CONCEPT
The Beneficiaries' Obligation
Glover's framework for the moral duty that falls on those who capture the gains of a systemic transition to address the concentrated costs borne by those whom the transition displaces — the obligation that does not depend on intention or direct causation but on the asymmetry of position.
When a systemic change produces concentrated harm alongside its diffuse benefits, the beneficiaries bear a moral obligation to mitigate the harm. The obligation is not contingent on malice — the beneficiaries did not intend the harm. It is not contingent on direct causation — the chain from any individual beneficiary to any specific displaced worker is too attenuated to assign blame in the conventional sense. The obligation arises from the asymmetry of position: the beneficiaries have the resources, the influence, and the knowledge to build the structures that would redistribute the costs, and their failure to build those structures is not a neutral omission. It is a choice — the choice to capture the gain while the cost falls elsewhere — and the choice has moral weight regardless of whether it is made consciously. Glover developed this framework in the context of collective harm. On AI applies