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Having Too Much Having too much Ingrid Robeyns* Utrecht University [email protected] Version March 17, 2014 Comments are most welcome. Note to seminar attendants at the University of Victoria on March 21: I apologise for the length of the paper. If you are primarily interested in the claim and the normative arguments, you can skip sections 1 to 4 and proceed on the assumption that a riches-line can be developed in a nonarbitrary way. Skipping these sections will reduce what you will read to almost half. Note also that the latter part has some lesser-developed sections, especially section 6. Thanks in advance for reading/attending! Abstract This paper defends the limitarian doctrine, which entails that we all have a duty not to be rich. For many, limitarianism has an intuitive plausibility: given the world in which we live, wouldn’t it be much better iF the wealth oF the rich were to be spent on alleviating sufFering and disadvantages, and battling the various crises that the world is facing? The question is whether limitarianism can properly be spelled out and defended. This requires a number oF diFFerent things. First, since limitarianism is a riches-reFerring claim, we need a proper conceptualisation of ‘riches’, in order to avoid that this threshold would be set arbitrarily. Yet surprisingly enough, there is a very large literature on the conceptualisation of ‘poverty’, but almost nothing on the conceptualisation of ‘riches’. Developing a conceptualisation of riches, as well as to respond to possible objections to that conceptualisation, will thereFore be my First task. I then deFend limitarianism based on two diFFerent arguments: the democratic argument, and the argument oF urgent unmet needs. Finally, I discuss whether limitarianism should be deFended as a moral or rather as a political doctrine. I analyse and reject two important objections to limitarianism, which entail that limitarianism is violating equality oF opportunities, and that limitarianism does not take incentive considerations into account. * I am very grateful for helpful comments to the audiences at the 2012 EIPE graduate conFerence in Rotterdam, the 2012 Society for Applied Philosophy Conference, the 2012 OZSE annual conFerence, the 2013 Utrecht-Nijmegen Workshop in the History and Philosophy of Economics, the 2013 Economics Ethics Network meetings, and at seminars at the OxFord Center For the Study of Social Justice, the Technical University Eindhoven, the University of Amsterdam, the London School of Economics and the Center For Ethics in Society at Stanford University. Special thanks go to Constanze Binder, Simon Caney, Chandran Kukathas, Sem De Maagt, Avishai Margalit, Roland Pierik, Gijs van Donselaar, Debra Satz, Liam Shields, Zosia Stemplowska and Laura Vallentini. 1 Having too much Whatever else theories oF distributive justice take a stance on, they always specify a metric oF justice and a distributive rule.1 The metric is concerned with the good X whose distribution matters in so far as justice is concerned. Among the most inFluential metrics are welFare, resources, primary goods and capabilities. The distributive rule specifies how X should be distributed; prime examples are the principles oF priority, suFFiciency, equality oF outcomes, equality of opportunity and the difference principle. This paper articulates and defends a doctrine of distributive justice that I will call limitarianism. In a nutshell, limitarianism advocates a duty not to have more resources than what is needed for a fully flourishing life. This doctrine considers riches to be the state in which one has more resources than what is needed For a Fully Flourishing liFe, and claims that if this is the case, then one is having too much, morally speaking. Limitarianism is only a partial account oF distributive justice, since it is agnostic regarding what distributive justice requires for those who are not fully flourishing. It is also a deliberately non-ideal doctrine, which starts from the distribution oF the possession oF income and wealth as it is, rather than asking what a just distribution would be in a world with strong counterFactual properties, such as For example the absence oF inherited wealth and privileges, or where we are in a state of initial property acquisition.2 A complete theory oF distributive justice should make normative statements about the entire distribution oF the metric. Some distributive rules, such as strict equality, do so. Other distributive rules entail normative claims about the lower-tail oF the distribution, which in practice coincides with normative claims about poverty and deprivation. For example, most versions of suFFicientarianism entail that justice should be concerned with making sure that no-one Falls below a certain minimal threshold, which is generally taken to be 1 E. Anderson (2010), ‘Justifying the capability approach to justice’, in H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns (eds.), Measuring Justice, Cambridge University Press. p. 81. 