Reference no: EM131573465

A just society can be designed under the Veil of Ignorance. Imagine the lawmakers who write the laws but are completely unaware of any qualities they have, including race, gender, intelligence, wealth, health, even drive or ambition. They have also no clue about the position they are going to have in a society, family background, or wealth.

Surely they would have made sure the laws they would have written would make it impossible for anybody to starve, be without a place to live, a college to attend, medical care, freedom from discrimination on whatever grounds.

So the principles they would generate would be:

Firstly, and obviously, Equality Principle which would guarantee equal freedoms of expression, religion, and rights to life, property, etc.
Secondly, Difference Principle. Rawls is nor a communist. He does not want everybody to be paid the same. People would still be able to make it rich, but they would have to share with the poor. Whatever the welfare system there is and however it is abused, its still inadequate to prevent homelessness and child starvation. There would be no homeless nor starving people under Rawls' system of justice. Why, because the lawmakers would write the laws to prevent these, as they themselves would not want to find themselves homeless.

The objections to John Rawls theory of justice are first about the incentives, second about the desert, and third about self-possession. Then Rawls has counter objections to these objections.

Objection 1: Incentives are important because they motivate people to work harder, invest money, and strive for achievement.
Counter-objection: The Incentives will remain-the rich are still going to be rich, even if the 75% of their income would go to get other American citizens out of poverty and provide for the starving children. Say, if Bill Gates makes 10 million dollars, a year, he would end up keeping 2.5 mil a year, and nobody would starve or have to live on the street. Wouldn't he still have an incentive to work, hey, its 2.5 millions a year.

Objection 2: The rich are deserving to keep their money because they work hard for it, so they deserve it.
Counter-objections:

a) other people might work just as hard, or even harder, and still might not be able to make ends meet.

b) the rich became rich because the society rewarded the talents they happened to have, and both facts are a matter of luck. Even hard work, motivation, enterpreneurial drive, not to mention smarts, intelligence, and creativity depend on the genes and upbringing, so nobody who happens to have these qualities can say to deserve them, but to be lucky to have chanced upon them.

Objection 3: We possess ourselves and thus our time, take away from us in the form of taxes ammounts to slavery.
Counter-objection: Self-possession is a very vague and undefined concept. We might not actually possess ourselves fully, like we possess our cars.

"Taxation is like slavery". Seriously? Slavery? Think about it.

Question to answer:

What things in our country would be different if the congressmen and senators legislated behind the Veil of Ignorance. As we know, now they are all too aware of their status and special interests groups that influence them. Take all that out of the equation, what kind of laws would they pass, what would have changed?