Duty II
Michael A. Gillette, Ph.D.

The view that I described in last month's "Practical Ethics" was based on work done by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy State and Utopia. While the arguments discussed were designed to show that government must play a role in caring for its citizens, the libertarian view of Robert Nozick is extreme in its commitment to maintaining as small a government as possible. The government, according to Nozick, does have a responsibility to provide a police force and army, and perhaps some level of health care. It most certainly does not have the right to tax citizens in order to build libraries and museums, and probably has a limited responsibility to provide education and specialized medical care as well.

No discussion of political philosophy would be complete, however, without presenting an alternative view regarding the role of government. According to the position of John Rawls as developed in A Theory of Justice, the government's obligation to its citizens is far more expansive than Nozick would claim. Both philosophers begin with similar assumptions. Both are clearly working within the social contract school of political philosophy, and yet the debate between Rawls and Nozick represents vastly different approaches to the question "How large should our government be?"

Let us begin the Rawlsian point of view by asking a simple question. How should a person who is taking care of two children proceed when a cake is to be divided between them? If the caretaker cuts the cake then at least one of the children will accuse him/her of preferring the other child. If one child cuts the cake and then distributes the pieces, then the other child will undoubtedly accuse the cutter of cutting unfairly. What should be done? The answer, as most parents know, is to ask one child to cut the cake and allow the other child to make the selection. By proceeding in this way, the first child is motivated to cut the two pieces equally, as any other cut will lead to him receiving a smaller than possible share.

This simple exercise in decision making is very instructive. In dividing up the social cake, and determining just how much we want our government to tax some of us and provide for others, we have a problem similar in type, although not in scale, with the simple children's dilemma. The answer is also similar.

In considering whether we want the government to tax the wealthy in order to provide support to the least advantaged, we must develop a procedure that yields a fair result. Rawls asks what leads to unfairness. His answer is that bias is the great spoiler of justice. Our prejudices and biases are what remove our ability to think fairly. If our biases could be removed, so would unfairness.

If you were to imagine that the two children in the above example were rational agents and needed to consider, before the cake was cut, how they would want the cake to be divided, both would agree to equal slices because each would be concerned that any division other than that of equality might put him at a disadvantage. In other words, without knowing whether you would end up being the winner or the loser in an unequal division of the cake, it would make sense for you to worry first about what would happen if you ended up being the loser.

Imagine that I were to offer you two possible solutions to this problem. We could give all the cake to one child and none to the other, or we could split the cake evenly. If you know that you are one of the children but you don't know which one, it is only logical that you would prefer the equal split. You would rather reduce possible winnings than create a situation in which you would lose entirely. Since you don't know which child you are, you are unbiased in this choice. It is, therefore, fair.

Rawls asks us to think similarly about our government. We all want tax cuts, but that is because we all pay taxes and imagine what life would be like if we paid less. Consider, however, what you would think if you were not biased by your knowledge of your own financial situation. Imagine that there are two possible worlds; one in which a very few people have most of the money while the rest are poverty stricken, and another in which things are divided more evenly. Not knowing which person in society you would end up being -- either the winner or the loser in the first scenario -- which possible world would you choose to live in? The answer is clear, I believe, that the second world is preferable to the rational decision maker.

The political world is not as simple, however, as the world of cake cutting, so more needs to be said. It is possible, for instance that by creating a distribution of social goods that is entirely equal, people will lose the motivation to work hard and the production of goods in society would plummet. If this is true, then people would be worse off in the world of equality than in the world of winners and losers. In that case, it becomes rational to prefer inequality.

Go back to the cake example. Suppose that in order to cut perfectly even slices I need to use a very large knife that wastes some of the cake. In producing even slices, each child receives one ounce of cake. If I use a sharper knife, however, I can cut two pieces that are unequal but larger. One child will get two ounces and the other child will get three. If you don't know which child you are going to be, which division is the fairest? According to Rawls, it is better to select the uneven distribution. This is true because even if you end up with the smaller piece, it is still larger than the piece you would have had if you insisted on equality.

In society it is not necessary that every citizen have an equal share of social goods. Some can have more than others, says Rawls, but only if the inequality is justified because the least advantaged actually benefit by it. This is the backbone of Rawls' theory of political justice. Inequality is to be tolerated when it is reasonably expected to work to everyone's advantage.

So what does this show regarding the clients under our care? According to Rawls we must ask "what distribution of social goods would we want if we didn't know who we were? Would we prefer a situation where government is small and programs are cut for the disadvantaged? Or would we rather have higher tax rates but a better minimum standard?" For Rawls the answer is clear. Government must do much more than act as a mere protector of its citizens. Government must provide for the least advantaged, and tax the better off if necessary to do it. According to Rawls, such a scheme is 'only fair'. As you can imagine, however, there are strong counter arguments to Rawls that we must consider. And so we shall...