Rawls says "My career has been the pinkprint When I retire, tell 'em, "Think pink" Pink Friday is the imprint And these b***hes basic, instinct" about Rights

 Rawls’ claim that it is ok for liberties to have unequal worth in a just society is very interesting to me. Rawls states “The inability to take advantage of one's rights and opportunities as a result of poverty and ignorance, and a lack of means generally, is sometimes counted among the constraints definitive of liberty.” This idea is very similar to what Marx articulated when he talks about how if your property right is an empty right then you do not actually have the right. Rawls, however, qualifies this statement and says “I shall not, however, say this, but rather I shall think of these things as affecting the worth of liberty, the value to individuals of the rights that the first principle defines.” He explicitly admits that “the worth of liberty is not the same for everyone. Some have greater authority and wealth, and therefore greater means to achieve their aims. The lesser worth of liberty is, however, compensated for, since the capacity of the less fortunate members of society to achieve their aims would be even less were they not to accept the existing inequalities whenever the difference principle is satisfied.”

When applying this idea to rights like property, the idea seems semi-plausible. If Person A is the most advantaged person in society, and Person B is the least advantaged person in society, Person A’s right to property is worth more than Person B’s, since Person A can secure more property. Person B’s right to property, however, is still worth more than it would have been worth in a society without a formal right to property.

Rawls’ idea becomes less plausible when applying it to legal and political rights due to said rights being zero-sum games. If Person B wants to sue Person A because Person A wronged them, but Person A has more money than B and therefore will evade any lawsuit due to their resources, Person B’s legal right is effectively useless. Person A’s right is clearly worth more than Person B. It does not matter that Person B has more rights than they would in a society without formal rights because even in a society with formal rights, it does nothing for them. Rawls can argue that in a society with formal rights, everyone’s rights are worth more than they would be in a society without formal rights, but it seems like in scenarios with political and legal rights, those rights are worth the same whether they are formally declared or not.

This inequality in the worth of liberty can translate directly into systemic oppression, due to the formal rights of people being used as a justification for their exploitation. If your ability to exercise your rights is more than someone else’s and you can impede the exercise of their rights due to your resources, that is not a society with rights that are worth unequally but rather a society with rampant corruption. You don’t have liberty if your liberty and capacity to exercise it is less than your peer. Liberty necessitates equality, without equality liberty is merely corruption. It is a zero-sum game when it comes to zero sum liberties. This inequality can then result in laws that will systematically oppress people whose rights are worth less – which in society’s case is usually gender minorities, queer people, people of color, and low-income people.

Rawls is correct in that it is good to have equality of formal liberty, but it is not ok to have widely varying capacities to exercise that liberty

 

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