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Lecture notes for JUSTICE AND ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION.

Justice: fairness, equality, desert and rights. Concepts such as these are essentially moral concepts characterizing societies of people. In the same way as moral concepts that characterize our personal relationships with one another, these moral concepts need to be defined, justified, and critically evaluated.

CLASSICAL THEORIES OF SOCIETY: PLATO (427-347 BCE) & ARISTOTLE (384-322BCE) PLATO: The Republic. A JUST STATE is one in which all the groups perform their unique functions in an exemplary fashion and all members of society work together harmoniously, as a smoothly articulated and balanced whole. This requires commonly held property. Injustice occurs when the parts of the state or the individual fail to perform the functions for which they were designed, or they fail to work with the other members in a harmonious way. This corresponds to the natural order: People of wisdom to lead society – the philosopher kings. People of courage to protect its interests – police and soldiers. People of temperance to provide the basic nourishing needs of the community – tradespeople and farmers. Justice = Virtue: Based on the principle of cooperation, a state in which all people fulfill their distinctive functions, fully committed to the general interests of society as a whole.

SOCIETY IS THE NATURAL STATE OF HUMANITY: ARISTOTLE (384-322 BCE) Politics. Aristotle believed that ‘man is a political creature’ by nature and that existing in social communities is our natural state. Virtue differs from justice for Aristotle: virtue deals with one’s moral state; while justice deals with one’s relations with others. Humans are naturally social creatures – political animals – in the same way that many other species instinctively form herds or packs. But: Humans have abilities that transcend those of other animals. These thinking and language abilities enable humans to reflect on their social communities and evaluate them in terms of concepts such as just and unjust, good and evil.

For many theories of justice: the state is the result of individuals coming together to form an organized society for their mutual benefit (social contract theory, e.g. Hobbes in Leviathan).

Aristotle believes the opposite - The state is prior to the individual: this means that humans can achieve their full potential only through their social existence. Believed that any individual who can exist independently of human community must either be a beast or a god – not part of a state, so not a fully human being. For humans to achieve their potential, they must work cooperatively with others to achieve virtue for themselves and for their community, which results in a just state

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE FOR ARISTOTLE: Deals with the fair distribution of wealth among members of a community. What each person receives is directly proportional to his or her merit, so a good person will receive more than a bad person. Wealth and honour ought to be distributed according to virtue. The most virtuous people make the most significant contributions to the life of the city, so they have the right to the greatest honours. Women, working men, and slaves do not have the freedom to fully exercise all the virtues, so they will necessarily receive a lesser share of the city’s wealth.

Injustice: involves one person gaining at another’s expense. Thus justice is a virtuous mean between the vices of giving more than a person deserves, and giving less than a person deserves. Justice is a mean or middle state of people having their proper due, while injustice involves people having either too much or too little in relation to their virtue/contribution to society. Golden mean: sufficiency between a lack and an excess. recklessness/courage/cowardice; sloth/ambition/greed; secrecy/honesty/loquacity; moroseness/good humour/buffoonery; quarrelsomeness/friendship/flattery; self-indulgence/temperance/extravagance; profligacy/generosity/miserliness; arrogance/self-esteem/humility;

ARISTOTLE AND MODERN BUSINESS PRACTICES: Aristotle describes the practice of accumulating wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth as greed. He deems greed to be unnatural and out of order in the sense that it is against the purpose of human beings, because the purpose of human beings is to live well, and the single minded quest for wealth cannot be sufficient for living well. The modern for-profit corporation also commits this vice, since the sole purpose of existence of a corporation is the ever increasing reach for more and more profit. Aristotle reasoned that no one can willingly suffer an injustice and that when goods are unjustly distributed, the distributor is more culpable than the person who receives the largest share.

Both Plato and Aristotle: proposed comprehensive theories that were built around the concept of justice for the first time in recorded Western history, with the following criteria: Fairness: the fair treatment of members of groups. Different standards may be pertinent in different cases, however. Like cases ought to be treated the same way except where there is some relevant difference. Equality: Plato and Aristotle both affirmed the idea that members of a category must be treated as equals, e.g. all tradespeople, all aristocrats, all women, all children, all slaves - a principle that forms the bedrock of many modern concepts of justice. This principle of equality suggests that the fairest allocation is one that distributes benefits and burdens equally among all parties. This principle, however, ignores differences in effort, talent, and productivity, which are best addressed by the notion of desert or merit. Desert: Justice requires that people get what they deserve. The idea of being deserving of something, whether good or bad. Rights: e.g. the right to a fair trial if accused of ill-doing; the right to form a union; the right to overtime pay; the right to vote; the right to work.

