Elizabeth Anderson Vis-A-Vis Egalitarians and

¶ … Elizabeth Anderson vis-a-vis egalitarians and egalitarianism and the same with one of two other authors, those being Dworkin and Cohen. For the purposes of this report, the author will focus on comparing Anderson and G.A. Cohen. Anderson's treatise relative to egalitarianism will be covered first while Cohen will be discussed second and the two will be compared and contrasted as is applicable. Anderson The words offered by Anderson relative to equality and how that topic interrelates with egalitarianism (as well as anti-egalitarianism) starts on page 312 of the relevant text.

Anderson offers a pretty awesome summary of how egalitarians of different stripes think and how this compares to anti-egalitarians. Anderson uses the example of politics on page 312 when she says that "(e)galitarian political movements opposed such hierarchies." She then states that egalitarians support the concept of "equal moral worth" of all human beings regardless of race, gender or any other similar trait as opposed to some anti-egalitarianism ideologies such as caste, class, nationalism and sexism (Anderson, 1999).

Anderson, not long after that, delves into a very important dimension of what defines equality and what does not. On page 313, the subject of "equality of fortune" comes up, which is basically the concept that all people should have an equal amount of a given resource such as wealth, land or some other tangible asset that can be measured.

On page 314, she notes that democratic egalitarians are "fundamentally concerned with the relationships within which gods are distributed, not only with the distribution of the goods are distributed." In other words, rightful and just distribution goods is important includes who gets what as well as who is doing the distribution and how they are doing it. It is also noted that people not be required to "grovel or demean themselves" as a prerequisite to receiving their appropriate share (Anderson, 1999).

As the author of this paper was reading this article, the differentiation between equality of outcomes (e.g. equal wealth, house size, etc.) is not the same thing as an equal opportunity strive (or not strive) to achieve what they want.

Instead of focusing on having everyone with the same "share" (which is simply not possible, if taken to the extreme), perhaps American society should focus more on giving people an equal chance and then letting the people decide if, and to what extent, they wish to take advantage of that opportunity.

In the capabilities approach as stated by Anderson, that author basically says the exact same thing (or at least infers it) on page 318 when it is said that "democratic equality guarantees not actual level of functioning, but effective access to those levels." In short, just because one has the ability to reach a level of functioning does not mean they will automatically get to that point.

Similarly, the second point made later on that page ways that "democratic equality guarantees not effective access to equal levels of functioning but effective access to levels of functioning sufficient to stand as an equal" in the broader society.

The third point, as noted on page 319, buttresses the other two when it says that "democratic equality guarantees effective access to a package of capabilities for standing as an equal over the course of entire life." In other words, people have to progress through the path they choose but they are not forever locked into a path if they make a bad or ill-advised choice (Anderson, 1999).

Anderson focuses her point a bit more on page 319 when she notes that that the capabilities approach to equality allows us to "analyze injustices in regard to other matters besides the distribution" of money and so forth. In other words, looking only at who has what amount of money or land is often (and should not be) the only metric used to ascertain whether someone is equal or not.

The functions of personal choice and freedom dictate that outcomes will necessarily be different based on a great number of different factors and that trying to police equality in such a complex situation is effectively impossible (Anderson, 1999). The great points by Anderson continue on page 320 when she states that the division of "enough" divisible resources can vary a lot based on the social norms relative to a person, a city, a state, a nation or even a particular political ideology which would transcend borders of all sorts.

On the bottom of page 320 and top of page 321, Anderson goes further by saying that people should, as an example, have adequate access to nutrition but this does not mean that all people should get to eat like kings at all meals. For some, a five star restaurant would be the norm or preference while others would be perfectly happy eating at McDonald's. There is nothing inherently wrong with either restaurant example and plenty of people will do one or the other or even both over their lifetimes.

A quote near the end of the Anderson article, as noted on page 336, notes that "people's rights do not depend on arbitrary variations in individual tastes and that people may not claim rights without accepting corresponding obligations" inherent to the demand in question. In other words, people do not have to all get the same amount of resources and in the same format to be equal and the outcomes each person experiences will be dictated by what obligations and prerequisites they satisfy to reach them (Anderson, 1999).

Cohen Cohen clearly takes a different tack, with a much more methodical and scientific approach being used. It is clear from the outset that Cohen is taking in multiple viewpoints and prior points of research, including from Dworkin and Arneson to name a few. Cohen, on page 908, defines someone being exploited as someone who has "bad luck (that) is not the result of a gamble or risk that he could have avoided" through preparation and diligence.

He then makes clear that he feels that distribution of goods not being influenced by "brute luck" and exploitation is a major aim of egalitarians (Cohen, 1989). Cohen openly condemns and otherwise shoots down the conclusions reached by Dworkin at several points early on in the article written. Cohen openly poses the question of what should be actively equalized and what should be left alone, also on page 908.

Cohen makes a great point on page 911 when it is stated that one should "(c)onsider people who convert resources into welfare inefficiently, so that, if welfare is to be equalized, they must be given twice the resources that ordinary converters get." The author of this paper can correlate this to transfers of wealth executed via United States policies like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and so forth.

The upper half of the United States taxpayers (income-wise) pay ALL of the federal income taxes yet the income transfers that are extended to the poorer of Americans do not seem to be helping them much as the expanse between the rich and the poor becomes greater and greater. Some might infer that how the rich would have spent that money had they been allowed to keep it would different greatly (in form and efficacy) than what would happen were it distributed.

This is not to say that the distribution is not righteous or the right thing to do, it is just to say that the outcomes for different people with the same amount of resources would usually not be the same.

That is the point that Cohen is making, as it is stated on that same page that "people whose inefficiency at turning resources into welfare is clearly their own fault" but Cohen also notes that inefficiency is sometimes the result of bad luck but this is not the case all of the time (Cohen, 1989). Cohen goes off on a related tangent, noted in part on page 915, when it is asked whether effort should be rewarded or not.

Cohen concedes that not all effort should be rewarded but that it is perhaps specious (if not wrong) to not ever reward effort regardless of whether it is noble or not and suggesting as such is perhaps less than wise. Cohen also makes a very prescient point when it is discussed that some people are widely bothered by colder weather (Cohen uses Great Britain as an example, as noted on page 920) but other people are either indifferent or love cooler to colder weather.

Given such a huge variance in something that is experienced by all people (weather), it is perhaps not all that simple to define equality of outcomes based on preference rather than survival or avoiding exploitation (Cohen, 1989). A similar example is noted on page 923 when the example of a person who would love to do photography but can't afford it and a fisherman that can afford his hobby and does it happily.

If both hobbies cost the same, one could perhaps make an equality argument but they most certainly do not cost the same. If one were to argue that both should have the opportunity to engage in their hobby, the question becomes how one deals with the fact that money allocated to the fisherman would leave that person with a glut as compared to how the photographer would have to spend their allocation.

If the photography cost $100 and the fishing cost $20, both would have to be given $100 to allocate the same amount of money but the fisherman would be left with $80 after everything was paid for while the photographer would be broke. One might suggest giving $20 to the fisherman and $100 to the photographer, but Cohen notes that the question of "cost of taste" cannot be removed from this argument. The Cohen article is concluded by.