Political Philosophy

by Phil Parvin

  For Rawls, the worst-off in society are not simply those who have the smallest amount of money. The worst-off are those who have the smallest amount of what Rawls calls ‘primary goods’. Primary goods are those goods that a person needs if she is to follow her chosen conception of the good, whatever that conception of the good happens to be. Money is a primary good, because some amount of money is necessary to follow any conception of the good. But there are other things that people need to live good lives, things like rights, liberties, opportunities and powers. These are primary goods that are distributed by social institutions, and the worst-off are measured according to their allocation of all of these social goods. So, in working out who the worst-off people are, we need to know not just how much money they have, but also how much power and opportunity, and what rights they have.

  However, these social primary goods are not the only things that people need in order to be able to pursue their conception of the good life. There are also natural primary goods, things like health, intelligence, stamina, determination and so on. These are the characteristics that Rawls argues are morally arbitrary, and so do not entitle people to higher salaries. Nevertheless, he does not allow natural primary goods to count when calculating who the worst-off people are. This is for two main reasons:

  • The first is the idea that justice is the first virtue of social institutions. In other words, principles of justice are supposed to tell us how social institutions should operate, how they should distribute benefits and burdens. Because natural endowments are not distributed by social institutions, their distribution cannot be a matter of justice. It is not unjust that someone is born less intelligent than average. It is merely unfortunate. Justice concerns only the operation of social institutions.

  • The second reason why natural primary goods do not count when working out who the worst-off people are is that it would be extremely difficult and costly to arrange society so that all inequalities benefit the worst-off, if the worst-off included people with debilitating handicaps, or who are paralysed or in a coma, for example. Including these people as the worst-off would mean that the state would have to distribute vastly disproportionate resources to them, thus undermining the difference principle.

  While Rawls’s claims may be true, it is still the case that his theory of justice would effectively ignore the potentially vast inequalities which arise out of the initial distribution of natural primary goods which are, as Rawls himself accepts, unchosen and therefore morally arbitrary.

  IT IS INATTENTIVE TO THE NOTION OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

  A second concern, raised also by libertarians like Nozick, is that the difference principle rewards people who have less money as the result of their own choices. An example that is often given is that of surfers. Remember, the difference principle ensures that society is arranged so that inequalities benefit those who are worst-off. It makes no attempt to discriminate between people according to how they became worst-off. So, if a particular society contains hard-working, rich accountants, and beach-bum surfers who work just enough to be able to survive so that they can spend the rest of the time surfing, Rawls’s account would say that the surfers are the worst-off. The accountants would not be allowed to earn more than the surfers just because the surfers have chosen their relative poverty. Instead, the difference principle makes the accountants subsidize the surfers, which does not seem very fair.

  For these reasons, numerous thinkers have criticized Rawls’s theory for failing to account for the moral difference between choice and luck. In what follows, we will concentrate on the most influential: Ronald Dworkin’s luck egalitarian theory. Before doing so, let us first mention an alternative approach that he rejects.

  Equality of welfare

  Egalitarians are generally committed to ensuring equality. But equality of what? One option is welfare. Dworkin argues that equality of welfare is initially attractive because it seems to deal with the problem of the arbitrariness of natural endowments better than Rawls’s theory of equality of resources. Consider the disabled, for example. Equality of resources is problematic once we take the disabled into account because disabled people require many more resources than able-bodied people just to reach the same levels of welfare. For example, someone who uses a wheelchair will require more resources than an able-bodied person if she is to be able to buy a car and enjoy the level of welfare that results from being able to travel independently. This is because the able-bodied person can purchase any car and drive it straight away, whereas the wheelchair user will have to spend a large amount of money having a car adapted, so that it can be operated without using foot pedals, for example. If we give both people the same amount of resources, there will be an inequality (of welfare).

  If we care about this sort of inequality – if we think that it is just that disabled people ought to receive more resources than able-bodied people – then we might find the idea of equalizing welfare attractive. However, Dworkin argues that equality of welfare is undermined by the problem of expensive tastes.

  This is the idea that different people will experience equivalent levels of welfare from different things, depending on their tastes. Some people will have tastes which are relatively cheap to satisfy, like tea and toast. Others will have very expensive tastes, like caviar and champagne. If our concern is to equalize welfare it seems that we should give the person with expensive tastes more resources than the person with cheaper tastes.

  Most of us, Dworkin argues, will find the idea that a principle of equality requires us to give more money to someone so that she can buy champagne and caviar extremely counter-intuitive. He therefore argues that egalitarians should not be concerned to equalize welfare. What is needed, in contrast, is a different theory which captures the egalitarian intuition that some people (e.g. the disabled) need more resources than others but which does not fall prey to the problem of expensive tastes. Dworkin proposes an alternative theory of equality of resources to Rawls’.