Injustice: when these rights are ignored or overridden. E.G.ITT in Chile.

RIVAL PRINCIPLES OF DISTRIBUTION: The proper distribution of social benefits and burdens, in particular, those which are economic in nature, is termed distributive justice, and a number of principles concerning how to achieve this have been proposed. Many philosophers take a pluralist approach: choose amongst the various equally valid, prima facie principles of just distribution according to the situation one finds oneself in. Other philosophers seek a general theory of economic justice: utilitarian, libertarian, and Rawlsian theories are important examples.

Mill’s Utilitarian theory of justice: Utilitarians tend to be among those who see no major divide between justice and morality. Utilitarians see justice as part of morality and don’t see justice to have a higher priority than any other moral concern. Utilitarians often advocate for social welfare because everyone’s well-being is of moral interest and social welfare seems like a good way to make sure everyone flourishes to a minimal extent. On the other hand Utilitarians often advocate free trade because (a) free trade can help reward people for hard work and encourage people to be productive, (b) the free market allows for a great deal of freedom, (c) freedom has a tendency to lead to more prosperity, and (d) taking away freedom has a tendency to cause suffering.

One conception of utilitarian justice can be found in the work Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill . Mill said that justice was a subset of morality—“injustice involves the violation of the rights of some identifiable individual”. Mill suggests, “Justice implies something which is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his moral right…….To have a right, then, is… to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility”. Rights are rules society can make for everyone that could help people flourish and prosper in general, and we should have rights given the assumption that they are likely to increase goodness in the long run.

Concrete utilitarian suggestions: Mill argued that we should reduce the division between workers and owners. There might be a way for workers and owners to blend together rather than be sharply divided groups, which could reduce class warfare and hostile relations.

We can promote greater equality of income. The more money you get, the less that additional money can help your well being. People who have billions of dollars don’t get as much of a benefit from each dollar they own than others would. This is the declining marginal utility of money. If we tax the rich to help the poor, than we could expect that greater goodness would result.

Utilitarianism and Competitive Capitalism: The key claim about market capitalism for the utilitarian is that free, unregulated markets efficiently allocate resources--chiefly labor and capital--in the production of goods. By a market is meant only any pattern of economic activity in which buyers do business with sellers. In the classical system of economics competition is presupposed among producers or sellers. The kind of competition in question here, "pure competition," exists in a market if and only if it meets the following conditions:

(1) There are sufficient numbers of buyers and sellers so that no single firm by itself can affect the prices it pays suppliers or the prices it charges its buyers, regardless of how much or little it produces. (2) There are no entry or exit barriers to the market, i.e., the market is one into which new firms can move with ease and out of which unsuccessful firms can easily exit. (3) The outputs or products of the firms competing in the market are undifferentiated.

When pure competition exists in a market, when, that is, the market meets conditions (1)-(3), then the following important consequences will follow: (4) Resources--chiefly capital and labor--will be efficiently employed: they will be used to produce goods at the lowest possible prices, and there will be adequate incentive for producers to do this and to seek more efficient (cheaper) methods of production. (5) Resources will be efficiently allocated: the "particular things that are wanted by the community" will be provided "in the particular amounts in which they are wanted." For, again, producers have adequate incentives to accommodate to consumer demand. (6) Reasonably full employment for all willing workers will be maintained. It should be noted however that the conditions (1)-(3) for pure competition are an idealization. They have rarely been jointly met in fact. But where they are not all realized, it cannot be argued that the operation of the market is guaranteed to yield the beneficent consequences (4)-(6).

But this way of evaluating forms of social organization is arguably defective because it may lead to unjust institutional arrangements. John Rawls famously stated the objection in his A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 23-4. Utilitarianism does not properly recognize "the separateness of persons"--the fact that the losses and gains may be experienced by separate--and hence different--persons. Thus, Rawls argues, questions of fairness or justice arise in the case of the social group that do not arise in the case of the single individual, and utilitarianism is unprepared to address these.

