The role of a merit principle in distributive justice

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 277-314

  Wilson, Catherine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Desert; Discrimination; Equality; Incentives; John Rawls; Justice; Merit

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744800970     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1024667228488     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. According to F. A. Hayek, "The values [men's] services will have to their fellows will often have no relations to their merits or needs" [F. A. Hayek, Law, Liberty and Legislation, Volume 2 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 72].
2. All "planned" distributions based on such qualitative principles, are, in Hayek's stated view, infringements of liberty productive of political servitude and material deprivation too [F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 5th edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)].
3. Desert-statements assembled by George Sher include the following: "McArthur deserves a hearing; he's an expert on the subject ... Miss Vermont deserves to win; she's the prettiest entrant" [George Sher, Desert (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 7]. It need not be morally creditable to let McArthur hold forth on fly-fishing techniques or even morally wrong to refuse Miss Vermont the prize.
4. By, for example, J. S. Mill, "Utilitarianism," in John M. Robinson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume 10 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1962-1991), pp. 241ff.
5. Gerald Cohen observes that the coincidence of self-ascribed need and merit formerly gave the working class a unified self-concept that it no longer possesses; our currently needy are not our most exploited producers [G. A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 105ff].
6. A useful summary of the debate between 1971 and 1991 is given by Robert Young, "Egalitarianism and Personal Desert," Ethics 102 (1992), pp. 319-341.
7. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (rev. ed.) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 89.
8. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 54.
9. Thomas Nagel took a stance similar to Rawls in 1973, arguing that "differential abilities are not usually among the characteristics that determine whether people deserve economic and social benefits ..." [Thomas Nagel, "Equal Treatment and Compensatory Discrimination," Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973), p. 354].
10. More recently he has emphasized the instrumental reasons for rewarding merit in Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 102-103.
11. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 91.
12. See Samuel Scheffler, "Reactive Attitudes and Liberalism," in Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
13. developing an idea from Joel Feinberg's Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 82f.
14. Sher has produced well-known criticisms of Rawls in George Sher, "Effort, Ability, and Personal Desert," Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979), pp. 361-376,
15. and in Sher, Desert, pp. 109ff.
16. There is a large literature on needs and well being. T. M. Scanlon influentially introduced ranking considerations into the economists' unranked preferences in T. M. Scanlon, "Preference and Urgency," The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 655-669.
17. Recent discussions include David Braybrooke, Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)
18. and David Braybrooke, "The Concept of Need," in Gillian Brock (ed.), Necessary Goods (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 57-72,
19. and other papers in that volume; James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Importance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986),
20. and Martha Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism," in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (eds.), The Quality of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 202-246.
21. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Co-operation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 111.
22. Melvin J. Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion (New York: Plenum, 1980), p. 9.
23. Scheffler, "Reactive Attitudes and Liberalism," pp. 23-24.
24. As Young remarks (without endorsing the view) "Many supporters of desert have argued that to fail to accord people their deserts is to fail to treat them as autonomous beings, as people who can actively and purposefully intervene in the world" [Young, "Egalitarianism and Desert," p. 335.
25. Cf. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principles of Population (Amherst: Prometheus, 1998), p. 95]. Abolishing relief, Malthus says, will restore "liberty and freedom of action" to the peasantry of England.
26. The distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics is that of Peter Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), "Introduction. "
27. For an application in moral theory see Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
28. Hayek, Law, Liberty and Legislation, p. 72.
29. Hayek, Law, Liberty and Legislation, p. 72.
30. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 159ff.
31. David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), pp. 219ff.
32. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp. 160ff.
33. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 18.
34. Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, p. 18.
35. This line of argument has been urged most recently in Robert Goodin, "Vulnerabilities and Responsibilities: An Ethical Defense of the Welfare State," in Brock (ed.), Necessary Goods, pp. 73-94.
36. Ronald Dworkin argues that individuals should be insured against the initial risk of being born without talents; all such deficiencies ought to be compensated at the starting gate [Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality: Part I: Equality of Welfare, Part II: Equality of Resources," Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981), pp. 185-246; 283-345]. The merit principle nevertheless plays an important role in his framework, insofar as a nonbasic level of well-being is not assured as an outcome.
37. See Nagel, "Equal Treatment and Compensatory Discrimination," p. 357.
38. For Nagel, effort "being a manifestation of the will, is the most personal or internal factor, and uniquely suitable to be regarded as the individual's personal responsibility" (Nagel, Equality and Partiality, p. 106).
39. John Locke, "Of Civil Government," in P. Laslett (ed.), Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), Chapter 5, "Of Property," Section 27.
40. John Roemer defends the view that the notion of effort can be given empirical meaning; see John Roemer, "Equality of Opportunity: A Progress Report," Social Choice and Welfare 19 (2002), pp. 455-471
41. as well as relevant sections of John Roemer, Equality of Opportunity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 11-12, 23-24.
42. Scheffler, "Reactive Attitudes and Liberalism," p.31.
