Rawls and talents: third reflection

The third reflection concerns whether a just society (just, that is, according to Justice as Fairness) can be a society in which disabled people, or better people with certain deviations from standard human functioning can all be among the worst off (in terms of expectations of primary goods).


Consider deviations from standard human functioning such as deafness or a particularly short height (notice that such deviations do not impair a person's capacity human functioning necessariy, or at least it would be controversial to say so). Let us imagine a society that treats a good hear or tallness as qualifications for many jobs, systematically. (It should not be a society so difficult from ours.) In other words, it would discriminate against short and deaf people (in the morally neutral sense of "discriminate", meaning "distinguish from the rest and reject", not "illegitimately or immorally distinguish from the rest and reject"). This society may:
1. fulfill the clause of fair equality of opportunity: people with similar talents/abilities and willingness to use them would have similar life chances. In a society characterized by the total lack of attention for the special needs deriving from deviations from standard human functioning, deaf and short people will lack an important talent or ability (for that society) and all end up with little life opportunities; [remember that Rawlsian talents are society-relative]
2. contain institutions that are not improvable from the standpoint of the difference principle: it might be that no change in its institutions can reduce inequality without worsening the position of the worst off members of society, measured in terms of income and wealth.

Notice the opposition with the case of racial discrimination. A society that does not violate the principle of fair equality of opportunity can hardly manage to discriminate people in relation to their skin color (that is, treat skin color as a relevant qualification for a social position) if it is also, at the same time, a society that satisfies the difference principle. For, as far as our knowledge of production and exchange tells us, it might be possible to either reduce inequality or to raise the life-prospects of the worst off members by simply allowing people with the usual productive talents (productivity, organization skill, fantasy, will, etc) discriminated because of their skin color to take position where they "fit", according to their marginal productivity. To put it in another way, a productive society must select people according to qualities connected to marginal product, and skin color is not one of those: hence skin color cannot be treated systematically as a qualification for a job, if a society wants to be productive. Since fair equality of opportunity is in place, and this forbids the arbitrary exclusions of people meeting (what in a given social arrangement counts as) the relevant qualifications for position (whatever these happen to be, in a society), a just society cannot simply afford treating skin color as a qualification. The same reasoning cannot probably be done for a property such as deafness and shortness. A society can probably systematically discriminate people that have such traits, place them in the least rewarding social roles, and justify this via increased productivity to the very people it discriminate against, as there could be no way to reduce this discrimination without worsening deaf and short people's expectations of wealth and income.


Two conclusion follow:
A. being not-deaf and being not-short may both qualify as Rawlsian talents
B. a society in which the worst off members of society are all deaf and short might be just according to Rawls's criteria.

The only way from escaping this conclusion, it might seem, is to introduce the social basis of self-respect in the index we use to measure who is the worst off in society. Self-respect is indeed a primary good according to Rawls, but Rawls uses only income and wealth to evaluate social positions. And for good reasons: it is very difficult to measure trade-offs between a good such as self-respect and goods such as income and wealth. So the way out of the difficulty seems very difficult one to take.

Rawls and talents: first reflection

1. It is highly unlikely that the color of the skin could be treated as a talent in a society governed by just institutions. For our knowledge of production and exchange tells us that it is highly unlikely that a society where the color of a person's skin is treated as a relevant qualification for a social position could be governed by non-improvable institutions - meaning, institutions that produce the least inequality compatible with a certain level of wealth for the worst off members of it. In fact, it is easy to think that racial discrimination prevents people having the capacity to increase the total cake of goods for society from being matched with the social positions where they would acquire the ability to do so. If that is true, it follows that by forbidding employers to treat race as a relevant "qualification" in assigning positions of responsibility, the society can easily increase its total wealth. And this suggest that it might be possible to improve the position of the worst off by simply placing in key social positions the more talented people that were prevented from getting there by racial discrimination and placing the less talented ones in their place. This would increase the distributable wealth without necessarily requiring more incentives for the more talented, hence reducing inequality without damaging the goods available to the worst off members. If one considers self-respect, beside wealth, it is even clearer that racial origin can never be treated as a talent in a society fulfilling the overall scheme of Rawlsian institutions.