Applying Mill’s theory of justice: First, we need to figure out what rights will probably lead to greater happiness. Second, we have to figure out whether those rights are being violated in a given situation.

Look at 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

1. Right to property – “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property” (Article 17). People ought to have a right to property for at least four reasons. One, because we have various needs and property is very helpful to fulfill those needs. Two, we make plans throughout the day concerning our future (e.g. retirement) and property rights are needed to have the stability required for these plans. Three, it often makes people upset when they are robbed, even when only luxuries are stolen. Four, the right to make a profit from one’s labor can be an incentive to work hard and be productive, which can help create greater prosperity for society at large.

2. Right to social welfare – “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” (Article 25). The right to the necessities of life requires the redistribution of wealth, but it can help many people who need help the most and thus increases happiness (the greater good) despite the fact that it can harm certain people. One could object that the right to social welfare violates property rights, but it is quite possible for people’s rights to conflict. Sometimes we think one right can override another.

3. Right to education – “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” (Article 26). Widespread education can help society in several ways: First, it can help people know how to be better productive and attain higher positions in society. Second, without a right to education many people could be stuck being poor without much of a chance at attaining a better position in society, and that could destroy their motivation to be productive. The poor could even be motivated to commit crimes if it’s the only way for them to attain a better position in life.

When are rights violated? – Consider the following six situations and whether or not any rights are being violated:

• A corporation sells TV sets that don’t work and scams people out of their money because people assume that the TV sets work when they buy them. Is this a violation of anyone’s rights? Mill can argue, yes, because a person’s property rights entail that property is transferred given an agreement and no one agreed to buy a broken TV set.

• Samantha was born in a poor family and she could never afford an education. She couldn’t afford food and couldn’t find a job, so she starves to death. Meanwhile there is an abundance of food and wealth that is almost exclusively owned by the wealthiest members of society. Was any right being violated? Mill could argue, yes, because (a) she should have been given a free education and (b) she has a right to social welfare and redistributing wealth could have helped her survive. People have duties to help one another and they can’t just let others die of starvation.

• The government taxes all profits 10% to help poor families buy the necessities of life. Anyone who doesn’t pay their taxes can be punished. Was any right being violated? It seems obvious that the right to property was violated in this case, but Mill could argue that such a violation is necessary for ethical reasons—either because of conflicting rights or other moral considerations to the “greater good.”

• The government subsidizes the big bank industry by using tax money to give the big banks billions of dollars to help them avoid bankruptcy. Was any right being violated? Yes, property rights are being violated in this case because people are coerced to pay taxes to fund a bailout. Is it just to violate property rights in this case? It depends whether the big bank industry getting lots of free money will lead to the greater good. Some people might argue that “saving the banks” will prevent a huge disaster to the economy—and absolutely no other alternative course of action would be better.

• A corporation hires hit men to kill the competition. Was any right being violated? Mill will argue, yes, because we have a right not to be harmed and it will probably not serve the greater good. The happiness of the “competition” (and their family and friends) matters just as much as everyone else’s happiness.

• The people who personally made the decision to hire hit men to kill the competition are thrown in prison after being found guilty in a court of law. Are any rights being violated? Yes, the rights not to be harmed are being violated here. The criminals have rights not to be harmed, just like everyone else, and being in prison is a violation of liberty—something that would ordinarily be considered to be unjust behavior against “innocent people.” However, a utilitarian could argue that it’s for the “greater good” to throw the criminals in prison because such use of coercion helps discourage and prevent further criminal acts and rights violations.

ROBERT NOZICK: (1938-2002) LIBERTARIANISM AND UTOPIA.

Anarchy, State and Utopia: Libertarianism is a framework for Utopia. Written in response to Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Anarchy: anarchia: absence of a leader. Libertarianism: any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals. AND: the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. The minimal or Nightwatchman state, inevitably accompanied by the purest possible free market, is ‘inspiring as well as right’. In favour of the minimal state: ‘limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on.’

