PH211 Week 20: Egalitarianism
Class Handout
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Course Connections
This week’s topic is egalitarianism; if one is an egalitarian, one values equality.
The goal this week is threefold: to examine what it means to value equality,
to determine when one situation contains more equality than another, and to
determine whether equality is something we ought to value. But first, since
this is our last topic, it is also important to see how the topics we have covered
throughout the term relate to, and in a sense, culminate in, this week’s topic.
So, as you think about debates that pertain specifically to egalitarianism, also
consider the connections listed below. We want our philosophical opinions to be
consistent, yet, sometimes, when concepts are used in different contexts, consistency can be difficult to achieve. Consider the capabilities approach. Many
of you argued that the capabilities approach (3 below) should be rejected because it was difficult to operationalise. But we encountered the approach again
in the context of well-being. It seemed to be more acceptable as a conception of well-being, at least in certain other contexts, than other conceptions of
well-being. Finally, the capabilities approach also provides an answer to the
‘equality of what?’ question we will encounter this week. Consider whether
your judgements about the capabilities approach are consistent across each of
these contexts; if not, consider the consequences of this inconsistency.
1. Decision Theory → Utility → Equality of What
2. Measurement → Measurement of Equality
3. Capabilities (Value Judgements) → Capabilities (Conceptions of wellbeing) → Capabilities (Equality of What)
4. Ballung Concepts (Measurement) → Well-being as a Ballung Concept →
Equality as a Ballung Concept
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Intrinsic, Instrumental or Consitutive?
This section addresses two questions: First, what does it mean to value equality?
Second, is equality something we value for its own sake, is it good because
it promotes other intrinsically valuable states, or is there some other way of
thinking about the value of equality.
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2.1
Intrinsic versus Instrumental
It may seem that equality is something we value intrinsically. To say we value
equality intrinsically is to say that it is, in itself a good thing. One might say
that if inequality were intrinsically valuable, then if two situations were equal
in all respects but one contained inequality, we would favour the state that was
more egalitarian. This makes sense. Suppose Alice and Bob both live happy,
valuable lives. Both are well off and do not suffer from any pervasive maladies.
But Alice has $10,000 more than Bob. Our intuition is that this world would be
better if Bob had $10,000 more. But would the world also be better if Alice had
$10,000 less? From the point of view of equality it would. Yet, we hesitate in
the second case, but not the first. Why? (This is a version of the leveling down
objection, for another formulation, see §5.) In order to avoid the leveling down
objection, egalitarians must say that things other than equality also have value.
Appeal to other values can then explain why we ought not level down. Also,
consider Miller’s critique in H&M: “Although I may from an aesthetic motive
decide to trim my rose bushes to an equal height or polish my wine glasses to
an equal shine, to treat people in such a way would be at best perverse and
at worse immoral. . . either the ultimate end of the pursuit is not equality at
all but some other values. . . or our societies are aiming at a goal that cursory
inspection reveals to be quite monstrous.” Consider also H&M’s own comments
that it does not make sense to say that natural occurrences are subject to moral
appraisal. They note that naturally occuring inequalities may be things that we
want to remedy, but they are not morally wrong. What makes these situations
bad is not the moral wrongness, but the fact that “the prospects of those who
are worse-off are bad.” This is an instrumental argument.
Instrumental egalitarians say that equality is only valuable as a means to
other valuable ends such as freedom, self-respect, having sufficient resources to
live a good life etc. Yet, this approach too, admits to problems concerning
our intuitions about equality. Sometimes, even when the values that equality
is supposed to foster are held constant, we still seem to value equality. The
instrumental egalitarian may respond that while we may value equality in these
reasons, we have no principled reason to do so; however, H&M point out that
there is a third alternative. It may be that we value equality because inequalities
are unjust. As Arneson states, on this view “quality stands in relation to justice
as does a part to a whole.” H&M point out, following Miller, that equality may
serve four ends to which it has an intrinsic connection: “[1]. . . equality is sometimes required in order to be fair. . . . [2] equality is a good thing because some
measure of equality is necessary for self-respect. . . [3] equality is a good thing
because equal treatment implements the duty to show equal respect. . . [and 4]
economic inequalities undermine social solidarity.”
