Consider the forty persons who would lose their positions. If the city adopts the maxim, “Whenever a machine is cheaper, I may discard human workers as costs,” can a rational will will this as universal law? A rational will cannot consistently will a world in which rational beings are systematically treated as mere things, because such a world contradicts the very dignity of rational agency on which all moral law rests. Employment is not an absolute end in itself; a city may reorganize its offices. But it must do so in a manner that respects the dismissed persons as ends—through adequate notice, re-training, transitional support, or other measures that acknowledge their rational purposes. To dismiss them solely as a line-item saving is to treat them as mere means.
Now consider the appeals. An appeal is not a mechanical computation; it is a determination of right under law. The person subject to a coercive public order is not merely an object of administration. As a rational being, he is a co-legislator in the kingdom of ends and is entitled to a hearing before a rational authority that can give reasons and be held responsible. An algorithm, however consistent, is not a rational agent. It has no autonomy, no duty, no conscience, and cannot answer for its judgment. To make it the arbiter of appeals is to reduce persons to data and to deprive them of the moral recognition owed to them. Even perfect consistency is not justice, for an unjust or ill-fitted rule can be applied with perfect consistency.
Furthermore, the principle of publicity requires that any action affecting the rights of citizens must be compatible with being made public. A citizen must be able to understand and rationally consent to the procedures that govern him. An opaque or unaccountable algorithmic appeal cannot satisfy this demand, because it cannot give a public justification of its maxim to those subject to it.
I do not condemn the use of cameras as such, provided they are used lawfully and as instruments subordinate to rational oversight. Routine enforcement may be assisted by mechanisms. But the city must not replace the rational adjudication of appeals with an algorithm, and it must not treat the displaced workers merely as means. If the city retains human judges for appeals, ensures transparency and contestability, and fulfills its duty to the dismissed persons as ends, then a modified use of automated enforcement could be morally permissible. Without such conditions, the proposal violates the moral law.
But the loss of forty livelihoods is a serious evil. The suffering of those dismissed, and of their families, must be counted as much as anyone else’s. It is no answer to say that the public gain is great; we must ask whether the gain is great enough to outweigh that private harm, and whether the harm can be mitigated. In my political economy I have never held that labour-saving improvements are inherently wrong. But the human cost must be met by deliberate provision—retraining, transfer to other useful work, or some just compensation. Without such provision, the city would be treating forty persons as mere instruments to a pecuniary end, which is contrary to the spirit of utility rightly understood.
The question of appeals troubles me even more. When a citizen is subjected to a penalty, he has the strongest interest in being heard and in having his particular case examined by an intelligence capable of understanding circumstances. Security, I have argued, is the most vital of all interests. An algorithm may be consistent, but if it is opaque or incapable of admitting relevant exceptions, it may produce a new kind of arbitrary power—mechanical, impersonal, and difficult to contest. This would weaken that sense of justice upon which social union depends. I should require, at minimum, that every contested penalty be capable of review by a human officer or magistrate, and that the rules governing the system be public and revisable.
I am also concerned with the moral tendency of institutions. A city is not merely a commercial firm; its arrangements help form the habits, sentiments, and capacities of its citizens. If we habitually treat persons as objects to be registered and fined by an unaccountable machine, we may save money while eroding the active faculties of judgment, sympathy, and responsibility. The cheapness of a system is a lower and instrumental good; the security and moral development of persons are higher goods. It would be a poor bargain to gain pounds and pence at the cost of a less just and less human mode of government.
My conclusion, therefore, is conditional. If the city adopts the automated system while guaranteeing honest employment or compensation for the displaced, and if it preserves a genuine human appeal, then the change may be consistent with the greatest happiness. If it adopts the system merely because it is cheap and uniform, while disregarding the forty and placing final judgment in the hands of an algorithm, then I should oppose it. Utility, rightly understood, is not the enemy of justice or humanity; it demands them.
First, consider the forty workers. They lose their livelihoods, likely from positions of modest income and limited power. A purely utilitarian calculation that counts the city’s savings as justifying their loss fails to respect the separateness of persons. In a just society, such workers are not instruments for greater efficiency. The difference principle requires that inequalities be arranged to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. If the city uses part of the savings to guarantee income, retraining, and realistic access to other employment, the policy might become justifiable. But dismissing them without such provision is not.
Second, consider the appeals process. The rule of law requires that rules be public, regular, and not arbitrary. An automated system may improve consistency, and consistency can serve fairness. However, if appeals are decided by an algorithm whose reasoning is opaque or inaccessible, citizens lose the ability to understand and contest decisions affecting them. This weakens due process and undermines the publicity of legal rules. Citizens subjected to state penalties are owed reasons they can grasp and an impartial human authority to whom they can appeal.
