25. Do we Deserve our Good Fortune?

IN 1971, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, by John Rawls, became an immediate bestseller, with more than four-hundred-thousand copies sold—a phenomenal feat for a book dealing with economics, morality, and philosophy. As a result of this book and his other writings, Rawls, an egalitarian, is considered to be the most influential moral theorist of the twentieth century. While his writings have garnered much criticism, especially among libertarians, many agree that he rekindled what had become a fading interest in political and moral philosophy.

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls claims that one does not deserve the fruit of one’s own innate talent. He contends that those born into the world with natural advantages over others do not deserve the financial benefits resulting from those advantages because those advantages are “accidents of natural endowment.” But what he seems to miss is causality: If you threaten to take away the fruit, someone’s innate talent and skill will not bother to blossom. Besides, if one does not deserve the fruit of his own talent, it hardly follows that someone else deserves it.

If Michael Jordan does not deserve the wealth that comes from his innate talent, size, and athleticism, what can be said about all the fans who have gained wealth (well-being) as a result of being able to watch him play basketball? Rawls neglects a key economic principle that when one person earns wealth, another must gain wealth. Jordan did not become wealthy by playing basketball; he became wealthy by giving millions of people the pleasure and benefit of watching him play basketball. When one buys a ticket for admission to a game or the theater, one perceives the pleasure gained from the experience to be greater than the cost of the ticket. No matter how lucky one may be in earning millions, those earnings require the granting of benefits to others of an amount greater than the dollars received by the so-called “lucky” one.

Whether one simply stumbles upon a cure for cancer or labors an entire lifetime to find it, the beneficiaries are no less the fortunate recipients of the utility of that discovery. Denigrating someone’s deservedness based on good fortune is a pointless and childish enterprise. Rawls misguides us with his “difference principle,”⁴⁴ inequality is neither justified nor unjustified—it is simply natural and not subject to justification. As discussed earlier, those with special talents and skills are society’s most valuable assets. Such inequalities are to be treasured, not disparaged. Any political policy aimed at justifying inequalities between the lesser advantaged and the greater advantaged would do injustice to both groups, but particularly to those who are the lesser advantaged.

Those seeking the greatest sustainable financial benefits for the least well-off group can only achieve their goal by allowing free markets to naturally bring all human beings to greater levels of well-being. By the nature of that process, those who are the least well-off will gain from those who are better off. This process will also grant the least well-off the most favorable opportunity to attain the wealth represented by those who are most well-off.

⁴⁴Rawls argues that self-interested rational persons behind the “veil of ignorance” would choose two general principles of justice to structure society in the real world: (1) Principle of Equal Liberty: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. (2) Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.