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As all of us wrestle with the question of what is the good life, we need to focus not only on individual happiness and accomplishment—on our love and our work—as aims in themselves but also to recognize that such goals can be attained only as we also engage larger issues, participate in ever more inclusive communities, and commit ourselves to causes that in the end embrace all of humanity, indeed the whole cosmos.

This chapter outlines the politics of networked individualism as a social phenomenon, locating the lack of attention to these politics within the discourse surrounding networked individualism in the tendency to naturalize technological change. The theory of networked individualism frames individuals as liberated social entrepreneurs, free to assemble their own portfolios of ties, obscuring how that ability to network and satisfaction gained from it are unequally distributed. Within network discourses, moreover, network technologies are depicted as simply spreading through populations rather than as the result of contingent socio-political factors. The resulting discourse, perhaps inadvertently, is biased toward justifying reverse adapation: The process by which people’s expectations for social life are adapted to what current technologies offer, rather than altering technologies to align with citizens’ view of the good life. Such discourse, if widely accepted, threatens to conserve networked individualism as the status quo mode of being for the foreseeable future.

In this chapter I argue that there is a normative aspect to self-control that is not captured by the purely procedural account to be drawn from dual process theories of cognition – which we only uncover when we consider what self-control is for and why it is valuable. For at least a significant sub-group of addicts their loss of control over their drug use may not be due to a lack or depletion of cognitive resources. Rather it may be that they have little confidence in their ability to exert control over their circumstances and shape the life they would value having and the person they would value being

Theunissen develops the emerging positive proposal by specifying that in virtue of which human beings are relationally valuable. Her starting point is that human value depends on the distinctive relationship we bear to objects and activities of value. In her view this is the capacity for having final ends: roughly, the capacity for pursuing interests, projects, relationships, and self-ideals for their own sake. She offers a new account of this complex cognitive, affective and behavioral disposition, and the analysis contributes to discussions of valuing and care. How does the capacity for having final ends ground our value? By identifying connections between valuing and the good life, Theunissen defends the claim that it grounds our value by making us relationally valuable in the sense that it makes us able to lead a good life—a life that is of value, in the first place, for the person who leads it.

This chapter tackles the seventh and final criterion for a good benefits system: The tax and benefits structure should reflect the labour market of today, and should remain serviceable as the labour market changes in the future. The ways in which the labour market is changing are described, and how to characterise today's labour market is discussed: whether as subject to seismic change and towards virtual organisations and a sizeable ‘precariat’, or as subject to slow adjustment in the direction of a somewhat more flexible labour market. The ways in which employment pattern changes and changes to the family are connected are explored. The combination means that we need a secure income floor to enable individuals and households to handle change and risk. If there is to be a period of constant change, then rather than a benefits system that will suit today's circumstances, one is needed that will suit a variety of possible future scenarios. Universal benefits are found to be the best option. The chapter concludes that the best benefits system to provide the conditions for ‘the good life’ is one based on a Citizen's Income.