https://feedly.com/i/entry/MUC1inwuyaK3hsjT0gdwQm1ydc/qwuFdSRB0ePqiW3I=_1735278f8e5:1db85:8af204bc

L'incoerenza di Rawls

Jim Buchanan to John Rawls: "Dude, your favored political-economic regime would have massive moral hazard, corruption, and rent seeking."

Rawls: "Nah, dude, I'm doing ideal theory. I'm asking how the system would work if we imagine people are fully motivated by a sense of justice. So that stuff won't happen."

Buchanan: "Oh, okay. Well then why not favor what you call welfare-state capitalism over property-owning democracy?"

Rawls: "Because in that system the rich could use their money to buy power and use it for corrupt ends!"

Buchanan: "But didn't you just say we're doing ideal theory and asking how institutions would work if only people were fully motivated by a sense of justice? And by hypothesis isn't that unjust and so they wouldn't do that under ideal..."

Rawls: "Nah nah nah nah nah, I can't hear you!"

Rawlsians: "Nah nah nah nah nah, we can't hear you."

Buchanan: "Huh. Political philosophers kind of suck at political philosophy."

See JaF, 137-8.