Rawls and talents: second reflection

2. There is no necessary guarantee that qualities that are found to be talents in a certain culture will be Rawlsian talents. Rawlsian talents are incompatible with Walzer's idea that the movement of social goods must be determined by their meaning (as found within a culture). For the conjunction of the following two propositions violates the idea that social goods are moved according to their meaning:

1. it is part of the meaning of some social goods (e.g. esteem) that they are allocated to the most talented

2. talents are not traits to which certain cultural meanings are attached, but they are Rawlsian talents

For if talents are Rawlsian talents, then whether they are talents or not depends on facts about possible distributions of primary goods in society. So the allocation of goods such as esteem depends on facts about possible distributions of primary social goods in society. This establishes what Walzer would call a "dominance" of the good "primary social good" over the good "esteem":the allocation of esteem depends (ultimately) upon the allocation of primary social goods.

Rawls and talents

What does it mean to be "more talented" in the context of Rawls's theory? As Nozick remarks (in a footnote of his discussion of Rawls' Theory - in Anarchy State and Utopia), "most talented" individuals just means, in the contexts of Rawls theory, those who are able to produce a larger economic output or who happen to be able to trade their work more favorably or to obtain social positions connected to the highest responsibilities and powers. The most talented should not be conceived to be such "from birth". Nothing must count as a talent absolutely - prior or independently from institutional arrangements. It follows that it is the ongoing scheme of cooperation that establishes whether some quality (or lack of it), say, the ability to speak backwards, or physical strength, corresponds to a talent (or lack of it). "Being talented" is a predicate that has a meaning only relative to a social arrangement.

I will now determine some properties that some quality must have in order to be a talent in a society that is just (according to Rawls). That is I will determine a necessary condition for something to be a talent in a Rawlsian society. A society is just, according to Rawls, if its basic structure (the main institutions that govern the distributions of social advantages and burdens) satisfies the following criteria:

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of
equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with
the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political
liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair
value.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent
with the just savings principle, and
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions
of fair equality of opportunity.

The principle of fair equality of opportunity (b) says that:

Those with similar abilities and skills should have similar life chances. More specifically, assuming that there is a distribution of natural assets, those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in
the social system.

On the basis of these two principles, we can define conditions that something must satisfy to count as a talent within a just society (a Rawlsian talent):

Being good (or bad) at F counts as a Rawlsian talent (or the lack of one) only if

institutions I [which ensure that people who have F and who make the same efforts to cultivate and use F have the same chance to end up occupying social positions connected to similar powers and prerogatives] belong to a scheme of institutions SI such that
- SI guarantees the basic liberties; and
- all the inequalities SI allows go to the advantage of the worst off representative individuals of that society;

That is to say, being good (or bad) at F counts as a Rawlsian talent (or the lack of one) only if the institutions ensuring equal chances to occupy social positions to those with equal talents and efforts are part of a regime of institutions in which social inequalities connected to social positions go to the advantage of the worst off (that is, a society in which no inequality could be eliminated without making the prospects of the worst off members even worst) and in which the basic liberties are respected.

What determines whether some trait which satisfies this necessary condition is eventually a talent, that is a good trait? The answer is: the free decisions of the people living within just institutions. A sufficient and necessary condition for a trait to count as a Rawlsian talent could therefore be the following:

F is a Rawlsian talent iff

the having of F by an individual is positively correlated to F's owner occupying offices and positions attached to responsibilities and powers, in a society governed by a scheme of institution SI where:

- people who have F and who make the same efforts to cultivate and use F have the same chance to end up occupying social positions connected to similar powers and prerogatives
- SI guarantees the basic liberties; and
- SI does not produce any inequality that could be eliminated without reducing the life-prospects of the least better-off members of society

This leads to the following three reflections:
first reflection
second reflection
third reflection