Chapter 9 - From sufficiency to equality

Summary

In this, the book's final chapter, I will directly confront the question of where to set the effectiveness threshold. Reduced to its essentials, my argument will be, first, that the state is obligated to render each citizen as able to live effectively as he can be, but, second, that to get to this maximum, a citizen need only reach the leverage threshold and the other complementary thresholds that were defended in the previous chapter. By assigning this new role to these familiar thresholds, I will attempt both to establish the convergence of the top-down and bottom-up approaches and to complete the transition from a sufficientarian to an egalitarian account. Then, to round out the discussion, I will return to the main unanswered questions about how a person's choices should affect his fortunes at the different stages of his life.

I

To live our lives effectively, I have argued, is to satisfy the standards that are internal to the activities into which our consciousness channels us. Satisfying these standards involves embracing ends that we in fact have reason to pursue, conceiving and adopting plans that are well suited to accomplish those ends, and executing the plans in ways that are efficient and flexible. Because a person can be more or less proficient at each activity, the ability to live effectively, to which each contributes, must also come in degrees. Thus, the question we must now ask is “To what level of that overall ability is the state obligated to elevate its citizens?”