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

小额信贷是向那些没有资产作为贷款抵押品的人提供小额信贷的做法。对于全球贫困人口中的最贫困人口，小额信贷通常采取为期6个月的250美元以下贷款的形式，用于建立微型企业，例如单人售货业务或小额农业投资。虽然发展专家普遍承认小额供资是在有机会获得这种供资的极贫穷的人当中减少贫穷的有效工具，虽然它有强烈的表面要求，可以使人民获得权力，但按照国际捐助界的希望，它被扩大到这些人民，道德和政治哲学家很少或根本没有注意到这一点，他们把减轻贫困作为全球正义理论中北方对南方的义务之一。对这一差距的一种可能解释是，小额信贷机构既不是由罗尔斯式的国内社会契约产生的，也不是由罗尔斯式的全球社会契约产生的，罗尔斯框架在托马斯·波格（Thomas Pogge）于20世纪80年代末创立的全球正义文献中占主导地位，并在20世纪90年代被贝茨（Beitz）等人扩大。从罗尔斯的社会契约中产生的制度，要么是沿着自由民主路线的国家立法机构，以及它们的税收和再分配分支，要么是这些机构的超国家或全球对立物。然而，就目前的情况来看，小额信贷机构往往与立法机构、税收征收或再分配相去甚远。他们不是，或者通常不是国家行为者，小额信贷有影响力的推动者不希望小额信贷成为一项国家职能。小额融资实体是私人的或非政府的，有时由北方供资。该项目旨在让自由主义全球正义理论的理论工具（包括元伦理和规范）与小额信贷机构及其所做的好事进行适当的接触。还需要在实践中对小额信贷的伦理进行评估。例如，有时有人声称小额信贷计划惠及的是刚好处于全球贫困线以下的人，而不是处于最底层的人。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，或者对某些计划是正确的，比如南美的Accion计划，这是一个重要的道德批评，还是仅仅表明没有单一的贷款解决方案可以被视为“穷人”的多样化群体？也许穷人中最穷的人需要补贴小额信贷计划；或许最好的办法是直接为教育提供补贴，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。在对小额信贷进行道德评估时，这一事实是否不利于小额信贷？如果有的话，小额信贷机构应该如何调整，以适应反对收取利息的宗教顾虑，在这些地方，宗教顾虑是很强的？避开这个问题的伊斯兰金融工具在道德上优于其他选择吗？在最不发达国家的城市地区或在最贫穷的发达国家中，集体贷款似乎并不可行：是否应该为这些群体设计其他形式的贷款？难道只有贷款人才有权惩罚那些对违约没有直接责任的合伙企业成员吗？这些问题表明该网络将在其会议和已发表的产出中注意的问题范围。

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.