http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074780 What rules govern a “just society”? Political philosopher John Rawls believed that a thought experiment known as the “original position” provided the answer this question. The experiment runs like this: if you were given the power to choose how society was to run, but you weren’t to know what what place you would eventually take in that society (that is, you had to decide not knowing whether you would be rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, young or old), what rules would you choose? Rawls felt that you would decide on a society in which: (1) individuals were granted every possible freedom compatible with freedom for all; and (2) economic inequalities did exist, but only if they were of benefit to the worst-off. In other words, you’d attempt to maximise the minimum.
Jim Holt here discusses the expected value objection to this argument, which I suspect is related to the observation that an individual’s objectives and those of a society often conflict. For example, though one’s death, or the death of one’s family is (usually) the worst thing that can happen to an individual, it’s by no means the worst thing that can happen to a society. Practically every day a society is given the chance to save a life; instead it fritters money away on sports stadiums, zoos, galleries… 10:41
