Abstract
The principle of fair equality of opportunity is regularly used to justify social policies, both in the philosophical literature and in public discourse. However, too often commentators fail to make explicit just what they take the principle to say. A principle of fair equality of opportunity does not say anything at all until certain variables are filled in. I want to draw attention to two variables, timing and currency. I argue that once we identify the few plausible ways we have at our disposal for filling in those variables, it will become apparent that a reasonable version of the principle will be quite narrow. Its usefulness as a justificatory basis for social policies will be limited to those policies that target the distribution of competitive opportunities among people entering majority.
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Notes
Rawls (1971).
Ibid., pp. 73, 87, 278.
Ibid., pp. 277–278.
The principle of fair equality of opportunity encompasses the principle of careers open to talents, which itself justifies social policies such as antidiscrimination laws. In this article I am concerned with what follows from the part of the principle of fair equality of opportunity that goes beyond careers open to talents.
Specifically, affirmative action for the purpose of achieving equality between the races or sexes. Jacobs (2004, chaps. 4–5). (It should be noted that Jacobs explicitly rejects the Rawlsian version of fair equality of opportunity; see chap. 3 of his book.) Insofar as affirmative action is backward-looking, or conceived of as compensation for past or ongoing discrimination, careers open to talents is the most likely source of justification. Contrast Shanley and Segers (1979).
One might worry that if we are so confident in the rightness of that wider range of social policies, then it is disingenuous to feign an interest in principles of justice. In other words, if we’re just going to advocate for the policies that seem right to us then searching for principles of justice that can justify them is little more than a game. Notice, however, that there is work to be done even if we are totally confident in the rightness of a certain social policy. Namely, we will still need to determine its precise shape. And I submit that the precise shape of a social policy often ought to depend on which principle of justice justifies it. Take universal health care as an example of a social policy that most liberals are confident is right. If that policy were justified based on equality of opportunity, then it would appear that we should opt for a system in which out-of-pocket purchase of supplemental health care is banned. This would ensure that no one uses his greater resources to secure for himself a greater-than-equal opportunity via the purchase of better health care. If, on the other hand, universal health care were justified based on a principle of sufficiency then that argument for such a system would be muted.
Arneson (1989, p. 85).
This is what Douglas Rae calls “prospect-regarding” equality of opportunity (Rae 1981, chap. 4).
FEO2 presumes the correctness of Rawls’s claim that the groups of people within which equality of opportunity ought to obtain are groups of equally talented individuals. This should not be taken as an insistence that Rawls’s claim is unassailable. It’s just that I have nothing to say about it here.
Investment is not the only cause of instability. By definition, anything that alters the distribution of opportunity is a cause of instability. So, for instance, when people engage in the opposite of investment—when they waste an opportunity—the distribution is disrupted. And luck, certainly, can rearrange the distribution of opportunity. The reason I focus on investment will become clear later in this section.
Miller (2002, p. 47).
Ackerman and Alstott (2010). In this book Ackerman and Alstott advocate, on the basis of equality of opportunity, a policy of giving every high school graduate a one-time US $80,000 cash payment.
One might suggest that Perpetual FEO can be easily dismissed on account of its being impossible to literally make everyone’s opportunity level at all times. But I reject the claim that unachievable principles of justice cannot be true principles of justice. Here I follow Cohen (2008, chap. 6), Mason (2004), and Swift (2008).
It has been suggested to me that we can finesse this problem by advocating perpetual equality of opportunity to invest alongside whatever other version of perpetual equality of opportunity we want to advance. But this will not work, for two reasons. First, equality can be achieved at any level, so equality of opportunity to invest, on its own, favors an unconstrained freedom to invest no more than it favors an exceptionless prohibition on investment. Second, equality of opportunity to invest, like all other versions of equality of opportunity, cannot perpetuate itself. Therefore, perpetual equality of opportunity to invest requires a ban on activities that augment one’s opportunity to invest—what we might call “meta-investments.” Yet meta-investing, like investing, seems like a good thing.
