Subject: Caplan and Rawls on Justice

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 17:36:49 -0500

From: Paul V. Torek <[email-masked]>

In reply to Bryan Douglas Caplan <[email-masked]> --

Thanks for your response.  In this message I address your comments
on Rawls.  In the next I'll address ownership of material goods.

>Now at first glance, it appears that Torek is completely correct:
>for if Rawls' first principle of justice, giving priority to liberty
>means anything, it means that slavery is impermissible. 
>Redistribution comes into its own only after there are some
>re-distributable goods [...]

>But I seriously doubt that Rawls would consider this a correct
>application of his principles.  It is quite clear that he does not
>think that coercive paternalism violates his first principle [...]

This could be taken as a guide to interpreting his first principle,
as you suggest, but I think Rawls fails to infer correctly the
implications of his own principle.  Whatever social mechanisms
are set up to enforce such rules,  they will occasionally err
by treating rational desires as irrational inclinations.  Thus 
there will be some loss of liberty, and what is gained at this
price will not be other liberties, but some protection against loss 
of well-being.  So the parties in the original position will not go
for this trade-off, having made maximally extensive equal liberties
the top priority.

I won't try to interpret the next passage you provide RE: "what he
[Rawls] has in mind with the first principle," I'll offer
another instead:

        Thus persons are at liberty to do something when they
        are free from certain constraints either to do it or not
        to do it and when their doing it or not doing it is
        protected from interference by other persons. (p. 202)

There's what liberty means to Rawls -- I think it's very much a
common-sense use of the term, and I think it obviously applies
to people's labor.  So if you apply Rawls's Two Principles
of Justice to your thought-experiment, you get freedom not slavery.

However, I now think my original response on Rawls's behalf may
have been too simple.  Look at this:

        The inability to take advantage of one's rights and
        opportunities as a result of poverty and ignorance, and
        a lack of means generally, is sometimes counted among the 
        constraints definitive of liberty.  I shall not, however,
        say this, but rather I shall think of these things as
        affecting the worth of liberty, the value to individuals
        of the rights that the first principle defines.  [I think
        Rawls means that everyone has equal liberty, but the
        contribution these liberties make to a person's welfare
        differs according to the means the person has to take
        advantage of these rights --PT.]  ... The lesser worth
        of liberty is, however, compensated for, since the
        capacity of the less fortunate members of society to achieve
        their aims would be even less were they not to accept the
        existing inequalities whenever the difference principle
        is satisfied.  But compensating for the lesser worth of
        freedom is not to be confused with making good an
        unequal liberty. (pp. 204-5)

I entered this quote initially to provide further evidence against
your view of Rawls on liberty -- here he denies that poverty means
less liberty, and so he closes off an avenue whereby forced labor
in your hypothetical society might be "justified".  But also, this 
passage shows that the difference principle -- together
with the assumption that any real economy will have goods that
can be distributed as it requires -- plays a part in justifying
the first (equal liberties) principle.  In other words, Rawls
might simply be unable to apply his theory of justice to your
hypothetical, pure-service economy society.  In still other words,
contractors behind a Veil of Ignorance, who considered the possible
society you describe, might not choose the Two Principles of
justice.  It seems to me that Rawls might well say that your
thought-experiment does not fit the "circumstances of justice"
(pp. 126-30); justice is just not "designed for" that kind of
society.

--Paul Torek, [email-masked]