Your patient has fractured the distal part of his radius (Co…
Questions
Yоur pаtient hаs frаctured the distal part оf his radius (Cоlles fracture). What is the nickname for the clinical presentation common in distal radius fractures?
Jоhn Rаwls аnd Mоdern Liberаlism: Updating the Argument In the twentieth century, the mоst important philosophical liberal—perhaps the most important political philosopher period—is John Rawls. John Rawls’ approach, even by his own acknowledgment is strongly inspired by the social contract theory of John Locke and Immanuel Kant (a later German liberal who fixed a lot of the problems we discussed with Locke a few weeks ago). Because Rawls’ theory is quite closely related to mainstream classical liberalism, we will spend less time on his particular vocabulary, and more time examining how his modern take on liberalism applies to distributive justice. The chart below compares John Rawls with John Locke and explains many of Rawls’ corrections to problematic parts of Locke’s approach. Locke God exists, and his reason establishes the state of nature. State of nature is historical: a real place that actually existed. Reason is substantive, meaning that it leads directly to moral rules that we should all acknowledge and follow. Lockean Conclusions Differential treatment based on race, religion, gender, sex, etc. is morally wrong. Equality of opportunity is the fundamental principle of economic justice. Rawls Agnostic on the existence of God; human nature (evolution) has given us reason, and we recognize reason in each other. Therefore, we don’t need God to hold the system together, human nature is enough. State of nature is hypothetical: what if we could pick the rules we want? Human reason is instrumental (it’s about getting what we want), but if we begin with the idea that everyone is trying to get the best deal for themselves, we can see that we should all work together to create a fair society (i.e. we can still derive principles of justice that everyone would agree to). Rawlsian Conclusions Differential treatment based on race, religion, gender, sex, etc. is morally wrong. To Rawls this means that state action (including projects of affirmative action) are justified to get to a place where these arbitrary criteria no longer affect persons life chances. Equality of opportunity is the fundamental principle of economic justice. All individuals are entitled by reason to a ‘basic bundle of goods’ such as education, social safety net, etc. to ensure that actual equality of opportunity exist To Rawls, the claim for equality of opportunity also means that decisions about economic policy will be made in order to improve the lives of the least well-off. As all individuals have equal rights by virtue of their shared grounding in human reason, but in the real world some have more opportunity and others less, it is of higher ethical importance to increase the opportunity of those with less. Basically, their claims to opportunity are stronger because they are not as secure in the real world or, put differently, people who are already rich don’t need help achieving equality of opportunity. Finally, Rawls is also explicitly agnostic (that means he doesn’t take a side) on questions of economic theory, especially debates between Keynesianism and neoclassical economics. This is a very important consideration to remember as well. His argument is that it is possible that a more equal society could have greater economic growth (the Keynesian position) or lesser economic growth (the neoclassical position), but that the question of equality of opportunity takes precedence over questions of aggregate growth. Rawls and Economic Justice: The Activity Let’s imagine that we are all in a state of nature (what Rawls calls the “original position”). In the original position you are behind what he calls the “veil of ignorance” meaning that you don’t know if you will end up rich or poor, you don’t know what your race, religion, ethnicity, or gender will be. Rawls is also agnostic (meaning he doesn’t take a side) on questions of economic theory such as which distribution will have more growth, social mobility, etc. You, and the other students in this class will each pick which of the following distributions of wealth our society will have. It’s all up to us! But remember, you don’t know if you will be rich or poor, so when you choose you need to think carefully about your chances of being rich or poor. The chart below breaks down your four choices, by economic status. What I have done is create four distributions of wealth to choose from, broken down by the top 20% of wealth, high-middle 20%, exact middle 20%, middle-lower20%, and the lowest 20%. The top 20% is dark blue, next is orange, then gray, then yellow, then light blue. So, to give you a sense of how these vary, in the distribution with the highest inequality, the top 20% has about 83% of the wealth, whereas the lowest 20% has 2% of the wealth. So basically, in the highest income distribution, there is a 20% chance that you are very wealthy, but an equal 20% chance that you are very poor. The “perfect equality” option is the communist ideal (which in my highly researched opinion hasn’t maybe existed in some very small anarchist-communist commune type places but not much more than that—but I wanted to give you the choice anyways). Notice in this option, all the colors are exactly even because that’s the goal: absolutely perfect equality of wealth. The medium and low inequality options divide a bit more evenly than the high inequality, but in medium inequality the wealthiest 20% still has also 60% of the total wealth, whereas in low inequality the wealthiest 20% has about 33% of the wealth. After you pick the distribution you prefer, there are important questions to brainstorm. There are four distributions above: one is the actual amount of economic inequality in the United States, one is what most Americans think our economic inequality is, one is what they want it to be, and one is ‘perfect’ equality of outcome (Communism NOW!). These are the REAL numbers (slightly rounded because I had to re-do the chart myself). Come up with a list of scientific RESEARCH QUESTIONS and MORAL CLAIMS that you would want to factor into your analysis (i.e. think about those questions Rawls doesn’t want to!): What specific policies would then be mandated by this analysis? What would we have to do to get there?