Economic Justice Slides PDF

20/11/2019 Economic Justice 1 Social Contract Theory Two forms of social contract theory: Contractarianism - What makes an act right (wrong) is that it is permitted (prohibited) by a social contract to which everyone has agreed (or would agree) in her actual circ...

20/11/2019 Economic Justice 1 Social Contract Theory Two forms of social contract theory: Contractarianism - What makes an act right (wrong) is that it is permitted (prohibited) by a social contract to which everyone has agreed (or would agree) in her actual circumstances Based on actual agreement and self-interest Hobbes’s Leviathan describes the “state of nature” with no rules to follow and no one to enforce them as a state where life is “…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (607), so bad that we are compelled by our need to survive to set up some rules and a sovereign to enforce the rules David Gauthier, Jan Narveson subscribe to a more contemporary form of contractarianism, motivated by game theory Usually covered in PHIL 350 2 1  20/11/2019 The Ring of Gyges and Contractarianism “The Ring of Gyges”: If you had a ring that could turn you invisible, what would you do? Gyges seduces the queen who helps him kill the king and seize the throne Contractarianism depends on a effective enforcer to ensure that wrongdoers are punished, otherwise “free riders” who can do immoral things without getting caught like Gyges will take advantage of the fact that everyone else follows the moral rules while he gets away with murder unpunished Since the view is based on always being self-interested, it seems like if you can permissibly sneak something by the enforcer if you can get away with it and it serves your self-interest Maybe we need to think beyond actual beings negotiating laws against murder backed up only by the punishment of an enforcer to hypothetical beings who are better Contractualism: About what rational agents might agree to under fair conditions If we legislate the rules for ourselves as rational agents we can’t opt out of them later if it might be in our immediate interest to do so To do so would be contradictory, irrational, since we agreed to follow them in legislating them 3 Contractualism Contractualism - What makes an act right (wrong) is that it is permitted (prohibited) by a social contract to which everyone would agree under fair conditions Embodies fairness, mutual respect Rawls falls in the contractualist tradition, which is inspired by Rousseau and Kant Recall that Kant was a constructivist, who thought that we should look for principles all rational agents could agree to by seeing through a deliberative procedure whether principles could be universalized without logical contradiction Recall that constructivism views the ethical facts as those that emerge from a deliberative procedure Contractualism is a constructivist position, Rawls is a constructivist For Rawls this deliberative procedure is contractualist, in that it should take place under fair conditions and aims at developing principles that everyone in a society might agree to Rawlsian contractualism is a form of local constructivism, where the ethical facts concerning political justice (not morality as a whole) are generated by a deliberative procedure under fair conditions 4 2  20/11/2019 Kantian Contractualism Rawls: ask what freedom-promoting rules people would themselves agree to under fair conditions Contractualism: An act is right if and only if it would be permitted by a system of rules to which everyone would agree under fair conditions If self-interested parties bargained on rules out of self-interest, they’d bargain away less important freedoms to secure more important ones, and the rules would protect everyone’s most important freedoms But only if the initial bargaining position is fair Otherwise could privilege lesser freedoms of the powerful Everyday example: If the person who cuts the cake gets to choose her piece first, she can cut herself the biggest piece and take it Rule everyone agrees to in order to ensure fairness: The person who cuts the cake must take her piece last Original Position: fair position for selection of principles Purely hypothetical; used to determine rules that best and most fairly protect the freedom of each individual 5 Rawls’s Kantian Contractualism Rawls: don’t have to consider a bargaining process Original position = lack of information needed to tailor rules to promote your freedom in particular You are behind a Veil of Ignorance; don’t know your Social class, race, or sex, natural abilities, particular psychology Don’t even know your own: Religious views Views about welfare and which outcomes are good Non-theistic Kantianism: religion & welfare matter only as objects of autonomous choice Justice as Fairness: a society is just iff it conforms to principles that people would choose out of rational self-interest from behind the veil of ignorance Rightness as Fairness: an act is right iff it is permitted by principles that people would choose behind the veil 6 3  20/11/2019 Rawls’ Principles of