Rawls points out that in fact most of the reasons people fall ahead or behind have little, if anything, to do with our individual merits. They are “morally arbitrary” at best, and we could even go further and suggest the project of overt historical prejudice and tyranny at worst. Firstly, many people are initially disadvantaged by the arbitrary distribution of “natural talents” that results from a genetic lottery. Some are born with serious physical disabilities, while others are born with a predisposition for athletic excellence. Secondly, people may endure serious trials growing up within difficult social circumstances which inhibit their life prospects. These can range from having an inferior diet and education, to living in sub-par housing or even having parents unable or unwilling to read to them.
Later in life, it is no coincidence that more students at Ivy League institutions come from the top 1 per cent than the bottom 60. And thirdly, even if we have natural talents we had the social opportunities to develop, being able to profit from those depends a great deal on them being valued by society. If I happen to have a genetic gift for playing hockey and practice 50 hours a week, that will only turn out to profit me if I happen to be born in Canada rather than South Sudan. Taken all together, the moral arbitrariness and historically determined injustices affecting marginalized groups gives the lie to the possessive individualist account of merit in a market society.
Not only is a meritocracy morally undesirable, it could never even exist given the enduring reality of moral arbitrariness. Consequently Rawls thinks it is long past time we abandon it as another quaint mythology, rather like the Medieval notion that God appointed lords and kings to their place because they happened to be more righteous and effective. Instead of asking what do unequal people deserve, we should ask what it required for those whose lives are just as real as our own to thrive? Critics like Thomas Sowell contend that this is fanciful; a yearning for the state to achieve a kind of “cosmic justice” between fundamentally unequal people. Rawls’ counter claim is that inequality is indeed both natural and socially prevalent. These are simply the facts of our world today. But what makes a society just or unjust aren’t the stark realities it faces, but how it deals with them:
We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action.
In Justice as Fairness Rawls doubles down on the egalitarian dimensions of this argument, by adding a further and intriguing twist. He argues that not only would possessive individualist classical liberalism and even welfarism be inadequate in how much attention they paid to the last well off. They would be politically illegitimate since a concentration of property in the hands of a wealthy elite would have the effect of ensuring political and economic power rests largely in their hands. This would result in the state ultimately working in their interest first and foremost, rather than for all. Let alone the least well off, who would have very little political and economic power given their situation at the bottom of an unjust social hierarchy. They would not enjoy “fair value” from their “equal” political liberties, since in reality some people’s “liberties” would matter a great deal more than others.
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