WHY SHOULD SOME HAVE MORE THAN OTHERS? · THE WILT CHAMBERLAIN THOUGHT- EXPERIMENT. 1. Society has an equal distribution, D1. 2. Now suppose Wilt Chamberlain has a busy season and

WHY SHOULD SOME HAVE MORE THAN OTHERS?Damien Storey

WHY SHOULD SOME HAVE MORE THAN OTHERS?

1. Inequality: some empirical examples.

2. The basic theoretical questions.3. Two answers: Rawls vs. Nozick.

W EA LT H D I S T R I B U T I O N I N I R E L A N D

Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2017, Table 6.5

TOP/BOTTOM ?%

TOP/BOTTOM ?%

W EA LT H D I S T R I B U T I O N I N I R E L A N DTOP 10%

BOTTOM 90%

50%

1%

Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2017, Table 6.5

4%

Bottom 50%

Top 1%

P RE-TAX NATIONAL INC OME SHARE, US , 1970– 2014

World Wealth & Income Database

The poorest 3.6 billion people, representing half of humanity, have the combined wealth of:

A. The top 10%B. Top 1%C. Top 0.1%

D. The richest eight men.

1 . B I L L G A T E S ; 2 . A M A N C I O O R T E G A ; 3 . W A R R E N B U F F E T T ; 4 . C A R L O S S L I M H E L U ; 5 . J E F F B E Z O S ; 6 . M A R K Z U C K E R B E R G ; 7 . L A R R Y E L L I S O N ; 8 . M I C H A E L B L O O M B E R G

Oxfam ‘An Economy of the 99%’ (Jan. 2017)

MYTH #1

Current inequalities benefit everyone (e.g. via a ‘trickle down’ mechanism).

MYTH #2

With enough diligence, anyone can get to the top.

MYTH #3

Current inequalities are a normal part of a free democratic society—the alternative would be undemocratic.

Some distributable social goods:

1. Income and wealth.2. Rights and liberties.3. Political participation.4. Health.5. Education.

Some common grounds for inequality.

1. Existing rights or claims (e.g. private property).

2. Efficiency (e.g. greater GDP).3. Fair reward: e.g. for efforts, skills, or

sacrifices.

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Is equality intrinsically valuable?

P U R E E Q U A L I T Y I N E Q U A L I T Y

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Is equality intrinsically valuable?

P U R E E Q U A L I T Y B E N E F I C I A L I N E Q U A L I T Y I N E Q U A L I T Y

If not equality—what?

1. Income and wealth affects other important distributions, like equal opportunity and political participation.

2. Perhaps there is a duty to help everyone get above some minimum level.

3. We can view society as a system of social cooperation, where the winners owe something to the losers.

EQUALITYJOHN RAWLS1921–2002

“The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness citizens agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. The two principles [of justice] are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune.”

A Theory of Justice (1971), p.84

P R E - F O U N D I N G C O N V E N T I O N

F U T U R E S O C I E T YT H E V E I L O F I G N O R A N C E

Race, gender, social position, age, natural abilities, generation of birth, and the natural, technological, and social circumstances of their future

society.

THE PARTIES’ CHOICE: ‘MAXIMIN’ AND THE ‘STRAINS OF COMMITMENT’

First: Rawls thinks the parties in the original position would not gamble with their life prospects: they would only accept a society in which they live well in any position they end up in.

THE PARTIES’ CHOICE: ‘MAXIMIN’ AND THE ‘STRAINS OF COMMITMENT’

Second: If the agreement is to be in good faith, the parties must only agree to principles of justice that they could endorse across the full range of possible positions they might end up in.

THE IDEA OF RECIPROCITY

Society: a system of social cooperation between free and equal citizens.

I’m a self-made man!

How much of an individual’s wealth and advantage is a product of: a) Their personal diligence and ingenuity?b) Their luck in the lottery of natural endow-

ments and social circumstances of birth?c) Their use of the system of social cooperation?

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE

1. Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:

a. They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

b. They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).

ROBERTNOZICK1938–2002

Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do them without violating these rights. So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

Anarchy, State, & Utopia, ix

“Individuals are inviolable”

People have a very strong natural right to self-ownership. No other person can force us to use our talents, labour, or bodies for their purposes—to do so is tantamount to slavery.

“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor”

As I own my talents and labour, so I own what is justly produced by them. For others to claim a right to these products is to claim a right of ownership in me.

THE ENTITLEMENT THEORY1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with

the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.

2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.

3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1. and 2.

T H E W I LT C H A M B E R L A I N T H O U G H T - E X P E R I M E N T

1. Society has an equal distribution, D1.

2. Now suppose Wilt Chamberlain has a busy season and 1 million people voluntarily pay him 25c each to see him play.

3. Wilt Chamberlain is now $250,000 richer, and a million people are 25c poorer—the distribution has changed from D1 to D2.

Has any injustice occurred?

THE PRACTICAL SIDE

1. Focus on equal opportunity, not just on compensating those left behind.

2. Break the link between money and political influence and power.

3. Aggressive gift and inheritance tax.4. A universal basic income.

“The background institutions of a PROPERTY-OWNING DEMOCRACY work to disperse the ownership of wealth and capital, and thus prevent a small part of society controlling the economy, and indirectly, political life as well. By contrast, WELFARE-STATE CAPITALISM permits a small class to have a near monopoly of the means of production.

Property-owning democracy avoids this, not by the redistribution of income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (that is, education and trained skills) at the beginning of each period, all this against a background of fair equality of opportunity. The intent is not simply to assist those who lose out through accident or misfortune (although that must be done), but rather to put all citizens in a position to manage their own affairs on a footing of a suitable degree of social and economic equality.”

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) section 42.3

S O M E R E A D I N G S U G G E S T I O N S :

Will Kymlicka Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (OUP: Oxford, 2002)A topic-based introduction to contemporary political philosophy with chapters on both egalitarianism and libertarianism.

Jonathan Woolf An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP: Oxford, 2006)A broad, historical introduction to political philosophy, from ancient to contemporary. It has a chapter on contemporary distributive justice.

John Rawls Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, E. Kelly (ed.), (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2001)

This is Rawls’s final statement of his position, written a few years before his death: it’s still a technical read, but it’s considerably shorter than A Theory of Justice. It also has more discussion of the practical institutions that best suit his theory.

Jonathan Woolf Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (Polity Press: Oxford, 1991)

A balanced introduction to Nozick’s libertarian theory and how it engages with egalitarian theories like Rawls’s.