distributive justice ii: john rawls ethics dr. jason m. chang
TRANSCRIPT
Are Your Accomplishments YOUR doing?• Factors contributing to your achievement
• Family income level
• Family upbringing
• Natural talents
• Personality
• Racial and gender discrimination (???)
• Factors arbitrary from a moral point of view
Rawls’s worries about a free market system…
“[D]istributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the
distribution of income and wealth to be settled by distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.”
John Rawls
Veil of ignorance
• Persons behind veil of ignorance are ignorant of…
• Social position or status
• Income level
• Race or gender
• Personal talents or characteristics• Athletic or sedentary, artistic or tone deaf, intelligent or not very
bright, physically sound or handicapped, talented or untalented, attractive or unattractive, etc.
What System of Distribution?
• Equal share for everyone?
• Distribution based on effort?
• Distribution based on achievement?
• Distribution based on just transfer and just acquisition?
• Distribution based greatest good for greatest number?
Rawls’s Difference Principle
Economic and social inequalities arranged so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least well-
off
Table from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/
EconomyLeast-Advantaged Group
Middle GroupMost-Advantaged Group
A 10,000 10,000 10,000
B 12,000 30,000 80,000
C 30,000 90,000 150,000
D 20,000 100,000 500,000
Rawls’s Difference Principle
The difference principle selects Economy C, because it contains the distribution where the least-
advantaged group does best.
Rawlsian societyWhat would a Rawlsian society look like?
• Sufficient welfare provisions for all
• Taxes and income redistribution?
• More egalitarian than pure free market capitalism
• Inequalities allowed to a certain extent