There are different theories of how to make the basic distribution.
Among them are:
Strict Egalitarianism
One of the simplest principles of distributive justice is that of
strict, or radical, equality. The principle says that every person
should have the same level of material goods and services. The
principle is most commonly justified on the grounds that people are
morally equal and that equality in material goods and services is
the best way to give effect to this moral ideal.
The Difference Principle
The most widely discussed theory of
distributive justice in the past four decades has been that proposed
by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, (Rawls 1971), and
Political Liberalism, (Rawls 1993). Rawls proposes the
following two principles of justice:
·
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 satisfy two
conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices
open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and
(b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
members of society. (Rawls 1993, pp. 5–6. The principles are
numbered as they were in Rawls' original A Theory of Justice.)
Equality of Opportunity and Luck
Egalitarianism
Dworkin proposed that people begin with equal resources but be
allowed to end up with unequal economic benefits as a result of
their own choices. What constitutes a just material distribution is
to be determined by the result of a thought experiment designed to
model fair distribution. Suppose that everyone is given the same
purchasing power and each uses that purchasing power to bid, in a
fair auction, for resources best suited to their life plans. They
are then permitted to use those resources as they see fit. Although
people may end up with different economic benefits, none of them is
given less consideration than another in the sense that if they
wanted somebody else's resource bundle they could have bid for it
instead.
In Dworkin's proposal we see his attitudes to ‘ambitions’ and
‘endowments’ which have become a central feature of luck
egalitarianism (though under a wide variety of alternative names and
further subset-distinctions). In terms of sensitivity to
‘ambitions’, Dworkin and many other luck egalitarians argue that
provided people have an ‘equal’ starting point (in Dworkin's case,
resources) they should live with the consequences of their choices.
They argue, for instance, that people who choose to work hard to
earn more income should not be required to subsidize those choosing
more leisure and hence less income.
Welfare-Based Principles Welfare-based principles are
motivated by the idea that what is of primary moral importance is
the level of welfare of people. Advocates of welfare-based
principles view the concerns of other theories — material equality,
the level of primary goods of the least advantaged, resources,
desert-claims, or liberty — as derivative concerns. They are only
valuable in so far as they affect welfare, so that all distributive
questions should be settled entirely by how the distribution affects
welfare. However, there are many ways that welfare can be used in
answering these distributive questions, so welfare-theorists need to
specify what welfare function they believe should be maximized. The
welfare functions proposed vary according to what will count as
welfare and the weighting system for that welfare. Economists
defending some form of welfarism normally state the explicit
functional form, while philosophers often avoid this formality,
concentrating on developing their theories in answer to two
questions: 1) the question of what has intrinsic value, and 2) the
question of what actions or policies would maximize the intrinsic
value. Moreover, philosophers tend to restrict themselves to a small
subset of the available welfare functions. Although there are a
number of advocates of alternative welfare functions (such as
‘equality of well-being’), most philosophical activity has
concentrated on a variant known as utilitarianism. This theory can
be used to illustrate most of the main characteristics of
welfare-based principles.
Desert-Based Principles The
different
desert-based principles of distribution differ primarily
according to what they identify as the basis for deserving. While
Aristotle proposed virtue, or moral character, to be the best
desert-basis for economic distribution, contemporary desert
theorists have proposed desert-bases that are more practically
implemented in complex modern societies. Most contemporary desert
theorists have pursued John Locke's lead in this respect. Locke
argued people deserve to have those items produced by their toil and
industry, the products (or the value thereof) being a fitting reward
for their effort (see Miller 1989). Locke's underlying idea was to
guarantee to individuals the fruits of their own labor and
abstinence. Most contemporary proposals for desert-bases fit into
one of three broad categories:
-
Contribution: People should be rewarded for their work activity
according to the value of their contribution to the social
product. (Miller 1976, Miller 1989, Riley 1989)
-
Effort: People should be rewarded according to the effort they
expend in their work activity (Sadurski 1985a,b, Milne 1986).
-
Compensation: People should be rewarded according to the costs
they incur in their work activity (Dick 1975, Lamont 1997).
Libertarian Principles The
market will be just, not as a means to some pattern, but insofar as
the exchanges permitted in the market satisfy the conditions of just
acquisition and exchange described by the principles. For
libertarians, just outcomes are those arrived at by the separate
just actions of individuals; a particular distributive pattern is
not required for justice. Robert Nozick has advanced this version of
libertarianism (Nozick 1974), and is its best known contemporary
advocate.
Nozick proposes a 3-part “Entitlement Theory”.
If the world were wholly just, the following definition would
exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings:
a.
A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of
justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
b.
A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of
justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is
entitled to the holding.
c.
No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of
(a) and (b).
The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that
a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they
possess under the distribution (Nozick, p.151).
All this from--On Distributive Justice: