Study all types of Distributive Justice (6 or 7 total) Summarize each in one sentence. Produce examples for each.

  

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 Study all types of Distributive Justice (6 or 7 total)

Summarize each in one sentence. Produce examples for each. 

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 Social Philosophy 

he principle question for social philosophy is:    Who gets what????

This matter is known as DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.  Just how are the goods and services within any society to be distributed?   In any society no matter how small (an island society) or how large (the People’s Republic of China) there will arise the question of how goods and services are to be distributed.  Whether people will be free to work and keep what they earn or whether all must contribute in some way to the welfare of others, particularly those not capable of working and caring for themselves.  Below there are a number of principles which have been developed in response to this problem of deciding how social life is to be regulated and people are to be cared for. Read these and note the differences. 

Please READ: On Distributive Justice:   

There are different theories of how to make the basic distribution.  Among them are:

• 1. Scope and Role of Distributive Principles
• 2. Strict Egalitarianism
• 3. The Difference Principle
• 4. Equality of Opportunity and Luck Egalitarianism
• 5. Welfare-Based Principles
• 6. Desert-Based Principles
• 7. Libertarian Principles
• 8. Feminist Principles

There are different theories of how to make the basic distribution.  Among them are:

Strict Egalitarianism

One of the simplest principles of distributive justice is that of strict, or radical, equality. The principle says that every person should have the same level of material goods and services. The principle is most commonly justified on the grounds that people are morally equal and that equality in material goods and services is the best way to give effect to this moral ideal.

The Difference Principle  

The most widely discussed theory of distributive justice in the past four decades has been that proposed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, (Rawls 1971), and Political Liberalism, (Rawls 1993). Rawls proposes the following two principles of justice:

·  1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.

·  2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. (Rawls 1993, pp. 5–6. The principles are numbered as they were in Rawls' original A Theory of Justice.) 

Equality of Opportunity and Luck Egalitarianism 

Dworkin proposed that people begin with equal resources but be allowed to end up with unequal economic benefits as a result of their own choices. What constitutes a just material distribution is to be determined by the result of a thought experiment designed to model fair distribution. Suppose that everyone is given the same purchasing power and each uses that purchasing power to bid, in a fair auction, for resources best suited to their life plans. They are then permitted to use those resources as they see fit. Although people may end up with different economic benefits, none of them is given less consideration than another in the sense that if they wanted somebody else's resource bundle they could have bid for it instead.

In Dworkin's proposal we see his attitudes to ‘ambitions’ and ‘endowments’ which have become a central feature of luck egalitarianism (though under a wide variety of alternative names and further subset-distinctions). In terms of sensitivity to ‘ambitions’, Dworkin and many other luck egalitarians argue that provided people have an ‘equal’ starting point (in Dworkin's case, resources) they should live with the consequences of their choices. They argue, for instance, that people who choose to work hard to earn more income should not be required to subsidize those choosing more leisure and hence less income.

Welfare-Based Principles  Welfare-based principles are motivated by the idea that what is of primary moral importance is the level of welfare of people. Advocates of welfare-based principles view the concerns of other theories — material equality, the level of primary goods of the least advantaged, resources, desert-claims, or liberty — as derivative concerns. They are only valuable in so far as they affect welfare, so that all distributive questions should be settled entirely by how the distribution affects welfare. However, there are many ways that welfare can be used in answering these distributive questions, so welfare-theorists need to specify what welfare function they believe should be maximized. The welfare functions proposed vary according to what will count as welfare and the weighting system for that welfare. Economists defending some form of welfarism normally state the explicit functional form, while philosophers often avoid this formality, concentrating on developing their theories in answer to two questions: 1) the question of what has intrinsic value, and 2) the question of what actions or policies would maximize the intrinsic value. Moreover, philosophers tend to restrict themselves to a small subset of the available welfare functions. Although there are a number of advocates of alternative welfare functions (such as ‘equality of well-being’), most philosophical activity has concentrated on a variant known as utilitarianism. This theory can be used to illustrate most of the main characteristics of welfare-based principles.