43. Nancy Folbre, "Roemer's Market Socialism: A Feminist Critique," in Erik Olin Wright (ed.), Equal Shares: Making Market Socialism Work (London/New York: Verso, 1996), p. 67.
44. Cohen presents some new arguments against the provision of incentives in Rawlsian fashion, Cohen presents some new arguments against the provision of incentives in Rawlsian fashion (Cohen, If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, pp. 124ff)
45. Consider the following list of real, "institutional" determinants of compensation: Formal qualifications earned, e.g., test scores, degrees, publications; natural advantages, e.g., beauty, height; seniority; prestige of work role, e.g., manual, white-collar; historical patterns of reward in the work location; scarcity/plenitude of role-fillers; degree of moral/legal responsibility for outcomes; history of labour disputes; return to investors; employer's overhead; funds lost, wasted, or diverted to corrupt purposes; state's overhead; state's provision for present and future nonearners. Their positive relationship to merit is either partial or nonexistent.
46. G. A. Cohen, "Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain: How Patterns Preserve Liberty," Erkenntnis 11 (1977), pp. 5-23.
47. See as well the relevant sections of G. A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
48. the subject of a special issue of this journal: The Journal of Ethics 2(1) (1998).
49. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 91.
50. There is historical and current evidence that rapid growth that increases the Gini coefficient of inequality induces not only relative but, for the worst-off sectors, absolute deprivation. "Growing numbers of people after 1780 could not afford food," according to Timothy M. Smeeding and Peter Gottschalk, "Cross-National Income Inequality: How Great Is It and What Can We Learn from It?" Focus 19 (1998), pp. 15-19.
51. The U.S. has the largest per capita income in the world; inhabitants at the 10th decile of income distribution are nevertheless are "at severe risk of poor health, subsequent poor education performance and diminished achievement" (Smeeding and Gottschalk, "Cross-National Income Inequality: How Great Is It and What Can We Learn from It?" p. 18). The U.S. also has the greatest real income inequality amongst the 17 OECD countries studied.
52. If the value of R supervenes on assignments to the variables, there has to be some additional qualitative difference between the two worlds if/(x, y, z....) = 2R in both cases but the worlds have different reward schemes. The difference might simply correspond to the inhabitants' views of what constitutes acceptable body size, or their adaptation to a coarser diet, or their ethical beliefs. I take this to be, generally, Cohen's point against Rawls's instrumental defense of incentives in Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, footnote 28.
53. On the costs of searches and the most effective (though not the fairest) short-cuts, see Gerd Gigerenzer (ed.), Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
54. On evaluation biases, see Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcoming of Social Judgement (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1980),
55. and Virginia Valian, Why So Slow? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), Chapter 7, pp. 125-144.
56. Examples of simulation include "indicator chasing"and the results of "professionalism seminars"and "grooming." Lerner, Belief in a Just World, p. 34.
57. Quoted by Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, p. 62.
58. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 276.
59. Nozick appears to find a logical connection between merit and reward, assuming the premise (which he takes as self-evident) that "people are entitled to their natural assets." I take this to imply, contrary to what was argued earlier, that failing to reward merit is a failure to perceive a logical connection once it has been pointed out and is therefore irrational (see Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp. 225-226).
60. Even Jan Narveson does not find any more plausible candidate for this role than Nozick; Narveson disowns the position in Jan Narveson, "Morality and Starvation," in William Aiken and Hugh La Folette (eds.), World Hunger and Moral Obligation (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 49-65.
61. As is stated, for example, by Roemer, "None shall consume luxuries while deprivation for others continues to exist" [John Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 202];
62. and in David Braybrooke's Principle of Precedence, which states that some persons can be required to give up goods they do not need, though not goods they do need, to satisfy others' needs, Braybrooke, "The Concept of Needs," p. 61. The question what to do when radical scarcity does not obtain is not, however, addressed by them.
63. As Partha Dasgupta remarks of basic needs, "The meeting of these needs is a prerequisite for the continuation of one's life. Their fulfillment makes living possible. [But] for life to acquire worth, for it to be enjoyable, other sorts of goods are required. ... This suggests that, roughly speaking, there are two tiers of goods and services" [Partha Dasgupta, An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution, and Destitution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 40].
64. For a fuller treatment along recognizably Benthamite principles, see Braybrooke, Meeting Needs.
65. Richard J. Arneson discussed similar nonbasic pursuits in a number of interesting articles, including Richard J. Arneson, "Perfectionism and Politics," Ethics 111 (2000), pp. 37-63
66. and Richard J. Arneson, "What Do Socialists Want?" in Erik Olin Wright (ed.), Equal Shares: Making Market Socialism Work (London/New York: Verso, 1996), pp. 209-230.
67. Robert J. Lane, "The Road Not Taken: Friendship, Consumption, and Happiness," in David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (eds.), The Ethics of Consumption (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 218-248.
68. Dasgupta, "National Performance Gaps," quoted by Braybrooke, "The Concept of Needs," p. 62.
69. See footnote 35 above.
70. Compare Nagel, who denies that statistical equality as between racial groups and genders with respect to outcomes is a requirement of justice (Nagel, Equality and Partiality, pp. 89-90).
71. The view that the radical contingency ought to lead to compression in judgments, i.e. to nonjudgementalism, was advanced (though not really defended) in Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 24-38.
72. Bernard Williams makes the very different point that individuals' recognition of the contingency of their own fates has a kind of moral importance in Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 20-39. On this basis, one would not expect Williams to favour compression of outcomes.
73. See above, footnote 6.
74. A version of this paper was read at the Western Canadian Philosophical Association in 2001. The comments of Bob Bright and of two anonymous referees for The Journal of Ethics are gratefully acknowledged.