Why Does Inequality Matter?by T.M. Scanlon Oxford University Press,
2018, 170 pp. T.M. Scanlon, who taught philosophy for many years at Princeton and Harvard, is among the leading ethical and political thinkers of the past fifty years or so. Though far from a libertarian, he takes libertarian views with terrific seriousness and has striven to react to them. He thinks that libertarianism gives inadequate consideration to the importance of particular sort of equality, particularly equality of income and wealth and also substantive equality of opportunity in opportunities to achieve socially esteemed positions. I’m going to address just these type of equality in what follows, though there are
other senses of “equality”also. As Scanlon acknowledges, libertarians believe that everybody has the same rights, and in this way accept equality; in Kantian terms, all persons have moral worth or self-respect. This sense of”equality” certainly matters, and for most people isn’t questionable. Scanlon identifies two sorts of concern with the type of equality I’m discussing here.
Sometimes individuals favor equality because an enough degree of inequality can have bad impacts on individuals, e.g., by causing them to lose self-esteem; this is “equality in the broader sense.”There is likewise” equality in the narrower sense, “and this is what I will primarily be discussing in this review. This concerns equality just taken as such: in this view, the reality that some individuals have a lot more than others is objectionable, even if those with less aren’t negatively affected by the difference. If Scanlon’s criticisms of libertarianism are appropriate, he requires to reveal that equality of the sort he prefers is morally mandated.
Libertarians don’t believe that it is, and just to assume egalitarianism at the start would beg the concern against them. Scanlon completely recognizes this requirement, and indeed goes further by saying that there seems a case that concern with equality is illogical. He states, Insofar as a factor for lowering inequality is even broadly egalitarian– insofar as it is a reason for objecting to
the distinction in between what some have and what others have– it might seem to count in favor of minimizing that difference even if this made no one better off, and left some people(the rich)worse off. The evident irrationality of such a relocation is the basis of what has actually been called the “leveling down objection.”( p. 3; see my discussion of the leveling down argument here )To understand Scanlon’s action to this, we should first take a look at his standpoint in normative theory. He is a contractarian. Very roughly, he thinks thatindividuals in a society try
to come to ethical guidelines that nobody could fairly turn down, assuming that everyone shares the wish to come to such rules. He does not believe that rigorous equality, unmodified by any other factors to consider, is a rule that nobody might reasonably reject. People might prefer rules that permit some degree of inequality, if this will make everyone much better off, or a minimum of no one worse off. This looks like John Rawls’s difference concept, however Scanlon’s requirement is less rigorous. The difference principle requires features of the standard structure permitting that departures from equality benefit the worst-off class to the greatest degree, compared to other rules that allow inequalities, however Scanlon requires just that enabling inequalities advantages the bad. He thinks that in practice, however, his requirement would come close to the same outcomes as Rawls’s. What could not be fairly rejected is taking equality as the standard, from which departures need to be justified. He summarizes his requirement in this method:” [A] required condition for features of a standard structure that create significant inequalities: it must hold true that these inequalities could not be gotten rid of without infringing crucial personal liberties or that they are required in order for the economic system to operate in a way that benefits all”(p. 141, focus in initial). What Scanlon objects to here isn’t, then, the mere presence of a large inequality, but the reality that the inequality might be minimized without intensifying the condition of the less well off or infringing important individual liberties. I do not believe Scanlon’s argument is successful. He is right that if society is deemed a scheme for social cooperation, individuals would fairly decline any guideline that would leave them worse off by entering the society than by staying out. But absolutely nothing more demanding than this is fairly required, and it is just Scanlon’s importation of his own dedication to equality into his choice treatment for the guidelines of the basic structure that leads him to believe otherwise. The difference in between what Scanlon’s concept of sensible rejection in fact requires and what he incorrectly takes it to need emerges clearly in this passage. Whether a particular system of residential or commercial property rights … is justifiable, and for that reason violations of the rights it specifies are for that reason wrongful, depends upon the system
