Hi, everybody. I will be posting something every Monday for the next five months. Since I am graduating in May, I will be less interactive in the first month of this competition. Please do comment, share your insights and feedback - this is all about kicking off a discussion, rather than me pretending to know the rightest approach to problems. The text below was originally written in March 15, 2010 as an entry for an essay competition on the topic.

Ivaylo Vasilev

American University in Bulgaria

Power, Plenty and Poverty: How to Achieve a Fairer Distribution of Wealth and Income

Ever since the inception of Western political thought, the issues of liberty and justice occupied the minds of philosophers. The ancient classic Plato created the first normative study; he wrote The Republic, a theoretical account on the ideal organization of a political polity. In it he addressed not least of all his ideas on the distribution of power and justice: ideas that are studied today, 25 centuries later. The reason that these issues are relevant in present times is that they are a fact in our world.

The problem this essay deals with is a problem of inequality. It has two dimensions: an empirical, and a theoretical one. What we observe in real life is perhaps most important for the obvious reason that theory cannot feed a hungry child. Nearly eighty percent of world’s population lives on less than $10 a day.[1] “The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.”[2] The available statistics extend to infinity. The blatant, cruel realization of these facts should necessarily be present in our thoughts when we theorize and look for solutions.

The second dimension of the problem is theoretical. The question is: why do we say that inequality is unjust. There may be many answers, but concisely, three main arguments come out out of widely-influential twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls's book Justice as fairness. Firstly, he asserts that it appears outright wrong that “some or much of society should be amply provided for, while many, or even a few, suffer hardship, not to mention hunger and treatable illness.”[3] Secondly, this inequality gives ground for domination of one class over the other, and ultimately undermines the progress of egalitarianism through discrimination. Thirdly, Rawls claims to make an allusion to an argument of Rousseau’s that the effects of social and economic inequalities “can be serious evils and the attitudes they engender [are] great vices” in and by themselves.

Whichever way we choose to approach the explanation of the problem, we cannot ignore the fact that humans are given free will, and that they, unlike any other creature, make everyday wilful decisions. Having a free choice obligates us to find the best possible conceivable to us decision. It would be hard morally to justify us not sharing our bread with our needy neighbours; yet that is a fact of life.

Now, this essay sets out to explore possible normative and comparative solutions of the problem of absence of justice. The regular approach for solving a problem in the status quo is to find the underlying reasons which cause it. In this case, the causing reasons are not evident. Moreover, resolving the problem appears a Sisyphean task – after all, with our core ethics not moving an inch since anyone can remember, we still have not come to a conclusive solution of the problem of income and wealth inequality. Nevertheless, this essay makes a step in this direction: perhaps a small step, but still – a step forward through the critical discussion of major influential contemporary authors’ positions on the issue which are used as a stepping stone to provide for the contribution of this text.

John Rawls’s theory was ground-breaking in its formulation of the two principles of justice which read as follows:”

1)      Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and

2)      Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).”[4][5]

Although this work of John Rawls is rightfully celebrated, it might not be the most relevant. Clearly, these principles are normative. That is to say, they are recommending something; they are professing that something should happen in a certain way. Thus, they are detached from reality. To illustrate, John Rawls gives the example that Hobbes’ and Locke’s social contracts are not established on a daily basis; the observation is that people today find themselves in an already formed contract, and they adapt to it, rather than resign it individually. Thus, Rawls’ theory might not be the best way to approach the solution of the problem of justice and inequality, as claims Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.[6] But that is discussed in several paragraphs.

The particular helpfulness of the discussion and elaboration of the precision of these principles is that they are something that societies can view as ideal and aspire to. The best example today is that of Nordic welfare states where the citizens’ attitudes are that they are willing to pay higher taxes to eliminate poverty and provide for the basic sustenance of those who cannot provide for themselves. This is, I think, what John Rawls implies in his difference principle by justifying social and economic inequalities, so long as they are “to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society.” Similarly, it probably carries the meaning that growth in the pay-checks of a selected few is unjust. So long as a certain threshold of basic sustenance is not provided for the worst-off of the population, it is unethical to grow your own fortune. In fact, this principle has foundation in Christian ethics: it was said that men should give their extra shirt to those who are shirtless.[7]

Similarly, in the same chapter of his book, Rawls advances this difference principle (also called maximin justice) by extending it to availability of minimum liberties. This implies the ability to extend the idea of solving inequalities to more than merely the material, but to argue for equality of liberties.

That being said, an obvious solution that has foundations in both theory and practical experience is that public perceptions in richer countries could adapt so that the change of ethics is sufficient to warrant the raise of taxes, so as to provide for the poor.[8] The evident problem with this solution is that it is not overly helpful in terms of practicality and implementation. Sen frames it quite simply by asserting that Rawls’ and other models of its kind require the assumption of an ideal agency.[9] This text concedes that it is unrealistic in real life to assume that all people (agents) will act in the theorized by Rawls manner.

In the beginnong of his The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen comments on Rawls’ principles, but more importantly, he offers an alternative. Sen straight-forwardly and in an accessible, steady manner argues for another type of an approach: an approach of comparativism that attempts to investigate “realization-based comparisons that focus on the advancement or retreat of justice.”[10] He argues that instead of seeking to model a perfectly just environment, scholars should attempt to formulate studies on how to minimize the injustices, rather than absolutely resolve them once and for all.

Sen’s writing is remarkable in its reinventing of the framing of the problem. A solution in this respect requires a different approach. It is much similar to the approach to the “debugging” approach to programming. To give another example, many new businesses that start from scratch have no knowledge of how to design their business models so that their company can work perfectly well. Instead, they solve problems one at a time, until they come at a working model. Put this way, the idea of solving injustice becomes easily accessible to anybody, even the more so because the benefits of such a solution (even though it is small-scale) are more visible, more clear because they are realistically achievable.

Thus, a different type of solution calls for comparative studies of how advancement of justice can occur. This solution can unite theory and practice just as was asserted in the beginning of this text. A step-by-step approach at minimization, instead of an attempt at god-like creation is much more useful for the actual solution of the problems of income and wealth inequalities across the world.

What this text set out to accomplish was to provide for scholarly solutions of the inequality and injustice problems in today’s world, and using the insights of the above authors, the text used them as a stepping stone in order to enumerate a number of examples and attempted solutions of the Sisyphean task to solve the problem of world inequality and injustice.

Last edited: 31.3.2010

[1] Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty, World Bank, August 2008  quoted in http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1

[2] 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25 quoted in http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1

[3] John Rawls. Justice as fairness: a restatement. 2001: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p 130 - 131

[4] Ibid. p. 42-43

[5] These are the restated principles of his original justice of fairness work.

[6] Amartya Sen. The Idea of Justice. 2009: Allen Lane. p. i-xx (Preface).

[7] (this footnote was edited on 5 April, 2010 - initially, it's purpose was to scout for viewers' reactions).

[8] The example refers to eradicating poverty, but analogously can be extended to other types of inequalities.

[9] Amartya Sen. The Idea of Justice. 2009: Allen Lane. p. 1-30 (Introduction).

[10] Ibid. p. 18