2 In contrast, starting gate theories, such as Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory, outline just procedures against a background oF just initial acquisition, and are thereFore harder to apply to non-ideal circumstances, since fair initial acquisition is hardly ever possible. See. R. Nozick (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books. 2 equal to threshold oF poverty or a minimally decent liFe.3 Global justice theorists have deFended a variety oF theories in which extreme poverty around the world is argued to be an injustice, or in which arguments are put Forward that the afFluent have a duty to alleviate that poverty.4 The substantial contribution of philosophers to the study of poverty and disadvantage should not be surprising, since most people hold the view that these conditions are morally bad. Given the large philosophical literature on poverty, it is surprising that so little (iF any) theorizing on justice has focused on the upper-tail oF the income and wealth distribution. It is all the more remarkable since For a long time normative claims related to the rights, privileges and duties oF rich people have been advanced in public debate. Most countries have some political parties who claim that the rich should pay For the economic crises, rather than the poor or the middle classes. In recent years several European political Parties have proposed to introduce an increase in the highest marginal tax rate oF the highest income group; similarly, the Occupy Movement in the US has claimed that the ‘one percent’ should be taxed much more heavily. Some citizens have also complained that austerity measures Fall disproportionally on the poor and the middle classes rather than aFFecting the rich in equal measure. What all these normative claims have in common is a Focus on the upper-tail oF the distribution – thereby making a distinction between the middle-class and the rich.5 Philosophers should give more attention to riches-referring normative claims, and not only because they have recently taken such a prominent place in political discussions in the real world. There are also philosophical reasons why we should take riches-reFerring normative claims seriously. For example, when analyzing our moral duties, we may have good reasons to distinguish between duties that apply to the middle-classes versus duties for the rich. Yet such a view would require us to make a distinction between the aFFluent that are rich and the afFluent that are not rich, and such a distinction is lacking in political philosophy. 3 Arneson, Richard (2002), "Egalitarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition); H. Frankfurt (1987) ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’, Ethics, 98, pp. 21-43. 4 P. Singer (1972) “Famine, AfFluence, and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1, pp. 229- 243; T. Pogge (2001) “Priorities of Global Justice”, Metaphilosophy, 32(2), pp. 6-24; T. Pogge (2008) World Poverty and Human Rights. Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. 5 The ‘afFluent’ refer to anybody who is not poor. An afFluent person can be either rich or non- rich. The middle-class refers to those who are afFluent but not rich. 3 My aims in this paper are twoFold. First, I will offer a conceptualization of ‘riches’. This account will allow us to identify rich people, and is also needed for riches-reFerring claims about justice (sections 1 through 3). The conceptualisation will need to meet three criteria. First, the purpose oF the conceptualisation is that it serves a function in normative claims oF justice. Second, given the non-ideal character of this project, the account of it has to be operationalisable: if they have access to the relevant data, then economists and social scientists should be able to make estimates oF the number oF riches within a certain population, and be able to identiFy rich persons. Third, the conceptualisation should not be an all-things-considered account of all that matters when we consider people’s quality oF liFe. A person can be rich but unhappy: a proper conceptualisation oF riches should not lump all these Factors together. Being rich is not all that matters in liFe – in Fact, it may be something that doesn’t matter much at all. Yet for questions of distributive justice we may have good reasons to want to capture riches and only riches, while acknowledging that For some other questions this is not what we should be focussing on. After developing my conceptualisation oF riches in sections 1 through 3, I analyse and respond to two objections to the account of riches (in section 4). The account of riches is needed in order to spell out and defend limitarianism, which is my second main aim in this paper. Limitarianism is the doctrine that we all have a duty not to be rich (section 5). I will defend limitarianism based on the democratic argument (section 6) and on the ‘argument oF unmet urgent needs’ (section 7), discuss whether it should be considered to be a moral or rather a political doctrine (section 8) and will respond to two objections: the objection of unequal opportunities and the incentive objection (section 9).
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