Justice and the Meritocratic State Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egali- tarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan stand-off by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinc- tive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don’t think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. Thomas Mulligan is a faculty fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. Before coming to academia, he served in the U.S. Navy and the Central Intelligence Agency. Political Philosophy for the Real World Edited by Jason F. Brennan, Georgetown University 1 Unequivocal Justice Christopher Freiman 2 Justice and the Meritocratic State Thomas Mulligan Justice and the Meritocratic State Thomas Mulligan First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Thomas Mulligan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-28380-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27000-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC To Mom and Dad for the opportunity Contents Acknowledgements x PArt I On Justice 1 1 Meritocracy: The Basics 3 1.1 Why Meritocracy? 3 1.2 A Brief History of Meritocracy 9 1.3 Remarks on the Assumptions of This Work 13 1.4 References 16 2 The Metatheory of Justice 19 2.1 The Scope of Justice 19 2.2 On the Distinction Between Justice and Morality 20 2.3 Efficiency and Three Requirements of Justice 23 2.4 Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory 28 2.5 Situating Meritocracy in the Debate About Justice 33 2.6 References 39 3 What We Think About Justice and Why It Matters 42 3.1 Human Beings Are Not Selfish 42 3.2 The Content of Justice 43 3.3 Children and Justice 48 3.4 Cultural Stability and Support for Redistribution 49 3.5 Rejecting Rawlsian Justice 53 3.6 The Importance of Intuition 55 3.7 References 58 viii Contents PArt II A Meritocratic Theory of Economic Justice 63 4 The Foundation of Meritocracy 65 4.1 The Concept of Desert 65 4.2 The Connection Between Merit and Desert 67 4.3 No Justice Without Equal Opportunity 71 4.4 Elaborating Equal Opportunity 74 4.5 Equal Opportunity and the Family 77 4.6 On the Difference Between Luck Egalitarianism and Desert-Based Justice 82 4.7 Desert Is Never Forward-Looking 85 4.8 The Justice/Efficiency “Trade-Off”, Part 1 88 4.9 References 92 5 On the Distribution of Jobs 96 5.1 Meritocratic Hiring: Whetting the Intuition 96 5.2 Why Should We Hire on the Basis of Merit? 98 5.3 How Do We Hire on the Basis of Merit? 101 5.4 Conceptual Complexities 104 5.5 Meritocracy Is a Fair Social Framework 106 5.6 Meritocracy Minimizes Resentment 110 5.7 On the Importance of Second Chances 111 5.8 Fulfilling Fiduciary Duties 113 5.9 Just and Unjust Discrimination 114 5.10 The Curious Case of Political Competence 118 5.11 The Justice/Efficiency “Trade-Off”, Part 2 121 5.12 References 122 6 On the Distribution of Income 126 6.1 Money in a Meritocracy 126 6.2 Determining the Desert Basis 127 6.3 What Is the Deserved Income? 131 6.4 Economic Rents Are Undeserved 134 6.5 What Would a Meritocratic Economy Look Like? 137 6.6 On Solidarity 141 6.7 The Myth of Neutrality 141 6.8 Problems With Libertarian Economic Theory 145 6.9 Positive Liberty and Personal Responsibility 152 6.10 On the Possibility of a Social Safety Net 155 6.11 The Justice/Efficiency “Trade-Off”, Part 3 158 6.12 References 161 Contents ix 7 Defending Desert From John Rawls 165 7.1 Rawls’s Influence on the Desert Debate 165 7.2 Two Other Rawlsian Objections to Desert 166 7.3 Rawls Against Desert 167 7.4 The Essentiality of Origin 170 7.5 What’s Wrong With Rawls 171 7.6 Some Conceptual Clarifications 175 7.7 Considering an Objection 177 7.8 One Final Note 179 7.9 References 181 PArt III Meritocratic Public Policy 183 8 Meritocratic Taxation 185 8.1 How Have Scholars Thought About Taxation? 185 8.2 Taxing Economic Rents 187 8.3 Pigovian Taxes and the Provision of Public Goods 190 8.4 A New Inheritance Tax 192 8.5 Is All Unearned Income Undeserved? 197 8.6 Desert-Based Taxation: Efficient and Progressive 199 8.7 References 200 9 Meritocratic Social Programs and Final Matters 203 9.1 On Schooling 203 9.2 (Most) Affirmative Action Is Unjust 204 9.3 Structuring Social Spending 208 9.4 Positive Predictions of Meritocracy 210 9.5 Justice in Our Lifetimes 213 9.6 References 215 Index 217 Acknowledgements This book is a hugely expanded version of the fourth chapter of my 2015 dissertation, The Just and Meritocratic State. Accordingly, my first debt is to my dissertation committee. I thank Eric Mack, my advisor, Jason Brennan, and David Shoemaker. They supported my development of a desert-based theory of justice even as most philosophers (and perhaps they themselves) thought it futile. I wish to acknowledge a special debt of gratitude to Jason, who showed me many professional kindnesses in the subsequent years. I wrote this book at Brown University’s Political Theory Project and the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics—two research centers which support work that defies common labels, and which still believe, in our divided times, that we can find political solutions through sober, rigorous analysis. I thank John Tomasi and John Hasnas for lead- ing these institutions, and for making them such pleasant places to do philosophy. Over the past two years, I have presented parts of this work at various fora—the Brown Political Philosophy Workshop, the 2016 Society for Exact Philosophy Conference, the Third International Conference on Economic Philosophy, the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics Workshop, the Normative Business Ethics Workshop at the Wharton School of Business, and the inaugural Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Conference. I thank these audiences for their helpful comments. Scholars at many institutions, as well as some of my philosophically- minded friends, have influenced this work in myriad ways. I thank Sarah Brosnan, Bruce Brower, Nora Cronin, Kristen Currie, Dan D’Amico, Michael Douma, Bill English, Dave Estlund, David Faraci, Nick Geiser, Jess Guernsey, Gil Hersch, Jesse Hill, Peter Jaworski, Michael Kates, Charles Larmore, Joe Oppenheimer, Govind Persad, Josh Preiss, Kirun Sankaran, Dave Schmidtz, Jesse Shapiro, Steve Sheffrin, Leanne Son Hing, and Carla Yumatle. To those I have failed to acknowledge owing to my forgetfulness, I apologize. Acknowledgements xi I cannot enumerate the many ways in which the arguments of this book were sharpened in lively discussions with Vanessa Kolb. I thank her. Huub Brouwer has taught me much about the concept of desert. He and I have co-authored a paper on the distinction between luck egalitari- anism and desert-based justice, and I wish to especially acknowledge his influence on §4.6. Greg Mankiw and George Sher were good enough to provide feedback on a proposal for this book, and to discuss various aspects of the proj- ect with me in the months that followed. Without George’s path-setting work, no desert-based theory of distributive justice would be possible. Dick Arneson, John Roemer, and Matt Weinzierl read a draft manu- script and provided extensive notes on it. This final version is much improved as a result. Among many other things, Dick’s criticisms led to a conceptual tightening-up of Chapter 7; John helped me make sense of efficient, contribution-based income distribution; and Matt provided guidance on incorporating desert within tax theory.