people (immigrants) washed up on a desert island with abundant resources and no
native population. The immigrants have equal personal resources (circumstances),
but differing tastes. They endorse the principle that no one is antecedently entitled
to any of the resources, and instead they shall be divided equally between them.
They also accept what Dworkin calls the ‘envy test’: ‘no division of resources is an
equal division if, once the division is complete, any immigrant would prefer someone
else’s bundle of resources to his own bundle’ (Dworkin, 2000: 67). A problem,
however, emerges which evades the envy test: the bundles might not be equally
valuable to each person given differing tastes. In other words, each person gets an
identical bundle of goods, but because tastes differ they may not attach equal value
to them – they do not envy other people’s bundles, but nonetheless they would
rather have a different bundle.
To deal with this problem the immigrants set up an auction. Each immigrant is
given an equal set of clamshells, to be used as currency. We assume the goods have
been created, but it is open to any immigrant to propose new goods. The auction
proceeds, with prices set and bids made, until all markets have been cleared – all
goods are sold – and the envy test passed. Of course, individuals might be lucky or
unlucky in their tastes. If there is high demand for goods which are in short supply
then the price of those goods will be high. Dworkin argues that taking responsibility
for our lives means accepting our tastes, or if necessary adjusting them, and not
expecting that resources will be redistributed to satisfy those tastes (Dworkin, 2000:
69–70). It should be added that the products we bid for can include leisure – if one
person chooses to work 12 hours a day, and another opts for a leisurely four hours,
then the income difference is the price paid by the latter person for eight hours of
leisure. If he were to look simply at the income of the hard worker then he might
feel envy, but the envy test requires a ‘whole life’ comparison: the hard worker may
have lost something by working so many hours a day.
A crucial assumption of the auction is that the participants enter on equal terms- they differ only in their tastes. Resources are equal, meaning we all start with the
same number of clamshells, but our personal resources are also equal: nobody is,
for example, severely disabled. It does not take much reflection to see that people
are not born equal in personal resources, and on the desert island itself it would
not be long before there was an inequality of resources, and the possibility that the
envy test will not be satisfied. Luck will play a part, but Dworkin makes a distinction
between calculated gambles and brute bad luck. You might, for example, take all
reasonable precautions but still contract lung cancer. Alternatively, you may be a
heavy smoker and as a result contract cancer: the smoker took a calculated gamble
and lost (Dworkin, 2000: 74–5).
Since the immigrants on the desert island know luck will play a significant role
in their lives and they are rational in the sense of being prudential – adopting a
‘whole life’ perspective – they will insure themselves against misfortune, such that
among the products for which they bid will be insurance policies. Of course,
individuals are free to buy different policies, but because we assume that risk is
random – let us say the chances of a coconut falling on your head from a great
height is pretty much equal for all individuals – the premiums will be the same for
each person, and so the insurance market will reflect the choices people make. The
problem comes when we introduce identifiable brute luck – that is, we know from
72 Part 1 Classical ideas