Equality as a Moral Ideal

1. Equality as a Moral Ideal Harry Frankfurt

2. Frankfurt on Equality • Egalitarianism is the view that it is desirable that everyone have the same amount of income and wealth. • However, egalitarianism is consistent with the existence of situations in which deviations from strict equality are permissible because attempting corrections through redistribution are unacceptable. • What is important about egalitarianism is that it claims that strict equality is morally valuable in itself, and that we should aim to approach this moral ideal as a priority when considering distributions.

3. The Doctrine of Sufficiency • Frankfurt denies that economic equality via income and wealth is of any moral importance. • Frankfurt advocates the doctrine of Sufficiency: What matters about a distribution from the point of view of morality is not that everyone has the same amount of income or wealth, but that everyone has enough. • Sufficiency is an alternative to Equality with respect to the question of what justice in a distribution requires.

4. Equality and Comparison Disorientation • Focusing on sufficiency rather than equality does not mean that equality is not important. What it means is that equality is not intrinsically important. • Focusing on equality maybe problematic because it requires us to look outward at others to determine how things are with us. • What we often need to figure out is what we need in order to lead the life we desire. This focus takes us to the issue of how much is enough for us given our goals and life projects. • Focusing on others and comparingour own situation with others disorients us from the issue of what is important for us.

5. Unpacking the Instrumental value of Equality • Economic equality leads to non-economic condition C. • Non-economic condition C is valuable. • So, economic equality is instrumentally valuable as a means to C. C = fraternal relationships, overall pleasure in society, equality of political influence. However, this argument does not establish the intrinsic value of equality. What is required is an argument that shows that equality is intrinsically valuable.

6. Deriving Equality from Declining Marginal Utility • For each individual the utility of money invariably diminishes at the margin. • With respect to money, or things money can buy, the utility functions of all individuals are the same. • From (1) and (2) it follows that the marginal dollar always brings less utility to the rich person than toa personwho is less rich. • So, totally utility must increase when inequality is reduced by giving a dollar to someone poorer than the person from whom it is taken.

7. Against the Derivation • Is the maximization of aggregate utility a morally important social goal? It would appear that only Utilitarians would hold this. • Premise (2) is false – concerning money people do not have the same utility functions. Some people derive more pleasure than others from the same good bought at the same price. If two people can buy the same good at the same price, and derive or convert different amounts of pleasure from the good, then it cannot be true that the two people have the same utility functions. • Premise (1) is questionable – on what grounds can we say that the next dollar always has less pleasure for the person than the prior dollar? We need to consider fixed points.

8. How an equal distribution may fail to maximize aggregate utility. Assume that there are 20 units of araremedical resource, 5 units are necessary for a person to survive. If every one is given an equal share, than all four people die. If an unequal share across the 4 is given, then three can live, and onewill die. Clearly, in this case equality does not maximize aggregate utility, since equality leads to 4 dead, and inequality leads to only 1 dead.

9. Against the Intuition for Equality • It is intuitive that inequality is morally wrong. • If a collective body has the intuition that P is morally wrong, than unless the intuition that P can be explained away as an intuition about something else, P is morally wrong. • The intuition that inequality is morally wrong cannot be explained away as an intuition about something else. • So, inequality is morally wrong. • Frankfurt argues that the intuition that inequality is actually morally wrong is confused with a separate feature of the situation that the subject is responding to. • The separate feature of the situation that the subject is responding to is not that A has more than B, but rather that B has too little. • The subject feels that the fact that B has too little is rectified by equality between A and B.

10. Consider the well to do • Do we really care about inequality? • Suppose A and B are extremely wealthy, but that A is slightly more wealthy than B. • Do we feel that the inequality between A and B is something that needs to be rectified? • Given that we don’t have the intuition that it should be rectified, we should not focus on equality alone.

11. Consider the Content • Do we really care about inequality? • Suppose A has far less than B and C, but A is completely content and happy, and by the standards of all is not lacking in any specific dimension that is deemed intersubjectively important, such as shelter or nourishment. • From a moral point of view, is it important that A has the same amount as B and C?

12. Sufficiency is logically independent from Equality • Evidence of economic disparity does not support the doctrine of egalitarianism that maintains that we should all have the same. • Evidence of the fact that some people don’t have enough supports the doctrine of sufficiency. • The doctrine of sufficiency is logically independent from the doctrine of egalitarianism. • So, neither (1) nor (2) support the doctrine of egalitarianism.

13. The Fundamental Error of Egalitarianism The fundamental error of egalitarianism lies in supposing that it is morally important whether one person has less than another regardless of how much either of them has. This error is due in part to the false assumption that someone who is economically worse off has more important unsatisfied needs than someone who is better off. In fact the morally significant needs of both individuals may be fully satisfied or equally unsatisfied . H. Frankfurt pg.34

14. Sufficiency • The doctrine of sufficiency focuses our attention on the question: how much is enough for a person to live a life worth living? • That question requires us to ask: What criterion determines whether a life is a life worth living? • Which in turn asks us to determine: whether there are lives worth living from the point of view of the subject, which are not acceptable from the point of view of others? • Sufficiency drive us to questions of liberty.

15. Does Contentment Work? • Can we use the criterion of contentment as a single criterion for determining if someone has a life worth living? • What is it to lead a life of contentment? • Can a person claim to be content, while in actuality their claim of contentment is a function of an environment in which they are objectively not flourishing, but simply content relative to others?