ENTITLEMENT THEORY: The redistribution of goods is only justified on condition of consent. One person’s property right over an object is equivalent to everyone else’s lack of liberty to use the object in question without permission. Original position: appropriation of property: if a field is unowned then both you and I are at liberty to use it. The minute you appropriate it, I can no longer use it without your permission. Justice in initial acquisition: comes from Locke’s argument that ‘one may permissibly appropriate from nature, only if one leaves enough and as good for others’. Nozick weakens Locke’s proviso: ‘you must not make anyone worse off by your appropriation’. Justice in holdings: The system of individual private property must not make anyone worse off than they would have been in the original position, where all individuals would have legitimate access to all natural goods. Assumption: no-one would do better in the state of nature than they would be able to do under modern capitalism. Justice in transfer: assuming justice in acquisition, entitlement to holdings continues if each transfer is free and voluntary. An unbroken chain of justice in holdings back to original justice in acquisition. Therefore private property is justified. Workers: free to contract to labour for another. Could have refused to enter into the contract if not particularly advantageous to them. Therefore don’t need minimum wage regulations, health and safety laws, etc.

NIGHTWATCHMAN STATE: make clients pay for the protection of themselves and others: State protects individual rights and makes sure that contracts and other market transactions are voluntary. When a state takes on more responsibilities than these, rights will be violated, through increased taxation to pay for these services. The minimal state arises naturally from anarchy, or the state of nature. Any expansion of state power past this minimalist threshold is unjustified. DEVELOPMENT OF THE MINIMAL STATE: Depends on claims about rights. We each have absolute rights to life and liberty, in the sense that no-one may justifiably interfere with another’s life or liberty, except in cases of self-defence or legitimate punishment. These are negative rights of non-interference, not positive rights to aid or assistance from others or the state. It is the task of the minimal state to protect us from each other and from external threat. No central bank, no department of public works or education, no welfare policy, etc. These functions will be undertaken by private individuals or firms, for the sake of profit or out of public spirit, if they are to exist at all.

IN LOCKE’S STATE OF NATURE: fundamental rights exist but there is no state to enforce and adjudicate them. Locke was wrong to imagine a social contract as being necessary to establish civil society. ‘invisible hand’ explanation: self-regulation of the marketplace. By trying to maximize their own gains in the marketplace, individuals’ ambitions benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. This would restrain individuals from enforcing their own rights at the expense of others, and protect all individuals, through the formation of the minimal state. Rational response to the troubles of this is the formation of groups of individuals into mutual-protection associations, to help and defend each other from aggressors. Logical result: the entrepreneurs will start selling protective services, and a dominant protective association will emerge in a given geographical area: this resembles a minimal state. No taxes other than sufficient to pay for protection of one’s right to retain one’s justly held property: police, army, border guards, etc.

In the Libertarian view people are essentially ‘rational end-choosers’, and the kind of life appropriate to rational end-choosers requires them to be free to choose their own ends and free to pursue them without interference from others. This may seem to imply that the Libertarian holds that everyone should be able to do whatever he or she wants, but really the Libertarian holds no such view. The Libertarian view is that each person should have the same freedom to pursue his chosen ends, that each is therefore obligated to refrain from interfering with others in their freedom to pursue their ends, and that the function of the state is solely to protect each individual's freedom to pursue his chosen ends.

The Libertarian therefore conceives of everyone as having certain rights, which protect his or her liberty to pursue a desirable kind of life: “[E]very person is the owner of his own life[;]...no one is the owner of any one else's life, and...consequently every human being has the right to act in accordance with his own choices, unless those actions infringe on the equal liberty of other human beings to act in accordance with their choices”. No one is anyone else's master and no one is anyone else's slave. Other men's lives are not yours to dispose of. In regard to property the Libertarian favors a scheme in which each person has a quite unrestricted right to acquire property, including full "capitalist" rights to acquire ownership of the means of production and full rights of bequeathal. The right of property is not the right to just take it from others, for this would interfere with their property rights. It is rather the right to work for it, to obtain non-coercively the money or services which you can present in voluntary exchanges. Furthermore, depriving people of property is depriving them of the means by which they live--the freedom of the individual citizen to do what he wishes with his own life and to plan for the future....Property rights are what makes long-range planning possible--the kind of planning which is a distinctively human endeavor, as opposed to the day-to-day activity of [nonrational] animals. Thus: without the right to property, the right to life itself amounts to little. How can you sustain your life if you cannot plan ahead? and how can you plan ahead if the fruits of your labor can at any moment be confiscated by other persons or particularly by government? The package of rights recognized as genuine by Libertarians define and protect the freedom of choice and action that Libertarians hold to be requisite to the life desired by rational end-choosers. And property rights--the rights to acquire, use, and transfer property--are held to be absolutely essential to effective freedom of choice and action.

