73 THE ORIGINAL POSITION AND END-RESULT PRINCIPLES - Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick - distribuirelamanna nessundirittonellaposizioneorifinale merocalcolo
THE ORIGINAL POSITION AND END-RESULT PRINCIPLESRead more at location 3928
Imagine a social pie somehow appearing so that no one has any claim at all on any portion of it, no one has any more of a claim than any other person; yet there must be unanimous agreement on how it is to be divided.Read more at location 3929
If things fell from heaven like manna, and no one had any special entitlement to any portion of it, and no manna would fall unless all agreed to a particular distribution, and somehow the quantity varied depending on the distribution, then it is plausible to claim that persons placed so that they couldn’t make threats, or hold out for specially large shares, would agree to the difference principle rule of distribution. But is this the appropriate model for thinking about how the things people produce are to be distributed?Read more at location 3939
For people meeting together behind a veil of ignorance to decide who gets what, knowing nothing about any special entitlements people may have, will treat anything to be distributed as manna from heaven.Read more at location 3948
Suppose there were a group of students who have studied during a year, taken examinations, and received grades between o and 100 which they have not yet learned of. They are now gathered together, having no idea of the grade any one of them has received, and they are asked to allocate gradesRead more at location 3951
Suppose next that there is posted on a bulletin board at their meeting a paper headed ENTITLEMENTS, which lists each person’s name with a grade next to it,Read more at location 3957
then the principle of distributing grades so as to maximize the lowest grades might seem a plausible one.Read more at location 3966
Grades, under the historical principle, depend upon nature and developed intelligence, how hard the people have worked, accident, and so on, factors about which people in the original position know almost nothing.Read more at location 3974
Each person in the original position will do something like assigning probability distributions to his place along these various dimensions. It seems unlikely that each person’s probability calculations would lead to the historical-entitlement principle,Read more at location 3977
Any probability calculations of self-interested persons in Rawls’ original position, or any probability calculations of the students we have considered, will lead them to view the entitlement and the reverse-entitlement principles as ranked equally insofar as their own self-interest is concerned!Read more at location 3982
The nature of the decision problem facing persons deciding upon principles in an original position behind a veil of ignorance limits them to end-state principles of distribution.Read more at location 3985
Thus for any principle, an occupant of the original position will focus on the distribution D of goodsRead more at location 3989
In these calculations, the only role played by the principle is that of generating a distribution of goodsRead more at location 3992
Different principles are compared solely by comparing the alternative distributions they generate.Read more at location 3994
The fundamental principles they agree to, the ones they can all converge in agreeing upon, must be end-state principles.Read more at location 3997
Rawls’ construction is incapable of yielding an entitlement or historical conception of distributive justice.Read more at location 3998
attempt to derive, when conjoined with factual information, historical-entitlement principles, as derivative principles falling under a nonentitlement conception of justice.Read more at location 4000
And any derivations from end-state principles of approximations of the principles of acquisition, transfer, and rectification would strike one as similar to utilitarian contortions in trying to derive (approximations of) usual precepts of justice;Read more at location 4002
It might be objected to our argument that Rawls’ procedure is designed to establish all facts about justice; there is no independent notion of entitlement, not provided by his theory, to stand on in criticizing his theory.Read more at location 4008
If any such fundamental historical-entitlement view is correct, then Rawls’ theory is not.Read more at location 4011
prevent someone from tailoring principles to his own advantage, from designing principles to favor his particular condition. But not only does the veil of ignorance do this; it ensures that no shadow of entitlement considerations will enter the rational calculations
