Jeffrey Paller

Equal Opportunity for Welfare: Richard Arneson

• Equal Opportunity for Welfare: Overview of Important Characteristics
  • Considers individual choice/personal liberty as a resource
  • Rests on personal responsibility
  • Considers interpersonal relations
  • Includes free environment to make value judgments
  • “Hypothetical ideally considered preferences” is proper measure for welfare
  • Assumes correct and full information regarding people’s preferences is available
  • Strives to be an egalitarian theory

The claim: “For purposes of determining what should count as fair shares from the standpoint of distributive justice, the appropriate measure of a person’s resources is some function of the importance those resources have for that very person as weighted by her conception of her own welfare (perhaps corrected to accommodate the conception she would hold if she reflected with full information and full deliberative rationality)” (1990; 159).

• Preferences
  • Welfare as the satisfaction of preferences
  • Self-interested preferences
  • “Nonmoral” judgments
  • 1) Behavioral dispositions, 2) Feelings or desires, 3) Personal value judgments (takes precedence)
  • Hypothetical rational preferences: “Those the individual would have if he were to engage in ideally extended deliberation about his preferences with full pertinent information, in a calm mood, while thinking clearly and making no reasoning errors” (1990; 163).
  • “First-best” vs. “Second-best” preferences: Question 1 (Ben and Wes)
• The Project
  • “An opportunity standard of distribution leaves room for final outcomes to be properly determined by individual choices for which individuals are responsible” (1990; 175).
  • Why is personal responsibility necessary? 1) Individuals often engage in games of pure chance, 2) Individuals often sacrifice personal welfare on behalf of chosen cause, 3) Some individuals put in more effort than others, 4) Some individuals choose to cultivate an expensive taste
  • The norm: “Other things equal, it is bad if some people are worse off than others through no voluntary choice or fault of their own” (1989; 85).
  • Opportunity: “A chance of getting a good if one seeks it” (1990; 176).
  • Necessary Conditions: Equivalent array of options: Question 3 (Stewart, Kevin, Kelly)
    • Awareness of options
    • Ability to choose reasonably among options
    • Strength of character that enables individual to carry out chosen outcome
  • The Mechanism: A decision tree
    • List an individual’s possible complete life histories; Add up preference satisfaction expectation for each life history; Separate by each “decision point” (when an individual makes the decision): Sum the total
    • Equality of welfare occurs when individuals face equivalent decision trees
• Objections
  • Lifetime satisfaction: must consider past preferences for welfare satisfaction under a condition of “second-best” preferences (hypothetical rational preferences)
  • Malformed preferences: must supplement preference formation theories with mechanism that includes healthy environment, rights for education and child nurturing, and nonmanipulation of adults (hypothetical ideal deliberation)
  • Bare persons: individuals are not “bare persons,” but rather have a “prudent perspective” (hypothetical ideal deliberation)
  • Responsibility for ends: not all ends are the same. Individuals should not be responsible for preferences they desire that are out of their control, but should be responsible for voluntary choices they make (equal opportunity for welfare)
  • Welfare differences reflect differences in beliefs: there are true differences in people’s lives (not mere beliefs) when there is full awareness of preference satisfaction, access to knowledge and imagination, and opinions are serious and sincere (contradicts Dworkin’s Jack and Jill example) (hypothetical rational preferences)
  • Equality of resources versus equality of welfare: equal opportunity for welfare overcomes preference-changes, “slavery of the talented,” and includes personal responsibility (hypothetical ideal deliberation and personal responsibility) Question 6
  • Expensive preferences: should be compensated for if expensive preferences were formed involuntarily by the individual (personal responsibility and distributive subjectivism) Question 5 (Gina)
  • Perfectionist doctrine: It is too difficult to objectively determine basic (or fundamental) human needs: “The conviction that mere preferences are analytically distinguishable from true human needs may prove to be illusory” (1990; 190). Also, there is no possible measurement index. (Distributive subjectivism)
• Critiques
  • Rawls and Sen: “Primary social goods” and “functionings of goods” Question 7
  • Curmudgeon’s Corner (Jordan)
  • Are opportunities really subjective?

Is this an egalitarian theory?