Marxism At Yale

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Nov 18 18:18:47 PST 2001


"Egalitarianism Against the Veil of Ignorance"

BY: JOHN E. ROEMER

Yale University

University of California, Davis

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=285762

Paper ID: Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1328

Date: September 2001

Contact: JOHN E. ROEMER

Email: Mailto:john.roemer at yale.edu

Postal: Yale University

Department of Political Science

Box 208301

New Haven, CT 06520-8301 USA

Phone: 203-432-5249

Fax: 203-432-6196

ABSTRACT:

J. Rawls and R. Dworkin have each used veils of ignorance to

justify equality (Rawls) or to compute what equality entails

(Dworkin). J. Harsanyi has also derived a distributive ethic

from a veil of ignorance argument, which, although not

egalitarian, is believed by Harsanyi to be not excessively

inegalitarian.

Harsanyi's analysis does not determine a unique social choice

function, but rather a family of such functions. Here, by

appending more information to Harsanyi's environment, and an

Axiom of Neutrality, I uniquely determine a social welfare

function by extending Harsanyi's argument. I show that this

function is strongly inegalitarian, in that it recommends

resource transfers from disabled to able individuals.

Some concluding remarks are offered against using the veil of

ignorance in studying the distributive ethics.

Keywords: Harsanyi, Dworkin, Rawls



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