Pre-proofed version. The published version of the paper can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-018-9966-9. Volacu, Alexandru, Dumitru, Adelin Costin (2018, OnlineFirst), " Assessing Non-intrinsic Limitarianism", Philosophia, DOI: 10.1007/s11406-018-9966-9. Assessing Non-intrinsic Limitarianism Abstract: In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. Keywords: distributive rule; limitarianism; political equality; responsibility; urgent needs. 1 1. Introduction The theme of distributive justice has been a prevalent one, perhaps more so than any other topic, in contemporary analytical political philosophy. While the area of contention related to distributive justice is, therefore, quite broad, two questions have traditionally stood out as central for the construction of any theory belonging to this field of inquiry: (1) what should be the unit of measurement for distributive justice (i.e. the metric question) and (2) how should we distribute whatever we consider to be the metric of distributive justice (i.e. the distributive rule question). In the case of the first question, standard responses are that opportunity for welfare (Arneson 1989, 2000a; Knight 2009), primary goods (Rawls 1971), resources (Dworkin 1981; Rakowski 1993), capabilities (Sen 1979; Nussbaum 2000) or access to advantage (Cohen 1989) should play the role of metric. In the case of the second question, standard responses include egalitarian views as well as more recent challengers such as prioritarianism (Parfit 1997; Arneson 2000b) or sufficientarianism (Frankfurt 1997; Crisp 2003) as well as other rules that are not pattern-sensitive1. In this paper we seek to assess a novel view - proposed as an alternative to these established pattern-sensitive distributive rules - recently advanced by Ingrid Robeyns (2017) under the label of limitarianism. In brief, the limitarian view claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich, where this idea is defined in connection to the level of income at which individuals can attain a life of maximal flourishing in terms of material goods. Subsequently, we intend to examine the two principal arguments offered by Robeyns in defence of limitarianism and the plausibility of the two versions of limitarianism that these arguments generate. The paper is structured as follows: in the next section we provide a brief summary of Robeyns's proposal, focusing on its core features as well as on the arguments substantiating the limitarian view. In the third section we engage in a deeper examination of the democratic argument and the strong limitarian view which this argument gives rise to, arguing that we should ultimately reject strong limitarianism since it is both unable to achieve its primary goal of achieving a full instantiation of the value of political equality and is also undermined by further undesirable implications. In the fourth section we assess the argument from unmet urgent needs and the weak limitarian view which this argument gives rise to, arguing that we should endorse this view, albeit in an amended fashion which also takes into consideration responsibility constraints. 1 See Anderson (2010: 82) for the distinction between pattern-sensitive rules of distributive justice and patterninsensitive ones. 2 2. The limitarian view The limitarian view stems from what Robeyns regards as an undertheorized area of political philosophy: "given the sizeable philosophical literature on poverty and the position of the worst-off, it is surprising that so little contemporary theorizing on justice has focused on the upper tail of income and wealth distribution" (Robeyns 2017: 2). Apparently, Robeyns is seeking to turn the sufficiency view on its head. Sufficientarians are interested in the beneficiaries of redistributive processes, specifying a threshold of relevancy and attempting to bring as many individuals as possible to that threshold or close to that threshold. Limitarians, by contrast, are primarily interested in the duty-bearers of redistributive processes, trying to identify the level at which individuals have "more resources than are needed to fully flourish in life" (Robeyns 2017: 1) and claiming that it is morally impermissible to own more than that amount. More specifically, Robeyns' project centres on the burdens placed on those who have more than enough, where enough is to be understood in light of a measurement of affluence that she calls the power of material resources2 (Robeyns 2017: 18-24). Robeyns describes limitarianism as: (1) a partial account of distributive justice, (2) belonging to the political, not moral, realm, (3) which is built at the level of non-ideal theory and (4) which relies on an instrumental justification. First of all, the partial character of her view originates in the fact that it does not address what "distributive justice requires for those who are not maximally flourishing" (Robeyns 2017: 1). Nonetheless, limitarianism does make normative prescriptions for those below the riches line, even though it is not committed to any specific account concerning the duties of those individuals. More specifically, limitarianism, at least in this original version, is based on a couple of assumptions that belong to the realm of the theory of ideals3: namely, that we have a prima facie duty to meet urgent needs and that political equality is an important moral value. It could then be considered that limitarianism is devised via the prior-principle strategy of argumentation described by Sen (1979), where principles are evaluated in light of the more fundamental values they 2 As we will discuss in depth in what follows, capabilities constitute the proper metric of justice in Robeyns's construal of limitarianism, with the power of material resources representing a proxy for assessing individual capability sets. 3 We appeal here to the distinction drawn by Hamlin and Stemplowska (2012) between the theory of ideals and theories of institutional design (further consisting of a continuum of ideal and non-ideal theory). The theory of ideals seeks to identify, specify the content of values and study their interplay, while theories built at the level of institutional design seek to identify and specify the content of social arrangements. 