Desert-Based Principles  The different desert-based principles of distribution differ primarily according to what they identify as the basis for deserving. While Aristotle proposed virtue, or moral character, to be the best desert-basis for economic distribution, contemporary desert theorists have proposed desert-bases that are more practically implemented in complex modern societies. Most contemporary desert theorists have pursued John Locke's lead in this respect. Locke argued people deserve to have those items produced by their toil and industry, the products (or the value thereof) being a fitting reward for their effort (see Miller 1989). Locke's underlying idea was to guarantee to individuals the fruits of their own labor and abstinence. Most contemporary proposals for desert-bases fit into one of three broad categories:

1. Contribution: People should be rewarded for their work activity according to the value of their contribution to the social product. (Miller 1976, Miller 1989, Riley 1989)
2. Effort: People should be rewarded according to the effort they expend in their work activity (Sadurski 1985a,b, Milne 1986).
3. Compensation: People should be rewarded according to the costs they incur in their work activity (Dick 1975, Lamont 1997).

Libertarian Principles  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 has 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:

a.  A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.

b.  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.

c.  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 (Nozick, p.151).

All this from--On Distributive Justice: 

Consider some matter of importance to us today that relates to the question of the distribution of goods and services. Apply any of the social theories you have read about and take a position on it. For example,

The distribution of the funds of the charities to the victims of the 9-11 Disaster, how should the federal money be distributed? What principle of distributive justice do you favor using.

Read how the money was distributed.  $7 Billion for the Grief of Sept. 11
 

There are a variety of social situations that result from the application of these principles or from a combination of the principles.  The range of variations is quite broad and includes communist states and democratic states.  It includes societies that have great concern for individual welfare and those that have great concern for the common welfare.  It includes those that have liberal as well as conservative orientations.  What does this mean? 

We shall contrast two rather different approaches to the matter of distribution in the next section:  Liberalism and Conservatism

 

The debate between liberals and conservatives is quite active in contemporary society.  How much you pay in taxes of all types is the outcome of that ongoing debate.  There are many other ways in which the ideas associated with those social and political views have consequences in the lives of all members of society.  It is important to have some idea of the meaning of those terms and the ideas associated with those movements. 

Today the term 'liberal' has come to be associated with a variety of principles, concepts and programs.  Liberals are often associated with ideas related to a WELFARE STATE and a system of taxes, subsidies, deductions, payments, regulations, restrictions, permissions, refunds, entitlements and other such ideas and programs.  The term was not always so associated. 

Liberal meant to "liberate" or "free" and as applied to social questions meant that individuals should be as free from interference from the government as possible.  There were and remain a number of theories that are based upon placing a very high value on human AUTONOMY, freedom or liberty.  In social affairs it was taken to mean that individuals were to remain free to pursue their own interests and to work and to keep the results of their labor, that individuals had a right to property and to pursuit of what would make the happy.  The ideas of the Utilitarians, Bentham and the Mills, contributed heavily to this view of how social life ought to be arranged.  Along with it came the idea that government should not interfere with individual’s earnings and with businesses.  There was the idea of Laissez- Faire economics.  These ideas were supportive of capitalism. 

Links on Capitalism

Many of these ideas are linked to what are called "conservatives" in contemporary American society.

READ: CONSERVATIVISM

Among the most radical defenders of this view has been Ayn Rand and her ideas which are titled: OBJECTIVISM.

Links related to Ayn Rand

Her views oppose state regulations as a form of collective interference.  She is opposed to socialism and to all forms of collectivism and the Marxist ideal of taking from each according to ability and providing to each according to need

READ: COLLECTIVISM:

Links on Collectivism:

Chronology:

Critique: "COLLECTIVISM:" THE TWIN BROTHER OF SOCIALISM!  