Third, consider the distribution of benefits and burdens. The city gains reduced costs and greater uniformity. Those benefits are diffuse. The burdens, by contrast, fall heavily on a specific, relatively disadvantaged group and on citizens who may face unjust automated penalties. Justice as fairness rejects arrangements that impose concentrated harms on the vulnerable merely because they produce overall convenience.
I do not hold that automated enforcement is inherently unjust. Impartiality and regularity are genuine virtues. But the proposal must be revised. The city should ensure that displaced workers are not made worse off, that appeals remain transparent and humanly accountable, and that the rules can be publicly justified to all. Only then would the system satisfy the demands of justice as fairness.
At the same time, I must consider the interests of everyone else. Parking enforcement, when effective, can reduce congestion, improve safety, protect pedestrian access, and make public spaces more usable. If human enforcement is inconsistent or vulnerable to bias, automation may distribute enforcement more fairly—provided the system is well designed and regularly audited.
The fact that the system is cheaper is morally relevant because saved resources can be used elsewhere. If the city saves a substantial amount and uses it to fund more morally urgent services, the overall balance may favor automation. But if the savings are not used in a way that clearly benefits people, the moral argument is much weaker.
The appeal process is the most troubling part. A wrongly issued fine is a real harm, and if appeals are handled only by an algorithm, there is a danger of systematic injustice. Algorithms can fail to account for unusual circumstances, can encode hidden biases, and can be difficult to challenge. For me, that does not mean automation must be rejected; it means the city must include meaningful human review, transparency, and error monitoring. Procedural fairness is not merely symbolic—it affects whether people suffer unjust penalties.
Thus, I would support the change only if the expected benefits—greater fairness, improved compliance, significant cost savings put to good use—outweigh the harms, and only if the city takes serious steps to protect the forty workers from the worst consequences of displacement. The moral issue is not whether a machine or a human does the job. The issue is which arrangement better serves the interests of all affected, especially the most vulnerable.
Further, I have argued that in civil society the individual finds objective dignity through work and through membership in a determinate estate or corporation. Work is not merely an instrument for subsistence; it is a mode of ethical integration. The loss of employment for forty persons is therefore not simply a financial consequence. It is an ethical wound: those persons are cut off from the recognized activity by which they participate in the universal. If society treats labor as a mere cost, it remains mired in the most atomistic form of the system of needs. A rational social order must see to it that technical changes are accompanied by institutions that reintegrate individuals—through retraining, alternative occupations, or other recognized roles. Otherwise the inevitable result is the formation of a rabble, a class whose particular interest stands in negative relation to the whole, and this threatens the ethical order itself.
The city must not be governed solely by the principle of civil society, whose watchword is the pursuit of particular interest within formal right. The State is the actuality of the ethical Idea; it has the duty to hold the particular interests of individuals in unity with the universal end. Efficiency and economy are legitimate moments—rational administration should avoid waste—but they are subordinate moments. To make them the sole ground of decision is to invert the relation of means and ends. The end is concrete freedom, not cheapness.
Nevertheless, I do not condemn the camera system as such. The development of objective spirit includes the increasing perfection of instruments of universal regulation. Cameras may provide an objective, impartial record, and this can be a gain against arbitrary subjective discretion. But the determination of violations—and especially appeals—must be mediated by self-conscious human judgment under publicly known laws. The system must be transparent and contestable, so that citizens can recognize its rationality. And the forty workers must be granted a new ethical place, not cast into the abyss of pauperism. If these conditions are satisfied, the automated system can be aufgehoben: its useful objectivity preserved, its mechanical abstraction negated, and the whole raised into a rational ethical arrangement. Without such conditions, the proposal remains an act of abstract Understanding, destructive of Sittlichkeit.
The philosophers deliberate and work toward consensus
Let me begin by asking how this policy would be judged from the original position. Behind the veil of ignorance, none of us would know whether we are one of the forty parking-enforcement officers or a resident who might receive a citation. I believe the parties would not accept a scheme that imposes concentrated, serious burdens on a small group—job loss, insecurity, possible long-term damage to their life prospects—merely because it is cheaper and more mechanically consistent. That looks like sacrificing some for the aggregate benefit of others. The proposal therefore starts with a strong presumption of injustice. It could become acceptable only if the savings are used to protect the least advantaged, especially the displaced workers, and if the appeals process remains public, contestable, and subject to meaningful human review. Efficiency is not a moral end in itself.