3 instantiate. We could, thus, rephrase Robeyns’s original claim as follows: limitarianism is a partial doctrine since it does not necessarily address what justice requires of those below the riches line, though it has something to say about what justice requires for the worse off. Secondly, limitarianism is defended "as a political doctrine, though this does not prevent the simultaneous development of a culture of giving among the very affluent that do not qualify as rich" (2017: 32). Thus, Robeyns leans towards an institutional conception of justice, in opposition to an interactional one. Under such a conception, moral values should not be promoted (solely) through individual action, but (mainly) through careful institutional crafting (for the distinction, see Murphy 1998 or Pogge 2000). The coercive actions which the state could take in order to enforce limitarian policies therefore represents a central concern of Robeyns, since viewing limitarianism simply as a moral doctrine would entail that the duties held by individuals might actually never be discharged, given the fact that they are voluntary. Thirdly, her view is constructed at the level of non-ideal theory, an aspect derived from her concern with current empirical circumstances. Namely, Robeyns argues that limitarianism is a plausible view for the present state of the world, which features widespread poverty at a global level, individuals who would seize the opportunity to gain more political influence than their peers if that opportunity were open to them etc., with no reference to the plausibility of limitarianism in a highly idealised state of the world. The non-ideal character of her theory is deeply interwoven with the instrumentalist outlook that she advances in favour of limitarianism. Thus, Robeyns does not consider that limitarianism is warranted because there is something inherently morally wrong with being rich 4, but rather because the distributive implications of limitarianism are instrumental in instantiating two distinct important values: that of political equality and that of a universal satisfaction of urgent needs. The strategy employed by Robeyns is to claim, in turn, that limitarianism is essential for the pursuit of these values, through two arguments: (1) the democratic argument and (2) the argument from unmet urgent needs. Let us begin with what she calls the democratic argument for limitarianism, i.e. the fact that "because rich people have surplus money5, they are both very able and seemingly 4 Robeyns makes no attempt to defend a form of intrinsical limitarianism, although she does suggest that grounds for such a defence may be found in virtue ethics, paternalism or perfectionist accounts (Robeyns 2017: 5). 5 Surplus money is to be understood as "the difference between an individual’s financial means and the threshold of riches that distinguishes rich from non-rich people" (Robeyns 2017: 4). 4 very likely to use that money to acquire political influence6 and power" (Robeyns 2017: 6), through four specific mechanisms: buying votes in electoral processes, gatekeeping, influencing opinion, and through machinations of money as an independent political power. All of these processes are detrimental to the proliferation of the political equality of citizens, "the cornerstone of free societies [and] the most basic principle of our democratic constitutions" (Robeyns 2017: 9). Robeyns considers that formal constraints embodied in legislative measures7 would be ineffective, with the taxation of surplus money at a rate of 100% being considered the optimal measure for guaranteeing political equality in a modern society. The second argument advanced by Robeyns for limitarianism is the argument from unmet urgent needs. She argues that if at least one of three empirical conditions holds, than limitarian policies should be implemented. The conditions she mentions are the condition of extreme global poverty, the condition of local or global disadvantages and the condition of urgent collective action problems. The condition of extreme global poverty refers to the fact that throughout the world, many individuals live in dire conditions, despite the fact that their well-being could be "significantly improved by government-led actions that require financial resources" (Robeyns 2017: 10). The second empirical condition pertains to the concept of flourishing, which goes beyond mere subsistence, and holds that prevailing shortfalls from maximal flourishing could be mitigated through governmental intervention. The condition of urgent collective action problems refers to the fact that many of the collective-action problems at the global level could be solved in a similar manner, through governmental actions (Robeyns 2017: 11). Robeyns mentions that, given the fact that surplus money is not relevant to people’s flourishing (since, by definition, surplus money is the money you have after you have reached a level of maximal flourishing), "it has zero moral weight, and it would be unreasonable to reject the principle that we ought to use that money to meet these 6 It is worth mentioning, as a side note, that it is not entirely beyond dispute if political equality necessarily relates to equality of influence in the way implied by Robeyns. Dworkin, for instance, has extensively criticized the ideal of equality of influence, according to which "citizens should have as much scope for extending their moral life and experience into politics as possible" (Dworkin 2002: 198). Dworkin advocates instead for a pure dependent conception of democracy, which instantiates the value of equal concern and equal standing, but is less preoccupied with inputs than with outputs. According to such a dependent conception, "the main features of a democracy are justified because a community in which the vote is widely held and speech is free is more likely to distribute material resources in an egalitarian way" (Dworkin 2002: 186). 7 Some measures, mentioned but discounted by Robeyns as insufficient, could be the campaign funding law or guaranteeing access of non-mainstream political contestants to public radio and public television. Another mechanism, which is not discussed by Robeyns, could be the the two-layered proposal of Pettit (1997), which endorses both constitutional constraints and the development of a contestatory form of democracy, in which citizens can raise concerns regarding decisions taken by the legislators. 