(I) Property may be acquired through its transfer from one person (who owns it) to another, or from one group of persons to another group. The transfer will be "just," and the person who acquires the property through the exchange will have just claim to the property if the exchange involves no coercion and no fraud, and if the initial owner is the legitimate owner of the property. (II) One may acquire property by acquiring previously unowned things. In this case one does not acquire ownership through transfer from another owner; for it is an unowned thing that one acquires. Libertarians often hold that one acquires ownership over previously unowned things by "mixing one's labor with the thing." The phrase is due to John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher. By applying one's efforts or labor to a thing, altering its condition, one can acquire ownership of the thing. Given his time and place, Locke was predictably interested in ownership of land. He thought that by planting crops on previously unowned land and tending to them, one could acquire ownership over both crops and land. It is clear that ownership must be acquired either by means (I) or (II), and in most cases there will be a chain of transfers leading up to one's acquisition of some item of property, beginning with the initial acquisition of the item as previously unowned and then proceeding through a serious of exchanges that ends with one's acquisition of the item by exchange. If there is nothing objectionable in the initial acquisition and if each of the transfers involves no force or fraud, then one will have a just claim to the item; one will be entitled by right to exclusive ownership of the item. If all property holdings have been acquired by such just means, then according to the Libertarian the distribution of property (which includes all forms of wealth) will be just, and it doesn't matter how ownership is distributed throughout the society: it doesn't matter whether everyone has significant wealth or whether all or most of the wealth is concentrated in a few hands.

Libertarians typically hold that a completely unregulated capitalist economy is the only form of economic organization that respects individuals' property rights. Individuals have the right of free association, the right to trade with one another freely, without coercion or fraud. Regulating--restricting--such rights for the sake of promoting the well-being of the community or social group would amount to an unjust interference with individual liberty. Notice the difference with 19th century Utilitarianism. The Utilitarians then favored a capitalist economy because they thought it efficiently promoted the well-being of the social group. The Libertarian does not favor a capitalist form of economic organization for that reason. He favors it because it respects individual liberty. Libertarians think that the state in particular cannot legitimately intervene in the operation of markets except to prevent fraud or coercion.

Problems for Libertarianism: Suppose, for example, that you somehow acquired ownership of the total food supply for your community and chose to hoard it and even to let it spoil rather than to trade with others. This would lead to starvation, but it would not violate the rights of others in your community according to the Libertarian. During the Irish potato famine in the 1840’s, approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland,[3] causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.[4] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.[5] Throughout this period, food was being exported from Ireland from the landed estates.

Plummeting prices are not always the result of acts of nature, such as floods or droughts; at least sometimes they result from the profit-motivated manipulation of investors and brokers. A case in point was a disastrous famine in the Sahelian region of Africa and the Indian subcontinent in the mid-1970s. Experts attribute the famine partly to climatic shifts and partly to increased oil prices that raised the price of human necessities, fertilizer, and grains such as wheat. Philosopher Onora O'Neill views the resulting deaths as "killings." "To the extent that the raising of oil prices is an achievement of Arab diplomacy and oil company management rather than a wind-fall," she writes, "the consequent deaths are killings.

Libertarian response to these facts? Libertarians would find it immoral and unjust to coerce people to grant food or money to the starving. Nor does justice require that a wealthy merchant assist the hungry children in his community to stay alive. And it would certainly violate the merchant's property rights for the children to help themselves to his excess food. Nevertheless, although justice does not require that one assist those in need, libertarians would generally acknowledge that we have some humanitarian obligations toward others. Accordingly, they would not only permit but also presumably encourage people to voluntarily assist others.