of holdings and exchange that the system creates. Such a system is understandable if the benefits it provides are sufficiently essential to make it unreasonable for people to challenge being left out from the system from access to items and other opportunities they have factor to want.( p. 108 )It does not follow from this concept that all appropriate systems of holdings and exchange should guarantee equal access to these items, unless those who do not have equivalent access benefit from the enabled inequality. Equal gain access to and overall exclusion are 2 really different matters. I would go even more. The standard of affordable rejection doesn’t eliminate exclusion from some, though not the whole, of the
things and other chances people have reason to desire so long as it fulfills the”worse off”requirement pointed out in the paragraph above. Scanlon makes the very same dive when he talks about substantive equality of opportunity. In his words,”Procedural Fairness concerns the procedure through which individuals are selected through positions of benefit. The requirement I have actually called Substantive Opportunity worries the education and other conditions that are needed to end up being a good candidate for choice through such a procedure”(p. 53 ). Once more, it does not follow from the fact that somebody would reasonably turn down a social system that rejected him any opportunity of access to the best positions that he should reasonably turn down systems that fell well except the substantive equality that Scanlon favors. Scanlon’s idea of “reasonable rejection”leaves open more alternatives than he acknowledges. Many critics of Lockean accounts of residential or commercial property acquisition, including Scanlon, claim that these accounts stop working to recognize that most property rights are traditional rather than natural. I do not think this criticism is correct, however it’s one I will not be speaking about here. I discuss it just to highlight a function of my main objection to Scanlon. Just as he and other critics of Lockean accounts argue that these theories stop working to acknowledge just how much is left open even when the right to acquire and hold home is acknowledged, I maintain that”sensible rejection”exposes how much social and financial inequality is morally allowable. Lots of egalitarians dismiss Robert Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain example, in which fans voluntarily pay Chamberlain a quarter from their earnings to watch him play basketball, but Scanlon to his credit does not. He states, The additional dollars that Wilt receives from his fans for the satisfaction of viewing him play lead to a substantial boost in economic inequality. Even if this inequality is something there is factor to prevent, it can not be avoided by prohibiting what Wilt and his fans do. What great is money if one can’t invest it on tickets to basketball games if that is what one wants to do? And it needs to be up to Wilt whether to play
for an offered amount or not. (p. 110 )He goes on to argue, though, that acknowledging these flexibilities does not leave out taxing Chamberlain on his gains in order to protect equality. Scanlon appears to me ideal to this level. If you accept his contractarian framework, arrangement on a system with this repercussion is possible, though, as he recognizes, the tax would have to be thoroughly created so that it would not eliminate individuals’s workout of their liberty to make exchanges. But, and this is the point I require essential, a system of this sort isn’t needed by that structure. If Scanlon believes otherwise, this is another circumstances of his making his variation of contractarianism more egalitarian than he has shown to be fairly needed. Some individuals, such as the economist Gregory Mankiw, argue that people are worthy of to be paid according to what they contribute to production, i.e., that they need to get their minimal item.(As Scanlon correctly points out, this isn’t Nozick’s view, though in a free enterprise this is what individuals will in truth tend to be paid. )Scanlon raises an objection to this. He points out that somebody’s limited product “is the distinction that including or subtracting a system of what that participant does would make to the value of what is produced But … this simply subjunctive idea need not refer what a given individual ‘has actually contributed’ in the sense that seemed to use to my first
example”(p. 129). The very first example in concern relates to causing or causing a product, and Scanlon’s point is that having a minimal product in the subjunctive sense need not involve this. Someone who collaborates the labor of others, e.g., might enable others to increase production but isn’t producing anything; nonetheless, the individual has a limited product. This objection seems to me lost. Scanlon’s argument here rests on the view, which I take to be a common financial fallacy, that just those participated in certain types of labor are “really” producing things. Even if you see matters in Scanlon’s method, though, this contention has absolutely nothing to do with the reality that marginal product is specified subjunctively. If his” real “producers have a limited product, that item will meet the subjunctive criterion and will not be provided some “genuine”financial value different from this. If I am right, Scanlon hasn’t revealed that his own contractarian framework needs the highly egalitarian conclusions he believes it does. His book is worthy of cautious research study, but my response to”Why does [financial] inequality matter?” would be”It doesn’t.”