Ronald Dworkin: Welfare, equality, and disability

A democratic and liberal state bases its political legitimacy on the fact that every citizen, in the public arena, is considered equal to all others. A requirement that philosopher of law Ronald Dworkin calls 'equal concern', equal consideration, precisely, for everyone indiscriminately. In order for this statement, however, not to remain just an abstract statement of principle, it is necessary to go a step further and ask what kind of equality, on the material level, should correspond to equal consideration on the legal level. Would it be sufficient to substantiate the principle of 'equal consideration', for example, to guarantee everyone a bare minimum of those basic goods such as food, housing, medical care? Would it be sufficient even in the face of the fact that that minimum level for some is all they will be able to aspire to, while for others it is only a small part of the goods of services and opportunities they will be able to enjoy? Put another way, is material equality also necessary to ensure full equality of 'interest', or can we be content with policies that aim at a mere reduction of inequality? Dworkin is clear on the point.

In Sovereign Virtue, a work published in 2000, he writes 'Once it is conceded that the affluent members of a community have no obligation of equality towards their disadvantaged fellow citizens, but only that of guaranteeing them a decent minimum standard of living, there is a danger that too much depends on what is meant by a decent minimum standard, and contemporary history suggests that affluent citizens are unlikely to give a generous answer to this question' (p. 3). For this reason, Dworkin concludes, it is essential to focus on a strong criterion of equality and not simply settle for a policy that tends only to mitigate inequalities.

The equality that Dworkin has in mind, we saw in last week's Mind the Economy, is what he calls "equality of resources", to differentiate it from a second idea of equality, "equality of welfare". We begin by analysing this second idea because when reflecting on equality the idea of "equality of welfare" (equality of welfare) is the first meaning that comes to mind, the most immediate and intuitive. Two people are equal, in this sense, if they can enjoy the same level of welfare. The very concept of welfare (well-being) and all the techniques for measuring it have been developed over time by economists precisely to identify the effects of wealth and material resources on people's quality of life. It would make no sense, for example, to try to increase the gross domestic product of our nation if we did not assume that from this increase in wealth there was some increase in the level of wellbeing of citizens. When we consider a person with a disability and one without, to take another example, it comes naturally to us that precisely in order for the former to be considered equal to the latter she is entitled to a greater share of the necessary resources. And this is precisely in order to guarantee her the possibility of overcoming all those obstacles that, because of her disability, prevent her from drawing from the experiences of life a level of well-being similar to that experienced by those without the disability. The disabled person, in order to be equal, will be entitled to more resources through which, for example, to achieve greater ease in mobility, autonomy and interaction. Equality, therefore, should be measured by the yardstick of the well-being they can enjoy and not by the yardstick of the resources they need.

All very intuitive and logical. But what if instead of people's different health conditions we considered their different tastes or expectations or lifestyles? Imagine we have on one side a poet leading a humble and ascetic life and on the other side one of those rich kids who are so successful today on Instagram. For these two people to be equal, they would have to be able to experience the same subjective level of well-being. But for this to be possible they will need a very different amount of resources: a frugal meal for the former will suffice, while the latter will need luxury cars, Dom Perignon and exotic holidays. Would we consider a policy that takes resources away from the poet and gives them to the child to be fair? Would it be consistent with our understanding of the idea of equality? One could get around the problem by trying to find a compromise. One could, for instance, exclude those welfare shares associated with particular tastes or attitudes. One could also decide to consider only certain aspects of the person as important, such as health condition, gender or age. But even if we were able to find this necessary compromise in order to overcome the paradoxical consequences of the equality of well-being, there would still remain a not insignificant problem: what exactly should we mean by 'well-being'. In this regard, Dworkin analyses two major approaches to the subject of well-being. The first concerns the so-called 'success theories' (success theories of welfare). These theories measure welfare on the basis of how well each individual is able to satisfy his or her preferences, tastes and aspirations. Pursuing equality in this sense means proceeding to redistribute available resources until people are equally 'successful' in satisfying their preferences. The second group of theories are called 'conscious-state theories' (conscious-state theories of welfare). Equality according to this second perspective is achieved through forms of redistribution that make people as equal as possible in the enjoyment of certain aspects or qualities of their lives. Like an athlete, for example, who finds satisfaction in exertion who is given the opportunity to train; or a less dynamic book lover who is given the opportunity and time to read while lying on the couch.

To go too deeply into the analysis of the pros and cons of these two groups of theories would take us too far off course. Nevertheless, a few examples may be useful to at least get an idea of the type of argumentation used by Dworkin. Let us begin by considering the theories of success. In this case, the government should proceed, by trial and error, to propose different distributions of resources and should continue until each citizen is as fulfilled as possible with respect to the satisfaction of his preferences. Let us imagine, however, that among these preferences there are also political preferences, as the philosopher calls them. Preferences, that is, which describe a life ideal, a political or social orientation. These preferences have a connection not only with the individual but with his or her view of society as a whole and thus with all other fellow citizens. For some, these preferences may refer to values of equality or solidarity, while others will give more weight to the incompressibility of freedoms. For still others, such preferences may express a racist, or sexist, or homophobic orientation. Here, the existence of these preferences has as an implication - as Dworkin shows - the possibility that people may be deeply dissatisfied with the situation of the society in which they live while being fully satisfied from an individual point of view with all their other non-political preferences. It follows that these people, despite being already satisfied with respect to all their preferences if not because of their political orientations, should receive additional shares of resources as a form of compensation. A homophobe, for example, should be compensated for the inconvenience it causes him to see homosexuals treated like all other citizens. Of course, this paradoxical result can only undermine the foundations of the possibility of constructing resource equality on the basis of theories centred on success and the satisfaction of individual preferences. Let us now consider the second group of theories, what Dworkin calls 'conscious state' theories. In this case, the idea is that people should be equal with regard to what each person considers fundamental from an individual point of view: happiness, satisfaction, fulfilment, meaning, serenity, etc. Dworkin's criticism on this point is that the difference between people with respect to what each person considers important is such that, even if it were possible to promote equality in this respect, they would become unequal in many other even more important respects. "In general," writes Dworkin again in Sovereign Virtue, "pain or dissatisfaction is bad and makes life less pleasant, desirable and valuable. For almost everyone, pleasure or enjoyment of some other form has value and contributes to the desirability of life. Conscious states of some such form, both positive and negative, are components of everyone's conception of the good life, but only as components, because almost no one pursues pleasure alone or chooses to give up something else he values in order to avoid a small amount of pain' (p. 42). Like the athlete who has to train, the student who has to study, or the cinephile who has to leave home and get to the cinema to see the film he or she wants to see. Here Dworkin wants to emphasise that we are not always motivated by extrinsic motivations, that is, we do what we do driven solely by the consequences of our choices. "Even when we enjoy what we do or what we have done," he writes, "we often enjoy it because we consider it valuable, not vice versa. And sometimes in the same way we choose to lead a life that we believe will bring us less satisfaction because in other ways it is a life we believe it is more right to lead' (p. 44).