贷？如果有的话，小额信贷机构应该如何调整，以适应宗教顾虑，在这些机构强大的地方不收取利息？绕过这个问题的伊斯兰金融工具在道德上比其他选择更好吗？团体贷款似乎并不是在最不发达国家的城市地区或发达国家的最贫穷地区都可行：是否应该为这些群体设计其他形式的贷款？贷款人惩罚那些对违约没有直接责任的联合合伙企业成员，这是不是仅仅是贷款人的责任？这些问题表明该网络将在其会议和已公布的产出中注意的问题的范围。

Microfinancing is the practice of extending credit on a very small scale to those who have no assets to offer as collateral for a loan. For the poorest of the global poor, microfinancing typically takes the form of a six-month loan for under US$250 to set up a micro-enterprise, e.g. a one-person vending business, or a tiny agricultural investment.Although microfinancing is widely acknowledged by development specialists to be an effective tool in reducing poverty among the very poor who have access to it, and although it has a strong prima facie claim to empower the people it is extended to, in keeping with the hopes of the international donor community, it has received little or no attention from moral and political philosophers who write about the relief of poverty as one of the obligations of the North to the South in a theory of global justice. A possible explanation of this gap is that microfinancing institutions are not among those that result from either a domestic or a global social contract along Rawlsian lines, and the Rawlsian framework is dominant in a global justice literature founded by Thomas Pogge at the end of the 1980s and enlarged by Beitz and others in the 1990s. The institutions that result from a Rawlsian social contract are either national legislative institutions along liberal democratic lines, with their tax-collecting and redistributive branches, or else supranational or global counterparts of these. As things now stand, however, microfinancing institutions are often at one remove from legislative bodies and from tax gathering or redistribution. They are not, or are not typically, state actors, and influential promoters of microfinance do not want microfinancing to become a state function. Microfinancing entities are private, or non-governmental, sometimes with Northern funding. The project is to get the theoretical apparatus, both meta-ethical and normative, of liberal global justice theory to engage properly with microfinancing institutions and the good they do. There is also a need to take stock of the ethics of microfinancing in practice. For example,it is sometimes claimed that microfinancing schemes reach those just under the global poverty line, rather than those at the bottom. Is this true, and, if it is, is it an important criticism of this kind of lending? If this is true in general, or true of particular schemes, such as the Accion scheme in South America, is it an important moral criticism, or just an indication that there is no single lending solution to a variegated group that counts as 'poor'? Perhaps the poorest of the poor need a subsidized micro-credit scheme; or perhaps it may be best for a subsidy to pay for education directly, rather than to support loan activity. The byproducts of female commercial empowerment in traditional, male-dominated societies include domestic violence. Does this fact count against microfinancing in a moral assessment of it? How, if at all, should microfinancing institutions adjust to religious scruples against charging interest, in places where these are strong? Are Islamic financial instruments, which get round this problem, morally superior to alternatives? Group lending appears not to be viable everywhere /in urban areas of the least developed countries, or among the very poor of developed world: should other forms of lending be devised for these groups? Is it just for lenders to penalize members of joint partnerships who are not directly responsible for defaults? These questions indicate the range of issues that the network will turn its attention to in its meetings and in its published outputs.