  Case study: G.A. Cohen on expensive tastes

  Against Dworkin, G.A. Cohen argues that, in certain circumstances, the state ought indeed to provide people with expensive tastes with extra resources. The reason, again, concerns the relationship between luck and responsibility. Specifically, Cohen argues that the problem of expensive tastes can be solved by distinguishing between those expensive tastes which a person has voluntarily chosen to cultivate, and those that she finds herself with, through no fault or action of her own. According to Cohen, egalitarianism does in fact demand that we provide people with enough resources to satisfy those expensive tastes that they have no control over, but not those that they have deliberately cultivated.

  Imagine that someone (Dworkin calls him Louis) deliberately cultivates a taste for champagne and caviar over tea and toast. Dworkin and Cohen agree that egalitarianism does not require that we fund this taste. However, imagine that Louis has a child, Louise, and that he brings Louise up on a diet of caviar and champagne. By the time Louise is fully grown, she cannot bear to eat anything but caviar and champagne. She has entrenched expensive tastes that she did not deliberately cultivate. If Louise falls on hard times, so that she cannot afford the caviar and champagne, Cohen’s position is that, in some circumstances, the state ought to provide her with resources so that she can afford them, because her taste for them is not her fault. It is just her bad luck that she has those tastes.

  Cohen therefore also rejects equality of welfare, arguing that egalitarianism should not be about the equalization of welfare, but instead the elimination of disadvantage.

  Dworkin and equality of resources

  Equality of resources does not mean, for Dworkin, simply that everyone should have the same amount or an identical set of resources. This is because people have different preferences, make different choices, about how to live their lives. Resources that are appropriate for one sort of life will not be helpful for another. For example, someone who wants to be a farmer will need a large amount of fertile lan
d in the countryside, whereas someone who wants to open a shop will need a much smaller amount of built-upon land in the town. It follows, then, that if we are to take into account people’s different choices about how to live their lives, we need to allocate them different sorts of resources so that they each have an equal chance at living out their choices.

  HISTORICAL VS. END-STATE THEORIES OF JUSTICE REVISITED

  The central claim shared by luck egalitarians is thus: inequalities are fair if they arise as a consequence of choices made by the individuals in question, and are unfair if they arise as a consequence of factors beyond their control. The aim of egalitarianism, luck egalitarians argue, is to compensate people for unchosen disadvantages (by ensuring that everyone has access to an equal bundle of initial resources) and not to compensate people for disadvantages suffered as a result of choices that they made. Luck egalitarianism therefore tries to do a better job of dealing with the tension between luck and choice that we find in Rawls by incorporating the idea of personal responsibility (for our choices) in a way that does not require libertarianism.

  Dworkin explains his theory through a thought experiment (a bit like Rawls’s original position) in which castaways on a desert island bid for an initial allocation of resources, depending on what kind of life they wish to lead. It is not possible to go into this in detail here. Suffice to say that Dworkin’s conclusion justifies a luck egalitarian approach which is historical (in a Nozickean sense) rather than end-state (like Rawls’s justice as fairness). People’s choices count both in the allocation of the initial resources that everyone receives, and in determining the distribution of resources over time.

  Imagine two people with equal resources, say, the same amount of land. The first person, Ben, decides to use his land just to farm enough food to survive. This leaves him with a fair amount of land, and a fair amount of time, to spend on leisure. So, he uses the rest of the land and the time to build a tennis court and play tennis on it. After five years, he has the same resources that he started with: he has made enough food to survive, but has not acquired any extra resources.

  The other individual, Bonnie, has used her land solely for farming. As such, she has produced far more food than she can eat by herself, and she has traded her surplus with others. In order to do this she has had to work far longer hours than Ben, and has not been able to set aside much of her time or land for leisure. Still, after five years she has produced and traded enough food to acquire a great deal more resources than Ben. She has a separate piece of land on which she has built a luxurious house – or on which others have built her a house in return for food. Moreover, in the little leisure time she does have, she is able to play tennis on Ben’s tennis court in return for giving him some of her surplus food.

  In short, although they started out equal, they now seem to have unequal resources. Critically, Ben will now envy Bonnie’s allocation of resources. They each began with the same amount. But now, Bonnie has much more than Ben. Does this mean, then, that the resulting distribution is inegalitarian?

  Rawls argues that it does. Dworkin argues that it does not. If we are to be properly sensitive to people’s choices, he argues, we must not consider Ben and Bonnie’s comparative resources just as this one point in time, five years after the initial distribution. Instead, we must consider the resources that each has enjoyed over the whole five years. Bonnie has enjoyed the extra resources of her house and so on. But Ben has enjoyed the extra resource of a great amount of leisure time. He has had to work far less than Bonnie did, and this was the result of his choice. He decided that leisure was more important to him than acquiring extra resources. As such, he has to take responsibility for that choice. If he had wanted to acquire more resources, then he could and should have spent more of his time and land on farming. The fact that he chose to spend his time and land on tennis means that there is no injustice in his subsequent relative lack of resources. Whereas Rawls’s difference principle would unfairly require Bonnie to redistribute some of her resources to Ben, Dworkin’s approach requires Ben to take responsibility for his choices, and receive no extra help.

