John Rawls II: Game Time!

Posted: Mon, Apr 6, 2026

Today

  • Rawls on the original position (cont.) [10 min]
  • Original position sim! [45 min]
  • Rawls on the two principles of justice [20 min]
Seven spidermen pointing at one another meme, with the caption “running into one another in the original position”

Original position sim

Rules

  • Groups of 4–5, elect your representative who will speak to the class and vote on behalf of your group.
  • We will vote as a class because we don’t have unlimited time, but you must come to consensus within your group.
  • For simplicity, we will consider only the (global) distribution of wealth and income; if it helps, let it be knowledge that we have agreed in a previous original position to a scheme of equal basic liberties in the image of Rawls’ first principle.
  • Known to us:
    • General facts about human society, such as general principles, laws, and theories of economics, politics, psychology, sociology, biology, etc.; and
    • The desirability of wealth and income as primary goods (= “things that every rational man is presumed to want”).
  • Not known to us:
    • Specific facts about our own society, such as its economic or political situation or arrangement, social safety net, public attitudes towards income and wealth, etc.
    • Our places in society, including our genders, races, sexualities, classes, religions, educations, occupations, families, generations, etc.;
    • Our “fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, [our] intelligence and strength, and the like”; or
    • Our own “conception[s] of the good, the particulars of [our] rational plan of life, or even the special features of [our] psychology such as [our] aversion to riskor liability to optimism or pessimism.”

Choices

You can choose from the following principles, revise them, combine them, or propose your own:

  • Laissez-faire: Wealth and income are to be distributed by the market; government may intervene in the economy only to protect private property.
  • Utilitarianism: Wealth and income are to be distributed in a way that maximizes society’s total utilities in the long term.
  • Equality of resources: Wealth and income are to be distributed evenly.
  • Equality of well-being: Wealth and income are to be distributed in such a way that everyone will enjoy equal well-being.
  • American exceptionalism: Wealth and income are to be distributed in a way that is to the greatest benefit of Americans.
  • Difference principle: Wealth and income are to be distributed evenly unless any deviation from that is to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.

Revelation

Rawls’ two principles of justice (pp. 302–3)

  1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
  2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
    1. to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle; and
    2. attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Lexical priorities:

  • Liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty:
    • a less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberty shared by all;
    • a less than equal liberty must be acceptable to those with the lesser liberty.
  • Fair opportunity is prior to the difference principle:
    • an inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunities of those with the lesser opportunity;
    • an excessive rate of saving must on balance mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship.

Key intuitions:

  • “Luck egalitarianism”: The birth lottery is morally arbitrary and cannot reasonably justify inequality.
  • “Maxmin”: In certain situations, it is most important to avoid the worst outcome.