• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. So to start you may want to read up on Rawls’ theory of Justice as Fairness and how he uses the original position thought experiment (imagining society from behind the veil of ignorance).

      Robert Nozick wrote a critique of Rawls’ theory: that it was a “patterned but not historical” principle (that it gives no moral weight to who produces what) and that “liberty upsets patterns.” That is to say, if you start with an equal society where everyone has the same resources you can’t expect it stay that way if everyone is free to exchange those resources with each other. Just like in the game of Monopoly, you’ll see winners and losers after enough time has passed.

      This is all to say that the big problem for Rawls is that his theory is a “time slice theory.” It is very strong at describing how a society can be made to be just at a single moment in time but it fails to account for how that state of affairs can be preserved long-term without restricting people’s liberty. One can argue that the game of Monopoly is just according to Rawls’ theory because everyone starts with identical resources at the beginning!

      • brbposting
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        2 days ago

        Wow. That’s super interesting. I’ll have to check out these links. Thank you very much for the detailed reply!