Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T03:38:06.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Egalitarianism, Responsibility, and Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

John E. Roemer
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis

Extract

Radical and liberal theories of egalitarianism are distinguished, in large part, by the differing degrees to which they hold people responsible for their own well-being. The most liberal or individualistic theory calls for equality of opportunity. Once such “starting gate equality,” as Dworkin (1981a) calls it, is guaranteed, then any final outcome is justified, provided certain rules, such as voluntary trading, are observed. At the other pole, the most radical egalitarianism calls for equality of welfare (assuming that interpersonal welfare comparisons can be made, so that such equality makes sense). In between these two extremes are egalitarian proposals that equalize more than conventional opportunities, yet less than full welfare. Sen (1980) speaks of equality of basic capabilities as a goal; implementing that requires more than starting gate equality, because some will require more resources than others to attain the same capabilities. Meeting basic needs is another objective. Equality of needs fulfillment is perhaps less radical than equality of basic capabilities and more radical than equality of opportunity. Rawls (1971) takes equality of primary goods as a benchmark; he distinguishes primary goods from welfare, but includes among them goods that are more complicated than conventional resources and opportunities, all of which are supposed inputs into any conception of welfare. One could imagine proposing an egalitarianism that equalized some quite measurable outcome across populations, such as infant mortality. That would be an outcome-equalizing theory where the rate of infant mortality is a proxy, presumably, for some more complicated maximand, such as the degree of wellbeing of a population.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Cohen, G.A. 1986. “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality: Part II.” Social Philosophy and Policy 3:7796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981b. “What is Equality? Part I: Equality of Welfare.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10:185246.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981a. “What is Equality? Part II: Equality of Resources.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10:283345.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roemer, John. 1986a. “Equality of Resources Implies Equality of Welfare.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 101:751–54.Google Scholar
Roemer, John. 1986b. “The Mismarriage of Bargaining Theory and Distributive Justice.” Ethics 96:88110.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Thomas. 1986a. “Equality of Resources and Equality of Welfare: A Forced Marriage?Ethics 97:111–18.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Thomas. 1986b. “The Significance of Choice.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Brasenose College, Oxford.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1973. On Economic Inequality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1979. “Personal Utilities and Public Judgements: or, What's Wrong with Welfare Economics?Economic Journal 89:537–58.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1980. “Equality of What?” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Vol. 1. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Steiner, Hillel. 1977. “The Natural Right to the Means of Production.” Philosophical Quarterly 27:4149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Inwagen, Peter. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Varian, Hal. 1975. “Distributive Justice, Welfare Economics and the Theory of Fairness.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4:223–47.Google Scholar
Yaari, Menachem, and Bar-Hillel, Maja, 1984. “On Dividing Justly.” Social Choice and Welfare 1:124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar