Rawls’ Theory of Justice and Some Objections (Part 4)
| [Part1] | [Part2] | [Part3] | [Part4] | [Part5] |
” The difference between the two is clear: the former merely reflects the value-neutrality of natural outcomes, allowing one the right to individually benefit from them; the latter clearly describes a situation which normatively requires redress. It appears that Rawls- if he chooses to reject a person’s entitlement to the benefits of his own natural states- will be caught in between contradictorily ignoring individual merit and holding a view of humans as deterministic zombies.
Empirical issues?
Another major area of contention against the general idea of government-enforced “distributive justice” lies in the historical and expected performance of institutions manifesting those principles. [3] There is little doubt that humans are, at least generally, self-interested. Their admission into a government post does little to alter that fact: agents will always seek to maximize their own utility, which is for the most part only checked by externally-imposed penalties. As a point of clarification, self-interested activity need not be self-oriented; the defining feature of self-interest is the pursuit of one’s conception of the good, no matter what it is. Other-oriented behavior is still detrimental to the efficiency of operating a government post, so long as the objectives of an action are not functionally isomorphic with having an interest in the efficiency or proper operation of government (e. g. one gives preference to one’s family, or ethnic group, etc. Institutional design should ideally be aimed to create this isomorphism of personal to public interest, in the theoretical tradition of Madison, established in Federalist No. 51; though this may be the best solution, this does not mean that it is totally successful in absolute terms.
The operation of institutions to enforce justice in general is faced by many challenges. Simply dealing with the basics military, police, and courts is already a daunting task to do correctly. Even on the comparatively simple starting point of individual rights to life, liberty, and property, cases of conflicting obligation arise on a frequent basis, particularly in establishing “reasonable expectations” in cases where a contract was not explicitly written and signed. The incorporation of distributive justice into the system of obligations complicates it immensely. Now, those tasked with adjudicating disputes must appeal to a broader host of laws and guarantees, while adapting to the constraints of equality, scarce resources, and respecting Rawls’ first principle of justice.
The cost of oversight is borne by more institutional expenditure (bureaucracy to watch bureaucracy, which may require some oversight of its own) which ultimately is borne by the constituent public. Besides taxes, the individuals must be attentive to their tax dollars at work. End-state distributive justice, as in the case of adjudication, not only necessitates the creation of more laws and more bureaucracies to execute those laws, but requires more lawyers, advocates, lobbyists, action groups, and others of their kind. Essentially, an entire sector of labor and knowledge must be dedicated to navigating complex institutions instead of those resources being applied to more productive endeavors. Furthermore, for the average citizen, a greater level of education and attentiveness to current affairs is required to ensure that he is not being swindled by special interest groups via these institutions. The bottom line is that he must trade off work hours or leisure in order to protect his “investment” in the government. His alternative is that his tax dollars go to waste-a problem plaguing governments worldwide today.
On the flip side of the problem of Rawls ignoring individual merit is the issue of diminished incentives to produce. In a market setting, wealth redistribution can be construed as a subsidy (or a kind of de facto tax) on a particular kind of behavior, namely labor. Rawls cannot simply assume that individuals will work and produce as they would have before; with an expectation of a certain level of well-being, many recipients of welfare benefits will be far less likely to produce the value of the goods and services they are guaranteed. From their perspective, they possess an exogenous level of utility irrespective of their action (sans filing the correct forms). Not all of them will be dependent on government services for factors supposedly beyond their control. The presence of those institutions will have a distortionary effect on how wealth is generated in the economy.
| [Part1] | [Part2] | [Part3] | [Part4] | [Part5] |
