John Rawls and the ‘lucky duckies’

John Rawls died last month. I never met him, but like thousands of other graduate students in philosophy, I was well-acquainted with him, or at least his work. Among his many writings was his landmark 1971 book, “A Theory of Justice,” in which he laid out his view that justice in society is nothing more than fairness.

It’s a testimony to Rawls that 30 years after publication of his book, it is considered a classic. Graduate students still refer to chapters and pages from the book to back up an argument, and there’s many a bookshelf, mine included, that contains a dog-eared copy of TOJ, as it’s affectionately known in some circles, held together with duct tape and coffee stains. And the book and the theory still draw fire from those opposed to the ideals of liberalism that they engendered.

His theory of justice was simple, yet complex, and any attempt to compress it into a few sentences or paragraphs always fails to capture the nuances. Recognizing that pitfall, I think I’ll take a chance at explaining at least one element of his work that has value for everyone when considering social or organizational policies in an attempt to determine whether they are fair or just.

Rawls asks us to take part in a hypothetical decision-making process — one that has never occurred, nor is ever likely to — but which will give us insight into the right path to follow. He stipulates that during this process, we are behind what he calls the “veil of ignorance.” We do not know who we are or what qualities we possess.

We don’t know whether we are rich or poor; we don’t know our race, our gender, our religion or lack of one. We don’t know our sexual orientation, the state of our health, or whether we’re willing to take risks. What we do know is that once we leave this meeting, we will have some of those characteristics. Our purpose in the meeting is that, given all the possible permutations and combinations of qualities we might have, we must choose the policy that would give us the best advantage possible once we are back in the real world.

You don’t need a philosophy degree to see that such an arrangement would lead each of the participants to envision themselves as being among the worst off in the real world when choosing policies under these conditions. It would be hard, for example, to approve of slavery, if there were a chance that you would be among the enslaved class. It would be hard to support gender-based inequalities when there’s a 50-50 possibility you could be among the disadvantaged gender.

The theory itself is somewhat akin to the so-called Golden Rule, which tells us to do to other what we would want them to do to us. My complaint against the Golden Rule is that it is subjective and bases our decision on what we would want, given our proclivities and perhaps willingness to take risks. Rawls removes those variables. We don’t know who we are. We don’t know if we’re “willing to chance it.” We have to assume we’re at the bottom of the heap — because we just might be.

So the decisions made behind Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” would tend to try to equalize inequalities and to work to the general advantage of those who would find themselves among the worst off once the veil of ignorance was lifted.

Obviously, this is a simplification of a very long and complex book, and of a theory that Rawls himself revised over the next three decades. However, his main concern was for the least well-off in society, and he tried in his theory to ensure that any inequalities that were introduced into society through public policy would favor those at the bottom rather than those at the top.

This, for Rawls, was the heart and soul of political liberalism, along with the idea of equality of opportunity and the irrelevance of irrelevant characteristics in making decisions about people. All of this has been turned on its head lately. “Liberalism” has become a pejorative label, unfairly I think. This has come about because its detractors have distorted its aims and goals and turned it into a cartoon character, a “straw man” that’s easy to knock over.

At the same time, some people have decided that inequalities introduced into society should favor the most well-off, so that some crumbs may eventually tumble down to the least well-off. Although the theory has so far not been proven, it persists. Some people, however, take it even further and propose to actively disadvantage those at the bottom.

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently lamented the favorable treatment that some “lucky duckies” — as the paper called them — get by not paying what the Journal editors think are their fair share of taxes. They weren’t talking about the billionaires who can hire expensive accountants to find mythical shelters and deductions. They weren’t talking about the corporations that take up a phony residence offshore to avoid paying any taxes at all. And they weren’t talking about the corporations that receive more in corporate welfare than they pay in taxes, thereby gaining a negative tax rate.

No, the Journal was criticizing those “lucky duckies” who make $12,000 a year and who the Journal thinks should be shelling out more in taxes. Apparently, the idea is that this will help them climb more readily aboard the tax-cut bandwagon. While you can certainly argue what we owe the worst-off, I think that labeling them “lucky” is cynical beyond comprehension. These are the working poor, who often try to scrape together a meager living against tremendous odds and without the benefits — health care comes to mind — of either higher-paid workers or welfare recipients.

Call me crazy, but I’ll stick with Rawls when considering ethical principles. I think his theory of justice has a lot more behind it, and while it’s open to criticism, I think it has withstood the test of time.

I’ve written before about ethical rules of thumb (see: “Elbows, ears, and rules of thumb,” /articles/op/xml/02/01/11/020111opethics.xml ) I don’t think they do a lot of very hard work, but they’re handy when trying to get to a quick decision. When considering policy decisions, whether in the political or business arena, I think Rawls can give us a good insight into the best course.

How would you decide if you had no idea what position you were going to fill once the decisions were made? Does the decision help out the worst off or is it weighted in favor of the best off? Is the decision free of irrelevant characteristics, such as race or gender? These are valuable questions and the answers should at least point you in the right direction.