Weiye Loh's Library tagged Egalitarianism →  View Popular, Search in Google

For Rawls, as we have seen, egalitarianism goes pretty radical, as it affects wealth as well as resources. While Rawls does concede the possibility of some inequality in wealth being just because it may be of advantage to everyone, his principle of equality of fair opportunity is as radical as egalitarianism gets (although not-so radical affirmative action policies, for instance, go somewhat into that direction).

most democratic societies have no trouble with the milder idea of formal equality of opportunity, where public employment, education, and even private employment are regulated so as to guarantee equal access to individuals and groups.

Modern libertarians are really followers of John Locke, who famously said that people are endowed with a set of fundamental “natural” rights, most clearly life and property. I tend to agree with Jeremy Bentham, who famously referred to the idea of natural rights as “nonsense on stilts” (i.e., very, very tall nonsense).

Marx, too, though hardly usually thought of as an egalitarian, can be interpreted as advocating some type of equality. When he famously said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” he was indeed advocating a principle of equal rights

we can see that different moral philosophies can be egalitarian about distinct criteria: a) opportunity (of jobs, of achieving a satisfying life, of pursuing happiness); b) income and wealth (the difference between the two being that the first is a flow, the latter a stock); c) resources (education, health care, etc.); d) civil liberties (including political representation and status under the law). There are more, of course, but these seem to cover most of what people actually care about.

. Equality does not mean that society is morally bound to correct all instances of bad luck a person may incur, nor that people cease to have to take responsibility for ill management of their resources. For instance, it is humane to provide additional resources to help people who — by genetic lottery or accident — are disadvantaged physically or mentally. But it would be absurd to pretend that society is morally bound to keep pouring resources on those people so that they achieve the same level of employment, education, and happiness as the population’s average.

By the same token, if people willfully and repeatedly squander their resources (e.g., in the case of addictions that lead to loss of income or jobs), surely it is not up to society to keep providing them, beyond basic sustenance and medical and psychological help.

Clearly, external things like education, access to health care, jobs, housing, and so on, are resources, about which we can have discussions concerning the degree to which they should be equally accessible or distributed. But some egalitarians consider internal resources — i.e., personal talents and inclinations — fair game as well. Obviously, people will always (well, short of permanent genetic engineering of the human species) come with a variety of natural talents, which will immediately put some people to an advantage and others at a disadvantage. But it seems to me that it is going beyond the pale (not to mention the limits of practicality) to say that society ought to redress inequalities in natural attributes.

A trickier problem, actually, comes when we consider the effects of so-called “unchosen luck” (like early socialization) or so-called “chosen luck” (one’s decisions later in life, in college, or on the job). Children cannot be responsible for their early socialization experiences, and yet we hold the resulting adults responsible for their choices, even though psychological research clearly shows that the two are far from being causally independent.

another issue with egalitarianism arises when one asks the question of to whom the principle applies. If we respond that one is concerned with equality within one’s society, the obvious question is why not extend the principle to the whole world? Well, one may answer, because though that would be nice, we simply don’t have the resources, political will, etc. to be able to do much about the rest of the world, except in a slow and indirect way. But then egalitarianism risks being perceived either as too parochial (it’s all about our in-group) or hopelessly quixotic (it’s about the world, man).