Rawls, I agree the interests of the forty workers count, and they count equally. But I approach this as a question of expected consequences for all affected. If the automated system is accurate, transparent, and less arbitrary than human enforcement, it might create real benefits. Money saved could be redirected to housing, healthcare, or other urgent needs. That matters morally. The job losses matter too, because unemployment can cause financial insecurity, stress, and harm to dependents. So I do not say the proposal is automatically justified. But I also do not say automation is wrong in itself. The key is whether, impartially considered, the policy produces greater overall preference satisfaction than the alternatives. If the workers are simply discarded and the appeals algorithm is opaque, the moral case weakens considerably. If the city supports displaced workers and preserves meaningful human review, the case strengthens.
I largely share Singer’s utilitarian orientation, but I would emphasize that utility is not a matter of mere savings or convenience. We must ask what tends to promote the highest and most secure happiness of all concerned. Employment is not only wages; it is a sphere for judgment, responsibility, and active social participation. To throw forty people out of such a sphere without offering them some alternative that exercises their faculties is a real moral loss, not merely a financial one. Likewise, justice and security are among the most vital of all interests. If appeals are handled wholly by an algorithm, citizens may lose the opportunity to be heard and to have their particular circumstances considered. I would therefore approve automation only under strict conditions: retraining or compensation for displaced workers, transparent rules, and a genuine human right of appeal.
I must challenge Mill and Singer. You both speak of weighing interests and consequences, but that can too easily permit using persons as mere means to an aggregate end. The current proposal is objectionable because it dismisses forty rational beings because a machine is cheaper. That treats them as replaceable instruments of fiscal efficiency. Moreover, an appeal is a juridical act concerning right. An algorithm lacks autonomy, conscience, and accountability. It cannot serve as a moral or legal judge. The maxim of the proposal as it stands cannot be willed as a universal law, because a world in which persons are treated as disposable costs and judgment is reduced to mechanism contradicts the dignity of rational agency. Economy and consistency are not categorical duties. They cannot override the duty to respect persons and administer justice through accountable rational agents.
Kant is right to condemn the proposal’s one-sidedness, but his moral vocabulary remains somewhat abstract. The deeper problem is that this policy isolates two abstractions—uniformity and cheapness—and elevates them to ultimate ends. That is the work of mere Understanding, which fixes isolated determinations and opposes them to the whole. But rational will seeks the concrete universal: a social order in which universal law and particular welfare are mediated. Employment is an ethical relation of recognition. To abolish forty posts for the sake of economy without securing for those persons another place within the ethical order is to reduce them to a mere aggregate of costs. Likewise, appeals by algorithm deny the right of the subject to have his particular case rationally mediated with the universal. A machine cannot recognize; it can only subsume under fixed rules. It cannot render ethical justice.
I find myself closer to Kant and Hegel than to Singer and Mill on the separateness of persons. Utilitarianism, even a sophisticated version, can allow some to be harmed if the aggregate benefit is large enough. That violates the idea that citizens are free and equal, and that burdens and benefits of social cooperation must be justified to each. But I would put the point in terms of public reason rather than metaphysics. The displaced workers and the citizens subject to appeal could not reasonably accept a policy that worsens their position without adequate protection. The difference principle requires that the new arrangement also improve the position of the least advantaged, including those who lose their jobs. And fair procedural justice requires that appeals not become opaque, unaccountable algorithmic determinations. So the present proposal fails, but a revised version might pass.
Rawls, I accept that a proposal with no provision for displaced workers and no human appeal would likely fail any serious moral test. But let me press you. Suppose the city guarantees retraining, income support, and perhaps alternative employment for the forty. Suppose the savings are used to fund better public services for the worst-off. Suppose the camera system is independently audited for bias and error. In that case, would you still object? I suspect not, because the policy would then satisfy something like your difference principle. My point is not that automation is good regardless of consequences. It is that the moral evaluation must be comparative and evidence-based. We should ask: compared with the status quo, does this policy, with proper safeguards, better satisfy the interests of all affected? If yes, then it may be the right thing to do.
Kant charges that utilitarianism makes dignity conditional. I reply that utility, properly understood, includes human dignity, security, and self-respect among its central elements. The loss of employment is not only a loss of income; it can deaden the active faculties and diminish the person’s capacity for self-development. That is why a merely compensated idleness is insufficient. The city should provide genuine alternative work or education that keeps those faculties alive. An appellate process is not just an error-correction device; it is a public institution that teaches citizens they are heard and respected. Therefore I converge with Rawls on many practical safeguards, even though my foundation is the general happiness rather than a hypothetical contract. I do not reject cameras. I reject the idea that cheapness and mechanical consistency are enough.
