No.400159
The arguments in this book might help, OP
>Conservative Maxim 1: Payment according to the value of one’s personal contribution and the contribution of the productive property one owns. The rationale behind the conservative maxim is that people should get out of an economy what they and their productive possessions contribute to the economy. If we think of the goods and services, or benefits of an economy, as a giant pot of stew, the idea is that individuals contribute to how big and rich the stew will be by their labor and by the productive assets they bring to the kitchen. If my labor and productive assets make the stew bigger or richer than your labor and assets, then according to maxim 1 it is only fair that I eat more stew, or richer morsels, than you do. While this rationale has obvious appeal, it has a major problem I call the Rockefeller grandson problem. According to maxim 1 the grandson of a Rockefeller with a large inheritance of productive property should eat 1000 times as much stew as a highly trained, highly productive, hard working son of a pauper – even if Rockefeller’s grandson doesn’t work a day in his life and the pauper’s son works for fifty years producing goods or providing services of great benefit to others. This will inevitably occur if we count the contribution of productive property people own, and if people own different amounts of machinery and land, or what is the same thing, different amounts of stocks in corporations that own the machinery and land, since bringing a cooking pot or stove to the economy “kitchen” increases the size and quality of the stew we can make just as surely as peeling more potatoes and stirring the pot more does. So anyone who considers it unfair when the idle grandson of a Rockefeller consumes more than a hard working, productive son of a pauper cannot accept maxim 1 as the definition of equity. A second line of defense for the conservative maxim is based on a vision of “free and independent” people, each with his or her own property, who, it is argued, would refuse to voluntarily enter a social contract on any other terms. This view is commonly associated with the writings of John Locke. But while it is clear why those with a great deal of productive property in Locke’s imaginary “state of nature” would have reason to hold out for a social contract along the lines of maxim 1, why would not those who wander the state of nature with little or no productive property in their backpacks hold out for a very different arrangement? If those with considerable wherewithal can do quite well for themselves in the state of nature, whereas those without cannot, it is not difficult to see how requiring unanimity would drive the bargain in the direction of maxim 1. But then maxim 1 is the result of an unfair bargaining situation in which the rich are better able to tolerate failure to reach an agreement over a fair way to assign the burdens and benefits of economic cooperation than the poor, giving the rich the upper hand in negotiations over the terms of the social contract. In this case the social contract rationale for maxim 1 loses moral force because it results from an unfair bargain. This suggests that unless those with more productive property acquired it through some greater merit on their part, the income which accrues to them from this property is unjustifiable, at least on equity grounds. That is, while the unequal outcome might be desirable for some other reason such as improving efficiency or economic freedom, it would not be just or fair. In which case maxim 1 must be rejected as a definition of equity if we find that those who own more productive property did not come by it through greater merit.