Question

Philosophy: Business ethic:  Explain the two competing accounts of distributive justice we have considered in class: Rawls’s Social Contract Theory and the Nozick’s Entitlement Theory. Which author’s account provides the best balance to our competing concerns of self-ownership and egalitarianism? Provide an argument in support of your response.

Answer 1

The economic, political, and social frameworks that each society has—its laws, institutions, policies, etc.—result in different distributions of benefits and burdens across members of the society. These frameworks are the result of human political processes and they constantly change both across societies and within societies over time. The structure of these frameworks is important because the distributions of benefits and burdens resulting from them fundamentally affect people’s lives. Arguments about which frameworks and/or resulting distributions are morally preferable constitute the topic of distributive justice. Principles of distributive justice are therefore best thought of as providing moral guidance for the political processes and structures that affect the distribution of benefits and burdens in societies, and any principles which do offer this kind of moral guidance on distribution, regardless of the terminology they employ, should be considered principles of distributive justice.

Many writers on distributive justice have tended to advocate and defend their particular principles by describing or considering ideal societies operating under them. They have been motivated to do this as an aid to understanding what their principles mean. Unfortunately though, as a result of this practice, some readers and the general public have been misled into believing that discussions of distributive justice are merely exercises in ideal theory—to be dismissed as a past-time of the academic elite rather than as something that is crucially relevant to current political discussion. This misunderstanding is unfortunate because, in the end, the main purpose of distributive justice theory is not to inform decisions about ideal societies but about our societies. To help correct this misunderstanding it is important to acknowledge that there has never been, and never will be, a purely libertarian society or Rawlsian society, or any society whose distribution conforms to one of the proposed principles. Rather than guiding choices between ideal societies, distributive principles are most usefully thought of as providing moral guidance for the choices that each society faces right now. So, for instance, advocates of Rawls’ Difference Principle are most constructively understood as arguing for changes to our basic institutional structures which would improve the lifetime prospects of the least advantaged in society. Other theorists are arguing for changes to bring economic benefits and burdens more in accordance with what people really deserve. Libertarians are arguing that reductions in government intervention in the economy will better respect liberty and/or self-ownership of its citizens. Sometimes a number of the theories may recommend the same changes to our current practices; other times they will diverge. It is best to understand the different theorists, despite the theoretical devices they sometimes employ, to be speaking to what should be done in our society—not about what should be done in some hypothetical society. Of course, ensuring that philosophical principles be effective for the purpose of guiding policy and change in real societies involves important and complex methodological questions.

Where the rules may conflict in practice, Rawls says that Principle (1) has lexical priority over Principle (2), and Principle (2a) has lexical priority over (2b). As a consequence of the priority rules, Rawls’ principles do not permit sacrifices to basic liberties in order to generate greater equality of opportunity or a higher level of material goods, even for the worst off. While it is possible to think of Principle (1) as governing the distribution of liberties, it is not commonly considered a principle of distributive justice given that it is not governing the distribution of economic goods per se. Equality of opportunity is discussed in the next section. In this section, the primary focus will be on (2b), known as the Difference Principle.

Most contemporary versions of the principles discussed so far allow some role for the market as a means of achieving the desired distributive pattern—the Difference Principle uses it as a means of helping the least advantaged; utilitarian principles commonly use it as a means of achieving the distributive pattern maximizing utility; desert-based principles rely on it to distribute goods according to desert, etc. In contrast, advocates of libertarian distributive principles rarely see the market as a means to some desired pattern, since the principle(s) they advocate do not ostensibly propose a ‘pattern’ at all, but instead describe the sorts of acquisitions or exchanges which are just in their own right. The market will be just, not as a means to some pattern, but insofar as the exchanges permitted in the market satisfy the conditions of just acquisition and exchange described by the principles. For libertarians, just outcomes are those arrived at by the separate just actions of individuals; a particular distributive pattern is not required for justice. Robert Nozick advanced this version of libertarianism (Nozick 1974), and is its best known contemporary advocate.

Nozick proposes a 3-part “Entitlement Theory”.

If the world were wholly just, the following definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings:

1. 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 (a) and (b).

The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution

The obvious objection to this claim is that it is not clear why the first people to acquire some part of the material world should be able to exclude others from it (and, for instance, be the land owners while the later ones become the wage laborers). In response to this objection, Nozick follows Locke in recognizing the need for a qualification on just acquisition. According to the Lockean Proviso, an exclusive acquisition of the external world is just, if, after the acquisition, there is ‘enough and as good left in common for others’. One of the main challenges for libertarians has been to formulate a morally plausible interpretation of this proviso. According to Nozick’s weaker version of Locke’s Proviso, “a process normally giving rise to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing will not do so if the position of others no longer at liberty to use the thing is thereby worsened”