Rawls

From the beginning I have stressed that justice as fairness applies to the basic structure of society. It is a conception for ranking social forms viewed as closed systems. Some decision concerning these background arrangements is fundamental and cannot be avoided. In fact, the cumulative effect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic structure. Moreover, the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are. Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future. How men work together now to satisfy their present desires affects the desires they will have later on, the kind of persons they will be. These matters are, of course, perfectly obvious and have always been recognized. They were stressed by economists as different as Marshall and Marx.2 Since economic arrangements have these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design of institutions to realize it. This choice must, therefore, be made on moral and political as well as on economic grounds. Considerations of efficiency are but one basis of decision and often relatively minor at that. Of course, this decision may not be openly faced; it may be made by default. We often acquiesce without thinking in the moral and political conception implicit in the status quo, or leave things to be settled by how contending social and economic forces happen to work themselves out. But political economy must investigate this problem even if the conclusion reached is that it is best left to the course of events to decide.Once the principles of justice are derived, however, the contract doc- trine does establish certain limits on the conception of the good. These limits follow from the priority of justice over efficiency and the priority of liberty over social and economic advantages (assuming that serial order obtains). For as I remarked earlier (6), these priorities mean that desires for things that are inherently unjust, or that cannot be satisfied except by the violation of just arrangements, have no weight. There is no value in fulfilling these wants and the social system should discourage them. Further, one must take into account the problem of stability. A just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be ar- ranged so as to bring about in its members the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice. Thus the requirement of stability and the criterion of discouraging desires that conflict with the principles of justice put further constraints on institutions. They must be not only just but framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in them. In this sense, the principles of justice define a partial ideal of the person which social and economic arrangements must respect. Finally, as the argument for embedding ideals into our working principles has brought out, certain institutions are required by the two principles. They define an ideal basic structure, or the outlines of one, toward which the course of reform should evolve.The upshot of these considerations is that justice as fairness is not at the mercy, so to speak, of existing wants and interests. It sets up an Archimedean point for assessing the social system without invoking a priori considerations. The long range aim of society is settled in its main lines irrespective of the particular desires and needs of its present members. And an ideal conception of justice is defined since institutions are to foster the virtue of justice and to discourage desires and aspirations in- compatible with it. Of course, the pace of change and the particular reforms called for at any given time depend upon current conditions. But the conception of justice, the general form of a just society and the ideal of the person consistent with it are not similarly dependent. There is no place for the question whether mens desires to play the role of superior or inferior might not be so great that autocratic institutions should be accepted, or whether mens perception of the religious practices of others might not be so upsetting that liberty of conscience should not be allowed. We have no occasion to ask whether under reasonably favorable conditions the economic gains of technocratic but authoritarian institu- tions might be so great as to justify the sacrifice of basic freedoms. Of course, these remarks assume that the general assumptions on which the principles of justice were chosen are correct. But if they are, this sort of question is already decided by these principles. Certain institutional forms are embedded within the conception of justice. This view shares with perfectionism the feature of setting up an ideal of the person that constrains the pursuit of existing desires. In this respect justice as fairness and perfectionism are both opposed to utilitarianism.Now it may appear that since utilitarianism makes no distinctions between the quality of desires and all satisfactions have some value, it has no criteria for choosing between systems of desires, or ideals of the per- son. From a theoretical point of view anyway, this is incorrect. The utili- tarian can always say that given social conditions and mens interests as they are, and taking into account how they will develop under this or that alternative institutional arrangement, encouraging one pattern of wants rather than another is likely to lead to a greater net balance (or to a higher average) of satisfaction. On this basis the utilitarian selects between ide- als of the person. Some attitudes and desires, being less compatible with fruitful social cooperation, tend to reduce the total (or the average) happi- ness. Roughly speaking, the moral virtues are those dispositions and effective desires that can generally be relied upon to promote the greatest sum of well-being. Thus, it would be a mistake to claim that the principle of utility provides no grounds for choosing among ideals of the person, however difficult it may be to apply the principle in practice. Neverthe- less, the choice does depend upon existing desires and present social circumstances and their natural continuations into the future. These initial conditions may heavily influence the conception of human good that should be encouraged. The contrast is that both justice as fairness and perfectionism establish independently an ideal conception of the person and of the basic structure so that not only are some desires and inclina- tions necessarily discouraged but the effect of the initial circumstances will eventually disappear. With utilitarianism we cannot be sure what will happen. Since there is no ideal embedded in its first principle, the place we start from may always influence the path we are to follow.

Various features of public goods derive from these two characteristics. First of all, there is the free-rider problem.Where the public is large and includes many individuals, there is a temptation for each person to try to avoid doing his share. This is because whatever one man does his action will not significantly affect the amount produced. He regards the collec- tive action of others as already given one way or the other. If the public good is produced his enjoyment of it is not decreased by his not making a contribution. If it is not produced his action would not have changed the situation anyway. A citizen receives the same protection from foreign invasion regardless of whether he has paid his taxes. Therefore in the polar case trade and voluntary agreements cannot be expected to develop. It follows that arranging for and financing public goods must be taken over by the state and some binding rule requiring payment must be enforced. Even if all citizens were willing to pay their share, they would presumably do so only when they are assured that others will pay theirs as well. Thus once citizens have agreed to act collectively and not as isolated individuals taking the actions of the others as given, there is still the task of tying down the agreement. The sense of justice leads us to promote just schemes and to do our share in them when we believe that others, or sufficiently many of them, will do theirs. But in normal circum- stances a reasonable assurance in this regard can only be given if there is a binding rule effectively enforced. Assuming that the public good is to everyones advantage, and one that all would agree to arrange for, the use of coercion is perfectly rational from each mans point of view. Many of the traditional activities of government, insofar as they can be justified, can be accounted for in this way.The need for the enforcement of rules by the state will still exist even when everyone is moved by the same sense of justice. The characteristic features of essential public goods necessitate collective agreements, and firm assurance must be given to all that they will be honored. Another aspect of the public goods situation is that of externality. When goods are public and indivisible, their production will cause bene- fits and losses to others which may not be taken into account by those who arrange for these goods or who decide to produce them. Thus in the polar case, if but a part of the citizenry pays taxes to cover the expendi- ture on public goods, the whole society is still affected by the items provided. Yet those who agree to these levies may not consider these effects, and so the amount of public expenditure is presumably different from what it would be if all benefits and losses had been considered. The everyday cases are those where the indivisibility is partial and the public is smaller. Someone who has himself inoculated against a contagious disease helps others as well as himself; and while it may not pay him to obtain this protection, it may be worth it to the local community when all advantages are tallied up. And, of course, there are the striking cases of public harms, as when industries sully and erode the natural environment. These costs are not normally reckoned with by the market, so that the commodities produced are sold at much less than their marginal social costs. There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary corrections.