Should-Read: T.M. Scanlon: Giving Desert Its Due

Should-Read: To paraphrase Rawls: Nobody deserves the benefits that flow because their native endowments and luck have given them talents and resources are hard to duplicate and help produce things that rich people have a strong jones for. According to Rawls, the most that is true is that it is useful to us all to pretend that the rich and talented deserve the benefits that flow because, etc. If you want to contest Rawls here, IMHO, you need to specify why people actually deserve to profit from having chosen the right parents and the right environment which formed them when young and from luck.

Now you can do so. You can say:

1. Those with the right parents and the right environment when young and with luck do things that are pleasing to the gods, and since we are in gift-exchange relationships with the gods, they respond by providing us benefits. But then you immediately fall into the pit of Euthyphro..
2. Those with the right parents and the right environment when young and with luck are advancing humanity’s telos to become as clever and strong as possible–are evolutionarily superior. But this is worse off than (1): we are not even in a gift-exchange relationship with humanity’s telos
3. Those with the right parents and the right environment when young and with luck “deserve” benefits because they are strong and clever, and justice is nothing but a word that the strong and clever use to disorient and disorganize the weak so that the strong can do what they will while the weak suffer what they must.

You see the trouble we are in? “Desert” is not a concept that can be deployed to clarify thought.

But on what principles should we act? My view is that the height of moral philosophy is attained by Bill and Ted, with their injunction: “Be excellent to each other!”

T.M. Scanlon: Giving Desert Its Due: “Here the relevant critical point was made by Rawls…

…in his remark that “no one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments”…. This remark is often read as presupposing the idea that a desert basis must itself be deserved. However, this is not the correct interpretation. Rawls’ point is not that no one deserves to have endowments that are scarce (although that may be true), but rather that no one deserves any special reward simply because his abilities are scarce–that mere scarcity is not a desert basis at all. This is not to deny that institutions that assign premium prices to scarce talents and resources may be justifiable, perhaps on grounds of greater efficiency. If such an institution is justified in this way, and is just, then individuals with scarce talents are entitled to the rewards that this institution provides. This, however, is not a desert-based argument but rather an argument for institutional entitlement, based on a prior conception of justice.