Bringing About Equality
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The London School of Economics and Political Science BRINGING ABOUT EQUALITY Christopher John Marshall A thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, September 2017 DECLARATION I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. The thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 50,371 words. ABSTRACT Sometimes people ought to do something for the sake of equality but it would be wrong to force them to do it. Contrariwise, sometimes it would be permissible to force people to do something for the sake of equality but it is unclear whether they ought to do it without coercion. This gives rise to moral obstacles to redistributing benefits and burdens in unequal situations of different degrees and kinds. In these situations, what are individuals required to do, permitted to do, and forbidden from doing for the sake of equality? In this thesis, I address four aspects of this problem. I defend the following central claims. When we fall short of realising equality using the coercive power of the state, individuals have an egalitarian reason to take up the moral slack and voluntarily redistribute their own wealth, even when this makes them worse off than they would be if society were equal. It is sometimes permissible for individuals to flout property laws in the name of equality by dispossessing people of things that they are legally, but not morally, entitled to. This is often true when property laws are severely unjust and is sometimes true when property laws are only partially unjust. Egalitarian justice requires people to benefit each other by making a productive contribution to society in order to realise a Pareto optimal level of equality. This is neither implausibly morally demanding, nor commits one to the view that justice licences legally coercive job allocation. Sometimes, due to brute bad luck, indivisible harm will occur and cannot be fairly divided. Some views say that it is wrong to harm innocent people in the course of defending yourself from an equivalent harm, but permissible to “duck” harm even though you foresee that doing so will lead to an innocent person being harmed as a result. I argue that, by the lights of such views, the mode of agency used to impose or redistribute harm makes no difference to permissibility. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Mike Otsuka, Alex Voorhoeve, Gabriel Wollner, Susanne Burri, Tom Rowe, Adam White, Goreti Faria, Silvia Milano, Nicolas Wuethrich, Todd Karhu, Philippe van Basshuysen, Bastian Steuwer (especially for suggesting the title to Chapter Two), the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the LSE Philosophy Department, and audiences at Warwick, Berkeley, Manchester, Pavia, Braga, Belfast, Boulder, and Reading. I’ve been lucky to meet so many great people during my time at the LSE. But most of all, I’m lucky to know Mariam Jalloq, whom I would like to thank for being so supportive and understanding over the past four years. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I Bringing About Equality 7 II Remarks on Methodology 9 III Chapter Summaries 11 1 FAIR SHARES AND DEGREES OF INEQUALITY 1.1 Introduction 15 1.2 Preliminary Remarks 16 1.3 The Institutional Thesis 18 1.4 The Fair Shares Thesis 24 1.4.1 The Fair Shares Thesis and Inequality Measurement 26 1.4.2 The Fair Shares Thesis and Partial Compliance 28 1.5 The Maximisation Thesis 31 1.5.1 Distributive Patterns and Egalitarian Complaints 32 1.5.2 Competing Claims and Justifiability to Each 32 1.6 Two Problems 36 1.7 Conclusion 40 2 IF YOU’RE AN EGALITARIAN, WHY NOT ROB A BANK? 2.1 Introduction 42 2.2 Preliminary Remarks 45 2.3 Dimensions of Vigilantism 47 2.3.1 Violence and Coercion 47 2.3.2 Varieties of Property 47 2.3.3 Direct and Indirect Losses 48 2.3.4 Consolidated and Widely Dispersed Losses 49 2.3.5 Individuals and Group Entities 50 2.3.6 Redistributive and Expressive 51 2.3.7 Summary 52 2.4 Degrees of Injustice 53 2.4.1 Just Enough 54 2.4.2 Severe Injustice 55 2.4.3 Partial Injustice 56 2.5 Two Moral Obstacles to Vigilantism 57 2.5.1 The Democracy Argument 58 2.5.2 The Kantian Argument 65 2.6 Conclusion 66 3 OPTIMAL EQUALITY AND FORCED LABOUR 3.1 Introduction 67 3.2 Equality, Pareto Optimality, Forced Labour 68 3.3 The Efficiency Dilemma 69 3.3.1 Reply to the First Horn 73 3.3.2 Reply to the Second Horn 76 3.3.3 Summary 79 3.4 The Forced Labour Objection 