Dworkin (2000, pp. 74–76).
Rawls recommends fixing this problem through educational policy and laws governing inheritance and bequest (see Rawls 2001, p. 53). (Rawls also makes reference to the use of “taxes” (p. 51), but this doesn’t tell us much since we don’t know what kinds of tax are being recommended.) Such policies do nothing to combat inequalities arising after the “one time”; in fact they do nothing at all to limit how much wealth and power a person can accumulate over a lifetime. This suggests that the only accumulation Rawls considers a threat to background justice is intergenerational accumulation.
Nozick (1974, pp. 160–164). Thanks to Alan Wertheimer for reminding me of the relevance of Nozick’s example.
Dworkin (2000, pp. 87–88).
In fairness to Dworkin, he was assuming for simplicity that the people among whom goods were to be distributed were all adults. What he objected to was one-time equality of resources among adults.
Chambers anticipates this move, however, and argues that if we say that the egalitarian ideal is overridden in the case of adults then we must refuse to indemnify adults against the choices they made as children whose effects emerge only after the passage of time (Chambers 2009, p. 395). (Chambers offers the example of the choices secondary school students make about which foreign languages to learn.) But this is not the case. If in our actual world we cannot achieve the goal of One-Time FEO without redistributing after the “one time,” One-Time FEO itself recommends intervening after the one time.
Chambers also has a second response, which is that the boundary between the stage of life during which one is properly held responsible for one’s choices and the stage of life when one isn’t is vague (pp. 394–395). This is true but doesn’t undermine the case for One-Time FEO. The distinction on which One-Time FEO relies remains intact, though now we know that that distinction is vague.
Alternatively, if we are firmly committed to the idea that there must be some principle regulating the distribution of opportunities for X, we need to be careful not to assume that that principle should be an egalitarian one. Suppose, for instance, that we believe that the distribution of opportunity for education is a matter of justice. We shouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that what we support is equality of opportunity for education. For instance, Alexander Brown argues that it is unjust that people should have just one chance to get an education (i.e., the chance they have as children to attend school at public expense). What justice requires, Brown argues, is that everyone’s chance for an education should be lifelong. Brown says that this is an argument for equality of opportunity for education. But it is actually an argument for sufficiency of opportunity for education. (See Brown 2006).
Perhaps expressing support for this idea, Rawls says that “those who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin, the class into which they are born and develop until the age of reason,” (2001, p. 44, italics mine).
I set aside cases in which an adult, because of illness or accident, becomes the kind of individual for whom it is not fitting that her choices should affect her opportunity level.
One additional question remains: whether to require fair equality of opportunity among those entering majority at any time, or just among people entering majority at the same time. That is, should we require that the opportunity level of today’s cohort of young adults be equivalent to that of the cohort of young adults 20 years ago? How we ought to answer this question depends in part on how we assign the currency variable, but here’s a preliminary impression. People entering majority today are in competition for many of the same positions as people who entered majority 20 years ago, and it does not seem fair that those entering majority today should, through no effort of their own, have a better (or worse) opportunity to obtain those positions than those who entered majority 20 years ago. Consequently, I’m inclined to interpret the principle as requiring equality of opportunity for those entering majority at any time. But I also think that this is one of the cases where equality of opportunity has to be balanced against other ideals. In particular, we want to allow society to progress, and this includes the opening up of new ways of life. When new ways of life become available in a society, the pool of opportunities expands and thus inter-cohort equality of opportunity becomes unachievable.
Hence Rawls’s comment about the family being a barrier to the realization of fair equality of opportunity. (1971, p. 511).
There are, it should be pointed out, certain social policies targeting adults that are justified by FEO3 directly (as opposed to indirectly via compensatory justice): to ensure that at a given moment in time a group of equally-talented individuals have equal opportunity it is necessary to ensure that no identifiable subset of that group faces future discrimination.
Leisure time might itself be an element of welfare, but this is compatible with its being a determinant of opportunity for welfare. We can say both that simply having free time is good in itself and that having free time gives one the opportunity to engage in activities that are conducive to welfare.