By Peter W. Hauer

SOCIAL LIBERALISM- This view holds that the division of social product is best left to impersonal, efficient, decentralized workings of free market.  It is based on a number of assumptions including that people act out of enlightened self-interest and that they are not only autonomous agents but also prudent rational agents.

READ: LIBERALISM

READ: LIBERALISM

In contemporary American society many liberals came to argue for more government intervention and their ideas came to be accepted by legislators and by the Supreme Court, when the Court sustained one act of New Deal legislation after another, asserting that individual citizens must be protected against overpowering economic groups and from disasters they have not brought on themselves. More and more laws were passed to provide for old-age and survivors insurance, unemployment insurance, federal control of various financial interests, minimum wages, supervision of agricultural production, and the right of labor unions to organize and bargain collectively. This all amounted to a radical change from the original ideas of European Liberals on the role of government.

Despite the metamorphosis in the philosophy of liberalism since the mid-19th century, almost all modern liberals agree that their common objective is enlargement of the individual's opportunity to realize full potentialities.  This has become a hallmark of liberalism today.  This is an idea consonant with the ideas of John Rawls. 

Rawl’s Theory of Justice: Outline

The most widely discussed theory of distributive justice in the past three decades has been that proposed by John Rawls in his seminal work, A Theory of Justice. (Rawls 1971) Rawls proposes the following two principles of justice:

(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

(2) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:

(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Rawls’ ideas are quite supportive of the notion of a welfare state. Why is it that people are thought to have a right to what they have not worked to earn for themselves?  Why is it that there is a law hat requires those who do work to provide for those who do not work or are unable to work?  We find the answers to those questions in the works of those who defend the welfare state.   

Argument in favor of WELFARE STATE  by Robert E. Goodin in

Reasons for Welfare:The Political Theory of the Welfare State 

Robert Goodin passionately and cogently defends the welfare state from current attacks by the New Right. But he contends that the welfare state finds false friends in those on the Old Left who would justify it as a hesitant first step toward some larger, ideally just form of society. Reasons for Welfare, in contrast, offers a defense of the minimal welfare state substantially independent of any such broader commitments, and at the same time better able to withstand challenges from the New Right's moralistic political economy. This defense of the existence of the welfare state is discussed, flanked by criticism of Old Left and New Right arguments that is both acute and devastating.

In the author's view, those possessing discretionary control over resources that they require best justify the welfare state as a device for protecting needy--and hence vulnerable--members of society against the risk of exploitation. Its task is to protect the interests of those not in a position to protect themselves. Communitarian or egalitarian ideals may lead us to move beyond the welfare state as thus conceived and justified. Moving beyond it, however, does not invalidate the arguments for constantly maintaining at least the minimal protections necessary for vulnerable members of society. There exists Special Obligations that are voluntary and Strong Obligations, such as with family, that are non-voluntary.  These Strong Obligations are based upon vulnerabilities of others. Family and others assist the vulnerable through voluntary charity, however, STATE (WELFARE) as “backup to the backup” assists the vulnerable and in this manner the vulnerable are dependent on the STATE.  Therefore it is possible to vest that vulnerable person with legal ENTITLEMENT to assistance.

Materials on Contemporary Welfare States

Today we appear to have reversed associations with many of the ideas originally associated with the terms “liberal” and “conservative”. 

LIBERAL

CONSERVATIVE

Individual Freedom

Social Order Preservation

No Government Interference

Governmental Action

No Taxes

Taxes

Laissez-Faire

Governmental Restrictions

Individuals are rational and prudent

Individuals are in need of assistance-imprudent, incapacitated, victimized

Individuals are self interested

Social Welfae is primary interest

These ideas are now associated with the groups that are bearing the opposite titles so that, for example, liberals are arguing for more government restrictions and provisions and the taxes to support those programs which protect people from themselves and from others.