Derek Parfit.
“Equality or Priority?” in The Ideal of
Equality, edited by Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams (Palgrave, 2000). Group 2
Iwao Hirose.
“Sufficientarianism,” Chapter 5 of Egalitarianism
(Routledge 2014). Group 3
Michael Otsuka.
“Self-Ownership and World-Ownership,” Part One of Libertarianism Without Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2005). Group 1
I found sufficientarianism to be a very convincing theory (as I'm sure others in the class did as well). However, Prof Robichaud brought up one downside to sufficientarianism, that money often equates to political power, so those who have the ability to generate large amounts of unchecked wealth would have a disproportionately large impact on politics than those left at the bottom. Yet I believe that the government could be restructured to eliminate this problem (the American government has certain measures to help keep this problem in check - however, it is debatable how effective it is in doing this). I am interested in hearing any other objections that people in this class may have with sufficientarianism (as I'm sure many exist). Not looking for a fight, just interested in hearing counterpoints.
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