Political Ideas, Their Policies and Ramifications - Essay Example

Political Ideas, Their Policies and Ramifications Significance of equality in each theory The significance of equality under free market moralist occurs if neither of the involved parties physically force or threat the other party to give goods or service. Rather, the exchange should be out of good will leading to satisfaction of both parties hence equity. According to the theory, Noznick confesses the fact that force and threat limit human being is becoming equal as a far as exchanges between the two parties and therefore, for people to be fair they have to avoid exercising threats and force to others. According to Noznick, equality comes in when people are able to get what they are able from any free exchange. According to this theory, one cannot have more than what they get through free exchange. This is undermining the principle of equality. Consider a person who inherits property from their parents, the Noznick’s will argue that such a person will never have more that the inheritance they got which inhibits equality. As to conclusion, equality it free market moralist enables people not to exercise force and threats to others. Also, it gives people the ability to go beyond their potential and do more than they ‘deserve’. Finally, it enable people do what is morally and permissible by society. Through the theory of Justice and Fairness (Rawls), one understands that equity is very fundamental to a person. His first principle, liberty principle, asserts that equality enables people have equal rights and freedom to basic liberties like personal belongings and as a result the government has no power and authority to remove people from them since everyone is equal. This can be summarized in Rawls claim “each person has equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties.” Rawls’ second principle states that “a society cannot arrange variations to make the most of the share of the least advantaged whilst not permitting access to particular offices or positions (Thomson, 6).” this is to say that when people exercise equity, they are able to access certain job position that would have been impossible to get with inequality. Equality therefore enables people have access to equal opportunities. The theory suggests that people should be given different opportunities to enable them to grow and equally exploit their natural endowed capabilities like talents. The capability approach people of different capabilities: gender, age, education level among others should be empowered to do things that are difficult to do given these people’s current status. Capabilities that people can have include ability to live old age, ability to do business and ability to participate in political activities. The question is then how is capability measured in an individual? This approach utilizes five components for measuring capabilities through which the importance of equality will be derived. First assessment is the ability of a person to convert resources into valuable activities. Different people have different capabilities of transforming resources into useful finished products. If equality does not exist, society will be subdivided into many divisions. Equality therefore comes in and ensures that people are having equal capabilities to transform resources into valuable finished products. The second component is the measure of the degree of happiness that comes from satisfaction of accomplishing different activities. Equality, according to this approach, enables all people exhibit similar happiness due to accomplishments of their tasks. By giving people equal chances to do things; they accomplish their goals hence become happy. For people to have equal capabilities in achieving their goals there is need to balance materialistic and non-materialistic factors, which is a fundamental importance of equality in this approach. 2. Which theory is the most defensible and why egalitarian The theory that is most defensible is the capability approach theory. This section will critically analyze all theories with their weakness in order to proof this argument. Robert Nozick’s libertarian framework is not the most defensible because to some extent, it allows larger differences in wealth, welfare, utility and holdings of primary goods of different individuals. Nozick’s framework is not merely non-equal, for it suggests equality of a given focal variable, even though it permits for variation on other variables. The same can be said about the proficiency benchmark. Even in the utilitarian method of making the most of the sum-total of the utilities, equality is present (Thomson, 3). Understand that when emphasizing the criterion of proficiency, utilitarianism puts into consideration the total sum of utility space. This makes it possible for inequalities to spring up arise between the utilities of different individuals, since the objective is not to balance them, but to make the most of their sum: if the utilities’ distribution that maximizes general utility is a non-free one, the goal of maximizing the sum will lead to variation at the level of individual utilities. Nevertheless, in this utilitarian method the free feature is present in the weights attached to each individual in the maximization of the utilitarian objective function. This occurs because each individual’s utility function is supposed to have an equal weight in the sum-total. As a result, in utilitarianism the criterion of equality runs correspondingly to the criterion of efficiency, but both are applied to different spaces: while the last applies to total utility, the previous applies to the weights of each individual utility function in the objective general utility function to be maximized. This is to say that equality does not happen at the level of individual utilities, but with respect to the weights of each individual in the objective general utility function. Rawls’s maximin criterion, on the other hand, stresses the significance of maximizing an index of primary goods of the “worst-off” individual. But when deciding on a specific distribution of primary goods, people are supposed to be under a “shroud of ignorance”, and thus they have no understanding of which position they will end up in the selected social arrangement. In this framework, even though the principle applied to the space of “primary goods” is the “maximin” (and not equality), equality exists in the fact that the person can end up in any position of this social organization, that is, and no honored place is guaranteed a priority. On the other hand, the “maximin” principle is to some degree free, for to maximize the situation of the “worst-off” individual in every occasion reveals a concern with those who suffer the most from inequality. In this sense, the “maximin” principle to some degree resolves maximization of something with equality. Many scholars have however criticized the maximin principle, arguing that if an individual would use such principle in real life circumstances, such behavior would culminate to irrational conditions (for instance, in comparing some condition A which holds much superior opportunities than condition B apart from one situation that can happen with an insignificant likelihood, but is not as good as any other case in both A and B, the maximin principle will lead to choose B), such a scenario can never happen in real life and if it does, it leads to inequality. The capability approach suggests the space of capabilities as the suitable space, or focal variable, for evaluating equality. Competing methods to fairness and well-being, both within political philosophy and welfare economics, contrast by recommending other spaces in which to evaluate equality, and other spaces combined with supplementary criteria (Thomson, 10). This is the indispensable difference between the capability approach, as a human development prototype, and the other opposing approaches that exist in the literature like Noznick’s and Rawls frameworks. As to conclusion, theories of justice can productively be seen in terms of: a principle; and a space to which this principle is applied. In addition, equality is a principle that is comprehensively present applied to some “focal variable”, while other principles applied to different spaces or variables are not mismatched with equality being the principle for another given variable. 3. Implications of capabilities approach framework This approach is not only good at designing policies, but it also determines how people are being affected by the already established policies. If this approach therefore will make new policies, then they should not be restricted to governmental or state-induced policy. The policy should incorporate other organizations like NGO’s, families, self-organized community groups and interest groups. In doing so, it will be very difficult for a locally organized organization to be accused of paternalism or unjustified distributions. This approach, on the well-being and development of people, makes it clearly that it is still undergoing developments in order to address several foundational problems. However, many scholars and other literatures have confessed that this framework speaks to the heart of people. As a result, it is to the expectations of many that the framework will undergo major changes to make it a mature paradigm for well-being, development and social policy. This will however not come easy as it will require a lot of efforts and work from scholars from different fields, societal policy makers and other actors within the society. With all these, the limitations and possibilities of the framework will be identified and be made better. Works Cited Thomson, David. Political Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Print. Read More