ANDERSON
Equality & anti-luck egalitarianism, pro-multiculturalism (with integration)
Pragmatist: truth is instrumental & contingent, if it works it works
- no deontology, we need to figure out how to get rid of injustice
Egalitarianism:
- either distributive (of resources) or relational (equalizing relations, like Kymlicka)
LUCK EGALITARIANISM = HARD EGALITARIANISM
Luck-egalitarianism:
[brute luck vs option luck]
- deserved and undeserved disadvantages
- state cannot compensate you for smoking or riding a motorcycle, you know the consequences
- we compensate undeserved bad fortune through the undeserved good fortune of others
- if you insure yourself you transform brute luck into option luck (all misfortunes turn chosen???) [covid example, vaccinated ppl should be denied urgent care]
- only help people with unchosen brute luck, like being born with a disability, etc.
Problems:
- only considers monetary inequality, nothing else
- only works under a framework of humiliating pity (for the disabled, for example → you’re lesser, so here’s some money)
- worst of capitalism (justifying not compensating bad choices) + worst of socialism (everyone trying to reduce their misfortunes to fate)
Anderson’s alternative: RELATIONAL EQUALITY
- we equalize all relations, so that ‘bad option luck’ is not a thing. If you’re born disabled this is not inherently bad, since society is built to accommodate this (not here’s some money and a wheelchair, but building ramps and a culture of understanding and acceptance, so that the disabled person stands in equal relation to the able-bodied person)
- rejection of natural hierarchies and all forms of oppression
- if we are brought up to a level of equal moral agency, we can be equally deserving of social spoils
Anderson, Rawls, Sen:
- for equality of social relations and democracy, not distribution, but equality of opportunity
- capabilities approach: different things will satisfy different people, so we need to ensure a society where each one has the capacity to persue the things that make them happy (without ofc treading on others’ freedoms)
- resources are merely ways to achieve our innate capacities, we do not fetishize resources for their own sake (pragmatist view)
- we can accept certain inequalities! as long as there is full democracy and relational equality me playing soccer and you drinking wine making us happy is not wrong (billionares and people in poverty is wrong tho)
[DP RAWLS: we must destroy un-distributable resources! if they would create further social inequalities (benefiting the most advantaged, harming the least advantaged)]
Democratic equality:
- changing social norms, not compensating pitiful conditions