Assess whether the goal of distributive justice is compatible with protecting individual liberties and rights

Introduction
When John Rawls suggested that justice is the first virtue of our social institutions as truth is of systems of thought he was summing up what a great many contemporary philosophers take to be the fundamental priority of justice. The issue of distributive, as opposed to retributive, justice concerns the fair distribution of societys benefits and burdens. Benefits include such things as income, welfare, services, status and honours. Some types of work might be said to constitute a benefit to the individual, for example because they allow self-expression, others might be unpleasant, dangerous or boring enough to classify as one of the primary burdens that some members of society take on. When deciding on the just distribution of benefits and burdens one crucial issue is to decide between the claims of the rights of the individual and the interests of society / overall social utility.

1. Strict equality
The question asks us to assess the goal of distributive justice, but, as is so often the case, many different and incompatible goals have been suggested by different philosophers. A simple way to begin would be to look at the theory of strict equality. According to such a theory the state or the community should ensure that everyone has access to exactly the same level of material goods and services as everyone else. Since it would be absurd to suggest that everyone has exactly the same items this approach could instead focus on giving each person an exactly equal income. This would however fail to achieve true equality because two different people might achieve a very different level of satisfaction or happiness with access to the same resources. This would however fail to achieve true equality because two different people might achieve a very different level of satisfaction or happiness with access to the same resources. The deeper problem is that even if the state could ensure that everyone had access to resources that gave them (pretty much) the same utility as everyone else, this could only be achieved through massive and constant interference with peoples lives and choices and there would be little or no room for an individual to make her own choices protected by rights.

2. John Rawls
Equality is an attractive principle for distributive justice to follow, but if the pursuit of equality is not to lead to the violation of individual liberty and rights it will need to be put forward in a far more sophisticated theory than strict equality. Rawls goal was to develop a theory that would do just that. Rawls suggests that we would be able to identify the form of a truly just society if we considered how we would want society to be if we did not know any details about ourselves such as our gender, race, abilities, disabilities, conception of the good and so on. He suggested that behind this veil of ignorance in what he calls the original position we would choose to give priority to the traditional liberal rights to freedom of expression, lifestyle and assembly. After this he believed that we would want to ensure that there was equality of opportunity in access to well paid or prestigious jobs. Finally he suggested that we would adopt the difference principle, that is, since we would be judging social inequalities without knowing whether we would be rich or poor, we have an obligation of justice to arrange society so that the least well off are as well off as they can be. This approach could therefore be used to support government

intervention in the economy and redistribution between rich and poor whilst still being a liberal theory that prioritises individual rights.

3. Assessing Rawls theory

Robert Nozick believes that any account of distributive justice violates peoples rights. According to Nozick each of us has a right of self-ownership founded on natural rights that guarantees my status as a person who is an end in itself. He argues that if I own myself then, if there was no existing private property, I would come to own something if I mixed by labour with it. Once I own something I have the right to trade it with others and to become rich or poor depending on the decisions I freely choose to make. The legitimate role of government is therefore to ensure that no one uses force or fraud to obtain property. To insist that government acts so as to ensure that a particular pattern of benefits and burdens exists or is maintained is therefore a violation of my rights and my freedom.

Evaluation: (1) the intuitive argument, does the Wilt Chamberlain example show us that important liberties and rights are being sacrificed by redistribution in the name of justice?
If redistribution is in the name of justice, then what is considered more important; Liberty or justice? If Wilt Chamberlain is an amazing basketball player with unique talent, unlike the majority of people, then does this make it unfair that he makes a vast amount of money from people want to see him play? If he asked for 25% of all ticket profits, he would be extremely rich by choice of everyone that payed to see him play. If we stick to distributive justice, then we should logically redistribute all excess money that Wilt Chamberlain makes; but we have chosen to give him the money that he has made so is this infringing on our liberty? The point of this is to show that basic rights (to keep whatever we create for example) can oppose the idea of distributive justice and the two can clash. I think that the idea of distributive justice is good, but in practice, it would clash with other rights that are perhaps more important, such as liberty. Life, in essence, is not equal we can see this by the fact that there is a divide in the rich and the poor around us today. Talents are, for example, not equal; if we all were given the chance to play basketball only very few would be good enough so that people would pay to watch them play; There seems little point in trying to make all people alike; whatever people do, there will always be people better at it than others is this fair? No! But it does not mean that we can do anything about it. To do so would interfere with people rights.

Evaluation (2) do I have rights to self ownership in private property that can be used to object to Rawls theory? Are we even sure that I really have justifiable rights to self-ownership in myself?
If we have rights to our own body, then this theoretically presents a problem for Rawls theory, as Robert Nozzick states. If we own our bodies, then surely mixing our labour with something must surely mean that we then own it? However this is a big is/ought gap: It is different to say: I own my body, than to say I own a pot made by my hands. I think that, however, you do own the pot in this scenario, provided the pot is made materials that you

have fairly acquired. Note the emphasis on fairly acquired. I think that all resources should be distributed evenly, or more appropriately; potential access to these resources should be available to all people. In this way ownership of something can only come of actively gathering these resources and creating (or fairly trading) the item in question. The issue arises however on the subject of whether I actually own my body in this case. If we were to take the position that we own our body because God has given us ownership of our own bodies in creating us. The problem with this is that we cannot prove that God exists, so we cannot prove that we have natural rights (in this way). We could say that we are the only ones with control of our bodies, so we should own them, or that are bodies are an intrinsic part of us, so having another own or take a part of our body could be seen on the same level as murder.

Evaluation (3) would we choose Rawls difference principle in the conditions of the original position? Can such a thought experiment be used to justify any conception of distributive justice?
There are a number of problems with the Rawls theory of the original position. If were ere in the original position and were excluding all emotion or ties to society, then we should logically chose a utilitarian approach rather than making the happiness more even; If I was in the original position, I should not care for whether I would be randomly placed into the society at all, but I would chose the society that would benefit the most amount of people. The problem with Rawls theory is that it presumes that we have retained our ability for human selfishness whilst in the original position, but we should not have by definition of the original position! Rawls seems to contradict himself in this way. If we were to retain our sense of emotion for the sake of argument, then how could be prevent people from taking a gamble? Bets are placed for huge amounts of money on very small probabilities, so how could be stop people making a very small minority oppressed if everyone else lived in luxury? Most people would have that and take the gamble rather than have everyone live in mediocre comfort, but guarantee that you would not be oppressed, rather that most people living in luxury and a few in oppression. Most people would take the risk. It could be said that this is different to gambling money as it is more important; but I still think that most people would take the risk for the potential chances.