79 3.4.1 The First Formulation 80 3.4.2 The Second Formulation 82 3.4.3 Summary 90 3.5 Conclusion 90 3.6 Appendix: The Equality Objection 91 4 KILLING AND DUCKING: SELF-DEFENCE AND MORAL EQUIVALENCE 4.1 Introduction 100 4.2 Threats, Bystanders, Killing, Ducking 102 4.3 The Moral Immunity Thesis 103 4.3.1 The Right of Self-Ownership 106 4.3.2 The Side-Effect Principle 109 4.3.3 The Redistribution Principle 112 4.3.4 Killing and Letting Die 114 4.3.5 Property Rights and Fair Chances 117 4.4 Two Objections 119 4.5 Conclusion 121 BIBLIOGRAPHY 123 7 INTRODUCTION Sometimes people ought to do something for the sake of equality but it would be wrong to force them to do it. Contrariwise, sometimes it would be permissible to force people to do something for the sake of equality but it is unclear whether they ought to do it without coercion. For example, it is permissible to tax the rich in order to bring about a more egalitarian society but it is unclear whether the rich ought to voluntarily redistribute their wealth. To give another example, one might believe that people have an egalitarian obligation to make a productive contribution to society but think it is impermissible for the state to legally conscript people into certain occupations in the name of equality. This gives rise to moral obstacles to redistributing benefits and burdens in unequal situations of different degrees and kinds. What are individuals required to do, permitted to do, and forbidden from doing for the sake of equality in these situations? In this thesis, I address four aspects of this problem. In this introductory chapter, I explain why I think this central problem is of interest and set out the four central questions I will answer. Then, I provide some remarks on the philosophical methodology that I use throughout. Finally, I state the central claims of each chapter and briefly summarise my supporting arguments. I Bringing About Equality Most philosophical attention on inequality has focused on the following questions: does inequality really matter, or is it a surrogate for a concern to give priority to benefitting the worse off? Is our concern for equality about distributive fairness, or ensuring that we are socially equal? If the former, what should we equally distribute? Between whom is inequality bad? What is the relationship between equality and justice? For the most part, I set aside these problems in order to focus on a different one which has received comparatively little attention.1 When faced with unfair inequality, what should individuals do insofar as they are concerned to reduce it? And, given that 1 A notable exception is G. A. Cohen’s If You’re An Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) Chapter 10. 8 equality is not the only thing that matters, what are individuals required to do, permitted to do, and forbidden from doing about inequality, all things considered? I think that these questions are interesting because while we want to know what an ideally egalitarian society would look like, we also want to know what we ought to do when faced with inequality of different degrees and kinds. And as individuals, most of us cannot determine what our social institutions are like or what other people do. But we can determine what we will do. These considerations give rise to an abundance of interesting subsidiary questions and I can only begin to answer a handful of them. In this thesis, I provide answers to the following four. First, when we fall short of realising equality using the coercive power of the state, do individuals have an egalitarian reason to take up the moral slack and voluntarily redistribute their own wealth? This question is of special interest to people with egalitarian convictions. Is it okay to be a rich egalitarian in an unequal society, or a “champagne socialist”? Or does a belief in egalitarianism commit you to making certain choices in an unequal society? I think that everyone, other than the worst-off person(s) in society, has an egalitarian reason to redistribute benefits until doing so further would worsen inequality, relative to the factual status quo. Second, is it ever permissible for individuals to reduce unfair inequality by unilaterally dispossessing people of things to which they are legally, but not morally, entitled? Such flouting of property laws can take many forms, including banditry, embezzlement, fraud, looting, occupation, and trespass. I think that sometimes it is.