Does individual desert matter for distributive justice? Is it relevant, for purposes of justice, that the pattern of distribution of justice’s “currency” (be it well-being, resources, preference-satisfaction, capabilities, or something else) is aligned in one or another way with the pattern of individual desert? -/- This paper examines the nexus between desert and distributive justice through the lens of individual claims. The concept of claims (specifically “claims across outcomes”) is a fruitful way to flesh out the content of distributive justice (...) so as to be grounded in the separateness of persons. A claim is a relation between a person and a pair of outcomes. If someone is better off in one outcome than a second, she has a claim in favor of the first. If she is equally well off in the two outcomes, she has a null claim between the two. In turn, whether one outcome is more just than a second depends upon the pattern of claims between them. -/- In prior work, I have elaborated the concept of claims across outcomes, and have used it to provide a unified defense of the Pareto and Pigou-Dalton axioms. Adding some further, plausible, axioms, we arrive at prioritarianism. -/- Here, I consider the possibility of desert-modulated claims—whereby the strength of an individual’s claim between two outcomes is determined not only by her well-being levels in the two outcomes, and her well-being difference between them, but also by her desert. This generalization of the notion of claims suggests a new axiom of justice: Priority for the More Deserving, requiring that, as between two individuals at the same well-being level, a given increment in well-being be allocated to the more deserving one. -/- If individual desert is intrapersonally fixed, this new axiom, together with a desert-modulated version of the Pigou-Dalton principle, and the Pareto axioms, yields a desert-modulated prioritarian account of distributive justice. Trouble arises, however, if an individual’s desert level can be different in different outcomes. In this case of intrapersonally variable desert, Priority for the More Deserving can conflict with the Pareto axioms (both Pareto indifference and strong Pareto). -/- This conflict, I believe, is sufficient reason to abandon the proposal to make claim strength a function of individual desert on top of well-being levels and differences. If distributive justice is truly sensitive to each individual’s separate perspective—if the justice ranking of outcomes is built up from the totality of individual rankings—we should embrace the Pareto axioms as axioms of justice and reject Priority for the More Deserving. In short: desert-modulated prioritarianism is a nonstarter. Rawls was right to sever distributive justice from desert. (shrink)

Michael Otsuka, Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey have challenged the priority view in favour of a theory based on competing claims. The present paper shows how their argument can be used to recast the priority view. All desert claims in distributive justice are comparative. The stronger a party’s claims to a given benefit, the greater is the value of her receiving it. Ceteris paribus, the worse-off have stronger claims on welfare, and benefits to them matter more. This can account for (...) intuitions that at first appear egalitarian, as the analysis of an example of Larry Temkin’s shows. The priority view, properly understood, is desert-adjusted utilitarianism under the assumption that no other claims pertain. (shrink)

A standard criticism of act-utilitarianism is that it is only indirectly concerned with the distribution of welfare between individuals and, therefore, does not take adequate account of the separateness between individuals. In response a number of philosophers have argued that act-utilitarianism is only vulnerable to that objection because it adheres to a theory of the good which ignores non-welfarist sources of intrinsic value such as justice. Fred Feldman, for example, argues that intrinsic value is independently generated by the receipt of (...) welfare and the degree to which receipt accords with the demands of justice, and that an action is right insofar as it maximizes the sum of both those sources of value. In response it is argued that justicized consequentialism only blocks the objection at the expense of presupposing deontological constraints. In addition, it is argued that the value of justice cannot be explained non-deontically and, therefore, that the proposed theory is not consequentialist all the way down. (shrink)

A desert-sensitive moral theory says that whether people get what they deserve, whether they are treated as they deserve to be treated, plays a role in determining what we ought to do. Some popular forms of consequentialism are desert-sensitive. But where do facts about what people deserve come from? If someone deserves a raise, or a kiss, in virtue of what does he deserve those things? One plausible answer is that what someone deserves depends, at least in part, on how (...) well he meets his moral requirements. The wicked deserve to suffer and the decent do not. Shelly Kagan (2006) has argued that this plausible answer is wrong. But his argument for that conclusion does not succeed. I will show how to formulate a desert-sensitive moral theory (and also a desert-sensitive version of consequentialism) on which this answer is correct. (shrink)

According topositive egalitarianism, not only do relations of inequality have negative value, as negative egalitarians claim, but relations of equality also have positive value. The egalitarian value of a population is a function of both pairwise relations of inequality (negative) and pairwise relations of equality (positive). Positive andnegative egalitarianismdiverge, especially in different-number cases. Hence, an investigation of positive egalitarianism might shed new light on the vexed topic of population ethics and our duties to future generations. We shall here, in light (...) of some recent criticism, further develop the idea of giving positive value to equal relations. (shrink)

It is better when people get what they deserve. So we need an axiology according to which the intrinsic value of a possible world is a function of both how well-off and how deserving the people in that world are. But how should these ?desert-adjusted? values of possible worlds be calculated? It is easy to come up with some qualitative ideas. But these qualitative ideas leave us with an embarrassment of riches: too many quantitative functions that implement those qualitative ideas. (...) In this paper I will select one of these quantitative functions and defend its superiority. (shrink)