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Equality of What?
Once we settle why it is we value equality, we must decide what it is that we
are equalising. There are four main alternatives: well-being, resources, opportunity (for welfare or resources) and Capabilities (also Cohen’s ‘Opportunity for
Advantage’). Let’s consider each in turn.
Welfare. For the purposes of this section, let’s take well-being to be preference
satisfaction. How well one is doing is captured by the idea of well-being.
It is, in a sense, an all things considered point of view from the perspective
of the agent herself. If we equalised well-being as preference satisfaction,
then everyone would judge themselves to be equally happy. But there are
many, many problems here.
1. Interpersonal Comparison
2. Personal Responsibility
3. Adaptive and Sadistic Preferences
Resources. So, perhaps we should equalise resources. Of course, we will need
to decide whether we are equalising all resources, or a subset of ‘important’ resources. We will need to decide whether everyone gets the same
resources or an ‘envy free’ set of resources that would result from trades
in perfect markets etc. But assuming these details can be worked out, is
there anything wrong, in principle, with equalising resources?
1. Personal Responsibility (Again.)
2. Internal Resources
3. Relationship Between Internal/External and Responsibility
Opportunity for Welfare. Arneson suggests equalising opportunity for welfare. This solves some of the problems of personal responsibility. If individuals have the same opportunities to acquire welfare, then, this, according to Arneson is what should matter. If they chose not to captialise
on these opportunities, that is their own choice. Despite giving an answer
to the problem of personal responsibility, since Arneson’s approach is wed
to welfare, it has many of the same problems the welfare approach has.
Especially when welfare is interpreted as preference satisfaction.
1. Inherits Welfare Problems
Capabilities and Opportunity for Advantage We’ve seen Sen’s capabilities approach many times before, so the idea here should be familiar.
Cohen’s access to advantage makes a few modifications to Sen’s account,
but the central theme is the same. For Cohen’s paper, see this week’s
additional readings. Just as Sen’s approach is by now familiar, so too are
its problems.
1. Measurement Difficulties
2. Selection of Capabilities
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Measurement of Equality
The final part of this week’s topic is how we measure equality. Suppose that
we figure out both why we value equality and what we should be equalising.
Great. Now we want to chose those social situations with the least inequality
in terms of our agreed units (in this section, I’ll use resources). But how do we
measure inequality? One answer is that we could use the Gini coefficient, or
see what the variance of resources in our population is. But the question is why
would these measures capture what we mean by inequality? This is the subject
of Temkin’s paper. He points out that there are three natural ways of looking
at inequality, in terms of the distance of an individual from the best off, from
the average, or by looking at the distance between the individual and all other
better off individuals. Temkin shows that a situation he calls “The Sequence”
looks different depending on which view we adopt and how we justify its use.
He identifies a number of principles we might want to endorse that would govern
how we look at the equality of a given situation. Today we’ll focus two (quotes
from Temkin p.110–12):
4.1
Princples
Maximin “How bad a world is with respect to inequality will depend upon how
bad the worst-off group in that world fares with respect to inequality,. . . if
the level of complaint of the worst-off group is the same in both, then that
world will be better whose is the same in both worlds.” (note that these
subprinciples are lexicographic) The advocate of this view “is concerned
not with the sum total of complaints, but with the distribution of those
complaints.”
Additivity “(1) given any two situations, the best situation with respect to
some factor f will be the one in which the most f obtains if f is something
desirable . . . and (2) to determine how much f obtains in a situation one
needs only to determine the magnitude of the individual instances of f
which obtain and then add them together.”
4.2
Complaint Perspectives
There are also three perspectives we could take with respect to individual complains of inequality (quotes from Temkin p.106):
Relative to the average (Eavg ) “one might plausibly maintain that only people below the average have a complaint, and the size of their complaint
depends upon how they fare relative to the average.”
