00100	ON RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE
00200	
00300	
00400	1. I find Rawlsz' "just society" depressing, mainly because I like
00500	being rewarded according to ability.
00600	
00700	2. The book never considers the existence of more than one society
00800	and so never considers that a society might have to be stable with
00900	regard to some of its members being tempted to emigrate to a society
01000	that rewards them more.  In fact, this is a real question and all
01100	communist ruled societies have emigration control.  Before the
01200	Berlin Wall, East Germany lost 3,000,000 people.  Does Rawls consider
01300	the Berlin Wall a legitimate way of enforcing justice??
01400	Presumably not - so his neglect of emigration stability is a
01500	serious defect.
01600	
01700		Likewise, the reason Harvard pays good salaries is to
01800	attract good people rather than because they deserve the good
01900	salaries.  Is this form of competition considered legitimate??
02000	
02100	3. Who are the worst off??  From context one would suppose that
02200	some social group like uneducated feeble-minded black women is
02300	meant.  A person in the process of dying from a painful disease
02400	is somehow not a candidate for the worst off person.  Why??
02500	Perhaps because it makes "justice as fairness" absurd, because
02600	we could spend half the GNP on entert?inment for the dyiwg
02700	one and alleviate his misery only arifle.  According to
02800	Rawls' theory, we must do this.
02900	
03000	4. When no further expenditure will alleviate the misery of the
03100	worst off, we still may be able to help the second worst off.
03200	The theory says nothing of this.
03300	
03400	5. People almost never adopt the maximin strategy that Rawls
03500	advocates.  The worst that can happen is also an utter
03600	disaster, and people seem to ignore small risks of great
03700	disaster.  Therefore, the proposition that it would
03800	be chosen in the "original position" also seems dubious
03900	
04000	6. The word "goods" is used 
04100	inconsistently.  Sometimes it is used to mean any good thing
04200	that can happen or good state like self respect, and other
04300	times it is used in connection with the concept of allocation.
04400	It is not clear that self respect can be allocated.
04500	or given.  To a first approximation, it depends on what the
04600	person does and cannot be given to him by others.
04700