2008, p. 60.
It is also open to Daniels to say that one’s level of opportunity for X just is the extent to which there are barriers in the way of one’s pursuit of X. Alan Goldman, for instance, seems to want to say this (Goldman 1987). But such a view is implausible; certainly one’s level of opportunity to obtain X depends not only on barriers but also on one’s capabilities.
(1971, p. 73).
One might argue that Rawls did not start from a commitment to FEO. One might believe that for Rawls FEO is a true principle of justice because it would be selected in the original position. I have no argument against this interpretation of Rawls. Notice, however, that this interpretation of Rawls strips FEO of its independent moral force. If the parties to the original position would choose FEO, then they would also choose whatever social policies follow from FEO, if only they had the information necessary to figure that out. Ultimately, then, those policies would be justified by whatever justifies the original position.
My answer to the currency question is the same as the answer at which Lesley Jacobs arrives (without ever considering the leveling down objection). Jacobs contends that we ought to equalize the distribution of competitive opportunities (2004, pp. 21–29), where ‘competitive opportunity’ is defined the same way I have defined ‘positional opportunity.’
Brighouse and Swift (2006).
As noted in Richards (1998, p. 70).
It is worth noting, though, that while Rawls’s official position on FEO is that we ought to equalize opportunity for (desirable) jobs and offices, he often speaks as if the currency is much broader. On page 73 of A Theory of Justice, for instance, he portrays FEO as concerning “life chances,” “prospects of success” and “prospects for culture and achievement.”
(2008, p. 60).
Daniels does not make his principle of fair equality of opportunity explicit. My interpretation is based on his latest work, Just Health, and I defend it in Sachs (2010).
A criticism along these lines was first made in Segall (2007).
I go into more detail about this in Sachs (2010).
Did Rawls recognize the limits of FEO, or was it mere coincidence that the two social policies he advocated on the basis of FEO conform to those limits? Surprisingly, the latter appears to be the case. Consider again that key passage from A Theory of Justice in which he first introduces FEO.
[T]hose who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social system, that is, irrespective of the income class into which they are born….The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class. (1971, p. 73)
Here, Rawls says first that individuals’ opportunity should be equal “regardless of their initial place in the social system, that is, irrespective of the income class into which they are born,” and then asserts, “The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.” These two claims are quite different. One says that opportunity level should not be affected by the social class of one’s birth, while the other says that opportunity level should not be affected by one’s social class (full stop, presumably). The unexplained slide from the former claim to the latter suggests that Rawls believed that from the perspective of fair equality of opportunity, it’s all the same. But this, as we’ve seen, is not true.
Almost nothing has been written on this subject. An exception is Andrew Mason’s discussion of equality of opportunity, in which he explicitly incorporates some elements of a sufficiency view into the principle of equality of opportunity (2006, chap. 5). The closest one finds to a clear defense of sufficiency of opportunity is Cavanagh (2003), in which Matt Cavanagh argues that instead of aiming to allocate opportunities for jobs equally we should allocate them so as to ensure that each person has a decent range of choices and thus some control over her life. This sounds like a version of sufficiency of opportunity, and indeed Cavanagh at one point describes it that way (p. 140). It also sounds like something that Rawls, after A Theory of Justice, often included on his list of social primary goods: freedom of movement and free choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities.
Meanwhile, even less has been said about priority of opportunity. Commenting on a section of A Theory of Justice in which Rawls appears to reformulate his ‘fair equality of opportunity’ as a version of priority of opportunity (§46), Thomas Pogge argues that such a reformulation is actually a better fit within Rawls’s overall theory of justice (1989, p. 170).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by an intramural postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health. The ideas contained in this article were presented before audiences there and also at Texas Tech University and Queen’s University. I would like to thank Joe Millum, Alan Wertheimer and Ori Lev for helpful conversation on the topic and for reading previous drafts of the article.
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Sachs, B. The limits of fair equality of opportunity. Philos Stud 160, 323–343 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9721-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9721-6