Relative to the best-off (Etop ) “Alternatively, one may claim that all but
the best-off have a complaint and the size of their complaint depends
either upon how they fare relative to the best-off person or. . . ”
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Relative to all those better off (Eall ) “. . . upon how they fare relative to
all those better off than they.”
4.3
Calculating the Sequence
Temkin introduces the sequence and shows that when we combine different
complaint perspectives and principles we obtain different results with respect to
how much inequality is present. The version of the sequence we’ll use today is
as follows:
Figure 1: The Sequence
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By combining our complaint perspectives with our principles we get different
assessments about what is going on with equality in the sequence, it may be
getting better and better(BB) as the sequence moves from A to B to C, or it
may be getting worse worse (WW), or it may be worse and then better (WB),
or everything is equal (EE). It turns out that the assessment looks as follows:
Table 1: Outcomes
Etop
Eall
Eavg
Maximin
Additivity
WW
BB
BB
WW
WB
WB
The calculations are as follows:
Table 2: Calculations
Additive Etot
Additive Eall
Additive Eavg
Maximin Etot
Maximin Eall
Maximin E)avg
MMnoLEX Etot
Seq A
Seq B
Seq C
9
9×9×1
1 × 8.1
9×1
1 ,n = 1
9×5
5×9×5
5 × 4.5
9×5
5 ,n = 5
9×9
1×9×9
9 × 0.9
9×9
9 ,n = 9
9×9
1
9×8.1
1
9×1
1 ,
9×5
5
4.5×5
5
9×5
5
9×1
9
0.9×9
9
9×9
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Further, if we drop the lexicographic requirement of maximin, then all steps
in the sequence are equal. What does this tell us? About Equality? How do
these relate to standard statistical or economic measures of eqaulity?
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Harrison Bergeron
By Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
The Year Was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only
equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody
was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else.
Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due
to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the
unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance,
still drove people crazy by not being springtime.
And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel
Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but
George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly
average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in
short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a
little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at
all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or
so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George
from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s
cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits
from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That danceit was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They
weren’t really very good—no better than anybody else would have been, anyway.
They were burdened with sash-weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were
masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would
feel like something the cat dragged in. George was toying with the vague notion
that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with
it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
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Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask
George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,”
said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said
Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Urn,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said
Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper
General, a woman named Diana Moon Clampers. “If I was Diana Moon Clampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday—just chimes. Kind of in honor
of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Wellmaybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good
Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal
son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his
head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood
on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the
studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out
on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.”
She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which
was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,”
she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t
notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.”
“You been so tired latelykind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just
some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take
out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took
out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said
Hazel. “I meanyou don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set
around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away
with itand pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody
competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws,
what do you think happens to society?”
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If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George
couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It
wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer,
like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute,
and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and
gentlemen—”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big
thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get
a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen—” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must
have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous.
And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the
dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound
men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair
voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody.
“Excuse me—” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely
uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just
escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the
government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should
be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screenupside
down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed
the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches.
He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody
had ever borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than
the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental
handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick
wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but
to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry,
a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked
like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred
pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times
a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even
white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
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“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not—I repeat, do not—try to
reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set.
The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again,
as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might
have—for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing
tune. “My God—” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an
automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was
gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The
knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians,
musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor!
Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio
shook.
“Even as I stand here—” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a
greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can
become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore
straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his
head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones
and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed
Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering
people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her
throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical
handicaps with marvellous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them
of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you
barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first—cheap, silly, false. But Harrison
snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang
the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
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Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while—listened
gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the
weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and
the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers
nearer to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long,
long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came
into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and
the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians
and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had
gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook
him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying¿” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said.
“What about¿‘ he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind, of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting
gun in his head.
“Gee—I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee—” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
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