Something is clearly wrong with Libertarianism. Recall that we identified the source of the problem for Utilitarianism with its failure to fully recognize "separateness of persons." The problem with Libertarianism is, in a way, at the opposite extreme: the failure to recognize the "interconnectedness of persons" engaged in a common social life. The Libertarian form of social organization would thus have the effect, over time, of amplifying social and economic differences among people in a way that favors certain classes. They would enable those already in possession of advantages of social position or natural endowment to greatly increase their wealth and position, while making it more difficult for those without such initial advantages to acquire them. The Libertarians system of rights, in effect, if not by intention, amplifies any advantage in social position or natural endowment into a significant competitive advantage in the struggle for position, wealth, and power. The libertarian begins "with the initially attractive idea that social circumstances and people's relationships to one another should develop over time in accordance with free agreements fairly arrived at and fully honored." This ignores the fact that while these conditions may be fair at an earlier time, the accumulated results of many separate and ostensibly fair agreements, together with social trends and historical contingencies, are likely in the course of time to alter citizens' relationships and opportunities so that the conditions for free and fair agreements no longer hold....Unless this [background] structure [within which the actions of individuals and associations take place] is appropriately regulated and adjusted, an initially just social process will eventually cease to be just, however free and fair particular transactions may look when viewed by themselves.

RAWLS (1921-2002) A Theory of Justice. Rawls believed that Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s idea of people living in a state of nature and then assembling to enter into a social contract were historical fictions. Nevertheless, we could still make productive use of these concepts by viewing them as theoretical constructs for understanding the nature, purpose, and authority of government and the state. e.g. if we were living in the state of nature and wanted to enter into an agreement with others to create a social/political community, what kind of social/political system would we create? Imagining ourselves in this situation provides us with the opportunity to identify the values we believe are integral to an enlightened society and to begin thinking about what form such a society would take.

Primary value: society based on justice = fairness. Anyone about to enter into a social contract with others would want to be assured that he or she would be treated fairly with respect to political rights and economic responsibilities.

Concept: the veil of ignorance. Imagine that in devising an ideal society, you had no idea who exactly you would be in this new society. Everything about you would be hidden behind a veil of ignorance that would conceal your gender, age, race, talents, education, parents: everything that defines you as an individual. Rawls: in this case, most people would want to be assured that they will be guaranteed fair treatment and equal opportunities, whatever their situation turns out to be.

TWO CARDINAL PRINCIPLES: on which a just society should be based.

• Each person should have the greatest amount of political freedom that is compatible with equal freedom for all citizens. (THE LIBERTY PRINCIPLE)

• Economic wealth and income should provide everyone with an equal opportunity to secure all positions. In addition, any economic inequalities, such as incentives for superior performance, should be designed to benefit all people in society, including the least advantaged persons. (Difference principle)

NOT: advocating a social model in which everybody is entitled to exactly the same amount of wealth and income. Rather, that people ought to have an equal opportunity to acquire such wealth and income. ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES: sometimes in the interest of society. If everyone is going to earn the same amount of salary, no matter how hard he or she works, there will be little incentive for each to put forth his or her best effort. BUT: not everyone is equally talented: some members of a society are at a disadvantage due to disabilities, age, and other variables. A just society therefore provides a safety net, or minimum, for the worst off: a system of public welfare that ensures a basic standard of living for everyone in society, no matter how disadvantaged. And: distributes social good unequally so as to maximize the status of those worst off. Society makes their unequal status the best that it could be.

CRITICISMS:

• Nozick disagrees with Rawls about the "natural lottery": the distribution of natural abilities might be morally arbitrary, but people are entitled to their natural assets nonetheless.

• TAXES!!!!!! Those entrepreneurs who have more wealth due to their activities have to pay higher taxes so the benefits of the wealth can be redistributed to those at the bottom of the hierarchy.

• Sweden is a very egalitarian nation, and they pay extremely high taxes, which are redistributed to those at the lower end of the social scale, and spent on social welfare initiatives.

• Is it even possible to imagine ourselves behind ‘a veil of ignorance’, and if we are, might we not gamble and choose an in-egalitarian society anyway, based on our basic belief in our own ability to succeed?

• The initial equality decided by the participants in the original position under the veil of ignorance is not preserved by the inequality sanctioned by the difference principle. It would therefore unravel eventually.

• Would the emphasis on equality lead to ‘The tall poppy syndrome’?

• This is a culture where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down or criticised because they have been classified as better than their peers.

• This is similar to begrudgery, the resentment or envy of the success of a peer.