  LUCK

  So, one reason why people might end up with different amounts of resources is that they might choose to spend their resources and their time on different things. However, there could be another cause of inequality over time: luck.

  Imagine two other people, Edward and Emily, who again begin with the same amount of land and who wish to use their land and time farming as much food as possible to trade with others. Imagine that Edward plants barley and Emily plants fruit. Both work equally hard. However, Emily’s fruit crop is struck down by disease. Although she works very hard to save her crop, she is unable to do so. Simply as the result of bad luck, she is left with a far smaller, less valuable crop than Edward. What should a Dworkinian egalitarian do about this result?

  In response, Dworkin distinguishes between two sorts of luck: option luck and brute luck. Option luck is the sort of luck that a person voluntarily, or optionally, takes on. For example, if you gamble £5 on a game of roulette, then the question of whether you win or not is a matter of option luck: you are subject to luck only as a result of the choice you took to play the game of roulette. Similarly, Dworkin gives the example of smoking: if you are aware of the health risks of smoking yet smoke for 20 years before developing lung cancer, then the fact that you developed cancer is the result of option luck. You voluntarily took the risk upon yourself.

  In contrast, brute luck is unpredictable, and the risk of suffering from brute luck is involuntary. An example of bad brute luck might be being struck by lightning, or developing a form of cancer not thought to be linked to any particular behaviour and thus not thought to be avoidable by any particular behaviour.

  Spotlight: The cost of bad choices

  15 million people currently living in the UK are obese. According to the official report, ‘Tackling Obesities: Future Choices’ (2007), the direct cost attributable to overweight or obese individuals in the UK in 2007 was £4.2 billion, with the total annual costs of all obesity-related diseases (such as diabetes, stroke, heart disease and certain forms of cancer) reaching an estimated £17.4 billion. The same report estimated that, on current trends, the direct costs attributable to overweight and obese individuals would more than double (£9.7 billion), while total annual costs of all obesity-related diseases would reach nearly £30 billion, by 2030. This figure does not include the substantial indirect costs to the UK economy associated with obesity, arising from things like increased work absenteeism, increased likelihood of disability, early retirement, or death before retirement age. In the USA, the direct and indirect costs of obesity in 2009 were $147 billion, although recent research suggests that this figure will rise as high as $344 billion by 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of all healthcare spending.

  This distinction between option luck and brute luck is central to the idea of luck egalitarianism. If people are to be held responsible for their choices, it seems appropriate that we should expect them to bear the costs of suffering from bad option luck, but not bad brute luck. So, for example, if you develop lung cancer as a result of your decision to smoke, then you have no grounds for asking society as a whole to bear the costs of your treatment. If, however, you develop lung cancer for reasons beyond your control (from passive smoking, for example), then you would have a prima facie claim to have your treatment paid for.

  Of course, the problem with this approach is that it will often be very difficult to tell whether an outcome is the result of option luck or brute luck, and so it will be difficult to operate the appropriate transfers. Instead, Dworkin suggests that insurance can bridge the gap between the two concepts. If insurance is available, then people can choose whether to take it out. Insurance could cover all sorts of eventualities. It could cover unforeseen and unlikely occurrences of bad brute luck or, at a higher price, it could cover predictable and likely occurrences of bad option luck. However, if insurance is available, all f
orms of potential bad luck are transformed into cases of option luck. The option that people now take is whether or not to take out insurance. If Emily knows that her fruit might suffer from disease but decides to save the money and take out no insurance, she is effectively gambling on the trees not being diseased. If they are diseased, she will suffer from bad option luck – she chose not to take out insurance – regardless of how likely it was that they would be diseased. So, the availability of insurance rules out most forms of brute luck. It follows, then, that people can be held responsible for most bad luck that befalls them, for it was their choice whether or not to take out insurance.

  ‘A person is exploited when unfair advantage is taken of him, and he suffers from (bad) brute luck when his bad luck is not the result of a gamble or risk which he could have avoided. I believe that the primary egalitarian impulse is to extinguish the influence on distribution of both exploitation and brute luck.’

  G.A. Cohen, ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, in M. Otsuka (ed.), On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 5.

  DISABILITY INSURANCE

  Insurance, and the difference between option luck and brute luck, lie at the heart of Dworkin’s approach to the question of inequalities in natural primary goods and, in particular, why disabled people should receive more resources than able-bodied people. Broadly speaking, Dworkin proposes that we place ourselves behind a kind of disability veil of ignorance. If we did so, it would be rational for each and every individual to put aside some of their initial starting resources into a common fund which would be used to provide us all with some level of welfare or compensation in the event that we were disabled, thus creating a social insurance scheme available to all who suffer from disabilities. We then take the amount that the average person would be willing to pay for such an insurance scheme, and levy that amount on each individual. The money raised is given to the disabled. Consequently, the disabled will not receive so many extra resources as to make them equal in welfare to the able-bodied, but they will receive a fair extra amount.