In: Psychology
In this week's chapter John Rawls gives us a thought experiment: Imagine you are standing behind a 'veil of ignorance', and creating a just/fair society without knowing what place you yourself will occupy in that society: not your gender, economic status, race, religion, etc. You want to have a good chance of being happy, whoever you end up being.
For this week's essay, suggest 5 components or institutions of a just and fair society, that might help pass this 'veil' test.
Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary.
(Answer) (1) Right to quality education – By this, I mean that every individual should have access to the same academic facilities that should be financed by the taxpayer. This would mean that there would be no “gated-communities” in terms of education.
(2) Right to vote – Every individual of age would have the right to vote. Furthermore, the cabinet of leaders would be of the people, for the people and by the people. The leaders would not be picked by any other supplementary popularity or voting system.
(3) Regulated leaders – Leaders of the society would need to be regulated based on their actions, behaviour, policy and decisions. A dissatisfied populace should be able to not only voice their opinions effectively but rather have access to economic and other data that would help determine if the leader has brought about progress or regression. Based on this, people should be allowed to make educated decisions about the nation’s leaders and policy.
(4) Employment opportunities based on skill, merit or ethical attributes and not nepotism or racial superiority.
(5) Equitable tax plan – An equitable tax plan would be slightly different from an equal tax plan in that all strata would not pay equally but rather pay based on how much they earn. In other words, the rich pay a higher ratio of taxes than the poor.
If a society has all of these characteristics and is backed by a fair legal system and an ethical constitution, the race, gender or anything else should not really matter.