Justice Rawls’s argument: you should play very safe Pick the principles that give you the best worst-case scenario (maximin – maximize the smallest gain that can be relied on) 1. Each person should have as extensive a set of basic liberties as is compatible with the same set of liberties for all (Principle of Equal Liberty) 2. Social and economic inequalities A. Must be attached to positions that are open to all (Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity) B. Must give everyone more primary goods than equality - in particular must provide more goods to the least advantaged than any alternative (Difference Principle) 1 is prior to 2, 2A is prior to 2B 7 Selecting Principles Principles concern allocation of the Social Primary Goods we need for our projects, whatever they are Legal / conventional rights & liberties, income, wealth The SPGs Each Person ’s Gets Person 1 Person 2 Person 3 Principles Principle 1 60 30 9 Principle 2 10 10 10 Principle 3 70 40 1 Which principles should you choose out of self-interest (concern for your own freedom / projects) behind the veil? 8 4  20/11/2019 Nozick’s Argument Against Distributive Justice The Wilt Chamberlain Example: “Now suppose that Wilt Chamberlain is greatly in demand by basketball teams, being a great gate-attraction. (Also suppose contracts run only for a year, with players being free agents.) He signs the following sort of contract with a team: In each home game, twenty-five cents from the price of each ticket of admission goes to him. (We ignore the question of whether he is "gouging" the owners, letting them look out for themselves.) The season starts, and people cheerfully attend his team's games; they buy their tickets, each time dropping a separate twenty-flve cents of their admission price into a special box with Chamberlain's name on it. They are excited about seeing him play; it is worth the total admission price to them. Let us suppose that in one season one million persons attend his home games, and Wilt Chamberlain winds up with $250,000, a much larger sum than the average income and larger even than anyone else has. Is he entitled to this income? Is this new distribution D, unjust? If so, why?” (p. 239) 9 What about not so straightforward transfers of wealth? Example: Couple teamed up with homeless man for a GoFundMe fund, raised $400,000 from donors Turned out the couple was keeping almost all the money They were discovered, the donors were refunded by GoFundMe Was the transfer of wealth to the donors from the couple just according to Nozick? The Entitlement Theory Original acquisition of holdings – Lockean Proviso Locke: Can appropriate unclaimed resources “at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” Nozick: thinks people are sufficiently benefitted by free market economies that they don’t have a complaint Transfer of holdings – voluntary exchange, gift OK, fraud not OK, etc. -> Nozick thinks the original acquisition must be just, and the transfer must be just, but once this is taken care of there is nothing more to justice than this to ensure just entitlement to holdings -> Fraud is not a just transfer of holdings (https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/25/us/gofundme-scam-refunds-trnd/index.html) 10 5  20/11/2019 Socialism without Capitalism? The Socialist Society Example In order to satisfy needs not otherwise satisfied by society, people will work overtime to exchange goods and services to satisfy their needs I melt down things I own to build a machine, I give you a philosophy lecture once a week so that you will crank the handle on the machine, and the products of the machine I exchange for other things, and so on (the things I melt down are given to me by others in order to hear philosophy lectures) Only by forbidding “capitalist acts between consenting adults” (p. 240) could we manage to produce a certain distributional pattern we consider just, only be interfering continuously in people’s lives and with their freedom In the Wilt Chamberlain example and in the Socialist Society example, people’s free choice, unless prevented by force, continually alters the distribution In both these examples there seems nothing unjust going on So, Nozick argues, we should be against trying to bring about preferred distributional patterns 11 The More Favored Man’s Complaint Nozick: Under Rawls’s Difference Principle, the more favored man does have grounds for complaint Rawls thinks his principle is reasonable. Nozick: Doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Wouldn’t the more favored man propose a different principle, an entitlement principle, rather than a patterned distribution principle? Wouldn’t the more favored man want a society set up to allow for the free exchange of goods and services, not a society in which freedom will be curtailed at his expense to ensure a distribution approved of only by the less favored? Can’t he make the same argument that everyone will be better off if those inclined to do so will engage in the exchange of goods and services, thanks to the benefits of the free market? 12 6