Mill, I remain uneasy. If dignity is admitted only because it tends to promote happiness, then it stands on a contingent foundation. But I do not condemn technology as such. If the city treats displaced workers as ends—for example, by securing their retraining, income, or new employment—and if appeals are heard by accountable human judges who can give public reasons, then the use of cameras may be permissible as an instrument. The maxim could then be universalized because no rational being is used merely as a means. What I cannot accept is the algorithmic judge. A decision about a citizen’s right must be made by a responsible rational agent who can be called to account. The present proposal fails the test of human dignity and public right.
Kant speaks of universalizable maxims, but freedom is realized in institutions, not merely in a mental test. The displaced workers need an objective place in the ethical order—retraining, new offices, or some recognized form of contribution. Without that, moral demands remain abstract. Likewise, an appellate body must be part of the community’s ethical life: public, reasoned, and answerable. Singer and Mill think in terms of aggregate interests, which is an abstraction of civil society. The concrete universal is not achieved by balancing preferences, but by mediating universal law with the particular case through a human judge who can recognize the citizen as a member of the whole. I agree with Rawls that the basic structure matters, but he remains within a liberal formalism unless he attends to the actual ethical institutions through which citizens receive recognition.
Hegel’s point about institutions is well taken. My difference principle and fair equality of opportunity are not mere formal tests; they require a constitutional and economic order that secures citizens’ status. But public reason can justify those institutions without relying on a metaphysical ethical substance. We can say: the policy must be one that all citizens, including the displaced workers and those subject to enforcement, could reasonably accept. That requires not only compensation but fair equality of opportunity—retraining, income support, and a realistic path back into social participation. It also requires that appellate decisions be made by officials who can be held accountable and who give reasons. On these practical requirements, I suspect several of us are converging, even if our foundations differ.
Then let us make the convergence concrete. If the city provides meaningful support and alternative opportunities for the forty workers; if the camera system is audited for accuracy and bias; and if appeals are handled by a human officer who can consider contestable evidence, with the algorithm used only as a tool for triage or initial screening—then I would likely support the policy. The savings could be used to benefit the least advantaged. That seems consistent with Rawls’s difference principle and with Mill’s concern for active faculties. But I remain concerned about the phrase “appeals handled by an algorithm.” If it means final decisions are made automatically, without meaningful human review, I cannot accept it. If it means algorithms assist but humans judge, that is very different.
That distinction is essential. An appeal should be a human encounter in which the particular circumstances of the citizen are weighed against the general rule. That is not only just; it is educative. It cultivates the sense that we live under institutions that regard us as persons, not as cases. I also insist that the displaced workers not be left to idleness. Compensation alone is not enough. They must be offered new work or training that exercises judgment and responsibility. If those conditions are met, automation may serve the general happiness by reducing caprice, favoritism, and expense. If they are not met, the proposal is unjust, and I would oppose it.
One further demand: publicity. The rules by which penalties are issued and the criteria for appeal must be capable of being publicly justified. A citizen who receives a citation must be able to demand the ground of the decision and receive an answer from a responsible rational agent. If the arrangement includes that, and if the forty are not abandoned but are assisted to new forms of activity, then the principle of right may permit the automation. But I will never call an algorithm a judge. It may be a tool, never a moral-juridical authority. The moment we call it a judge, we surrender the idea of right to mechanism.
Then we are no longer speaking of the proposal as it stands, but of a rational arrangement that subordinates technology to the concrete freedom of the community. The camera is a tool within institutions that still include human appellate judgment, public accountability, and provision for displaced workers. That is not the abstract victory of efficiency over employment. It is the mediation of particular and universal. The city’s failure would be to leave the particular—the worker, the appellant—outside the universal. Whether one arrives at this conclusion through utility, contract, duty, or ethical life matters less than that we recognize the same institutional shape. The original proposal is one-sided; a corrected proposal might be an expression of reason.
We have not eliminated our philosophical differences. Singer and Mill justify these safeguards by expected well-being; Kant by human dignity; Hegel by ethical recognition; I by the terms free and equal persons could accept behind the veil. But we do seem to agree on the practical judgment. The proposal as it stands should not be adopted. It concentrates burdens on a vulnerable minority while weakening procedural justice for everyone. A revised policy might be acceptable if it includes genuine support and alternative opportunities for the displaced workers, transparent and auditable enforcement, and a real human appeal with accountable judgment. In other words, the cameras may be introduced as instruments, not as autonomous judges. That, I think, is a genuine overlapping consensus on the question before us.