the day someone is born, and in fact even before they are conceived, that they will
have a poor natural endowment.
To deal with this problem we agree to randomise risk. Although Dworkin does
not use the term, in effect he argues for a veil of ignorance, albeit one much thinner
than Rawls’s: an individual knows her talents but does not know the price those
talents command in the market (Dworkin, 2000: 94). Dworkin wants the agent to
know enough about her talents and preferences to make judgements about the
appropriate level of insurance cover to buy. The difficulty is that even when we are
denied knowledge of the price our talents can command, the insurance premiums
can never match the income a talented person will acquire through the exploitation
of her talents. Not everyone can earn as much as J.K. Rowling earns and although
buying an insurance policy which will pay out the millions that she has earned may
at first sight seem the rational approach, further reflection shows it to be irrational.
Let us assume that Rowling is in the 99th income percentile, but at the time she
selects an insurance policy she does not know she will earn $X million per year –
imagine she is returned to the state of being a struggling writer trying to get her
first book published. We also assume that once the veil is lifted the actual payout
will equate to what the market can bear and that she will be obliged to pay whatever
premium she has agreed. If the market can bear coverage to the 30th percentile and
Rowling has taken out a policy which covers her to the 90th percentile, and she
remains a struggling writer on, let us say, the 35th percentile, then she will be far
worse off than if she had opted for a cheaper policy. Importantly, the wealthy
Rowling (on the 99th percentile) is also worse off, as she has to keep writing the
Harry Potter books just so as to cover her premiums (Dworkin, 2000: 98). The aim
of Dworkin’s argument is to calculate how much income should be transferred
across classes and he does not suggest that poor people have to pay the premiums,
but in order to work out how much wealth should be transferred to agents behind
his veil we must assume they will be obliged to pay up. The basic problem is that
no insurance system will fully compensate a person for lacking talent, or, more
accurately, lacking marketabletalents.Summary
We have surveyed a number of principles of equality, and sought to put them into
some kind of order. A coherent defence of equality requires a number of things: (a)
clear distinctions between different kinds of equality; (b) recognition that any
principle of equality must explain what is being equalised, because equality in one
sphere (along one metric) can result in inequality in another; (c) a scheme for
connecting different principles of equality together; (d) an explanation of how
equality fits with other political principles, such as freedom and efficiency. One of
the tasks of a theory of justice is to connect and order different political values and
principles, so the discussion in the next chapter follows directly from this one.Chapter 3 Equality 73