Abstract

Basic humanitarianism requires that people help those in dire need. "Egalitarian policies" benefit the poor more than basic humanitarianism requires. Egalitarians aim to show that we are morally required to implement egalitarian policies. In doing so they must confront the possibility that we have a moral prerogative to refrain from promoting others' non-urgent ends.

In Chapter One, I argue that luck egalitarianism and prioritarianism fail to adequately address the possibility of such a prerogative and therefore fail to provide compelling support for implementing egalitarian policies.

In Chapter Two, I address Michael Otsuka's left-libertarian position that the prerogative does not apply to the distribution of natural resources and that implementing a fair distribution of natural resources requires implementing egalitarian policies. His arguments provide a compelling egalitarian response to the possibility of the prerogative but go too far, because they sometimes assign persons claims to natural resources in cases in which their claim to those resources depends on their having a prior claim on the labor of others. But Otsuka cannot square this latter type of claim with a plausible notion of self-ownership.

In Chapter Three, I contend that egalitarian arguments that appeal to the significance of government's coercive power to ground a requirement of impartiality fail to respect the value of voluntary participation, a value they champion.

In the final chapter I provide two arguments for the egalitarian claim that well off parties are morally required to grant the bulk of the surplus value of an exchange with poor parties with whom they engage in exchange, or at least out to do so out of decency. First, persons have "standing reason" to aid those who are undeservedly poor, such that if one can do so at no "net cost" to oneself, then one should. Second, in dividing the proceeds of a mutually beneficial exchange with someone who is undeservedly poor, a well off person ought not increase her share at his expense.