5 urgent unmet needs" (Robeyns 2017: 12). For limitarians, there is no moral trade-off, then, between redistributing all the surplus money and allowing people to keep the riches that they have earned, as there are urgent needs which "have a higher moral urgency than the desires that could be met by the income and wealth that rich people hold" (Robeyns 2017: 12). This idea is not particularly controversial, being related to a well-known distinction within the sufficientarian literature between needs and desires. Frankfurt (1984) argues that the claims of the persons in need are more stringent than those of persons who merely desire something. Starting from the assumption that losses weigh more than gains, Frankfurt holds that the fulfilment of a need represents a way to keep harm at distance, whereas fulfilling a desire is merely an additional pleasure (Frankfurt 1984: 9). Accordingly, conflicting moral claims ought to be solved according to a principle of precedence: "when A needs something that B wants but does not need, then meeting A’s need is prima facie morally preferable to satisfying B’s desire" (Frankfurt 1984: 3). The two arguments advanced by Robeyns for limitarianism give rise to two distinct forms of this view, which we have termed strong and weak limitarianism, respectively, with the former being supported by the democratic argument and the latter being supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs. The difference between the two can be summarized as follows: while strong limitarianism advocates taxing any income above the riches line (to be defined below) at 100%, as in any other case individuals would still have surplus money which they can use in order to purchase political influence, weak limitarianism recognizes that such a fiscal policy would disincentivise the wealthiest individuals in society from being maximally productive, and, consequently, that there would be less income to redistribute for the meeting of urgent needs. Robeyns refers to this latter claim as the incentive objection8. This objection exposes an important tension between strong and weak limitarianism, as both cannot be met at once if this latter claim is accurate. Consequently, she offers four possible ways of interpreting the limitarian ideal, depending on the weight placed on each argument: (1) choose a revenue-maximising fiscal policy, while trying to use other mechanisms to safeguard (even if only partially) political equality, (2) choose a revenue-maximising fiscal policy as the value of meeting urgent needs trumps that of political equality (even if this latter value is also important), (3) choose a 100%-tax rate over the riches line as a fiscal policy, while trying to use other mechanisms to further (even if only partially) the meeting of unmet 8 A similar worry partly motivates Rawls's (1971) endorsement of the difference principle over a merely egalitarian one, a position which Cohen (1991) has notoriously criticised. 6 urgent needs or (4) choose a 100%-tax rate over the riches line as a fiscal policy as the value of political equality trumps that of meeting urgent needs9. As it should be obvious by now, the viability of the limitarian project hinges in part on how to set the threshold of riches. Robeyns’ proposal is to specify an objective conception of well-being, i.e. a flourishing account inspired by the capability approach. In fact, Robeyns sets out to develop a specific account of the riches in order to avoid a problem facing some sufficientarian projects, namely the ambiguity of the idea of a threshold (Robeyns 2017: 14). Drawing from the wider field of the capability approach, Robeyns rejects any subjective metric due to problems of adaptive preferences. Instead, her solution is to propose a metric of affluence that: (1) looks at each individual’s functionings levels, (2) encompasses only material possessions, and (3) "accounts for the need/want distinction" (Robeyns 2017: 21). She further considers that the interpretation of affluence which best incorporates these distinct concerns is the power of material resources, an index comprising of several distinct sources of income10, coupled with a conversion factor11 (Robeyns 2017: 20-22). Following the terminology endorsed by Gheaus (2016), the various sources of income that determine the power of material resources can be considered the distribuenda, the index itself can be considered a proxy for assessing the level of individuals' flourishing, while the metric of justice is represented by capabilities. An important aspect which should be mentioned at this point is that Robeyns' limitarianism is concerned only with the freedom of individuals to achieve those functionings that "are considered part of the standard of living or the material side of quality of life, rather than the broader notions of quality of life or well-being" (Robeyns 2017: 15). This could be considered another way in which limitarianism is a partial 9 Clearly, there is no practical distinction between options (1) and (2) and between options (3) or (4) as a matter of fiscal policy, the only relevant difference being related to the justification of each of them and the former two can be more generally described as being part of the family of weak limitarian conceptions, while the latter two are part of the family of strong limitarian conceptions. 10 Note that the sense in which Robeyns uses the ideas of income and wealth does not reflect the more technical meaning of these terms, standardly used in economics. Thus, Robeyns appears to lump all types of economic resources under the generic umbrella of income, reserving the label of wealth to describe a level of economic resources that exceeds a certain level. This contrasts with the economic approach, where income is a flow variable that corresponds to the quantity of economic resources gained by someone within a time period from labour, dividends etc. and wealth is a stock variable that corresponds to the total amount of economic resources held by someone at a specific point in time. On this latter distinction, it would make sense, as one anonymous reviewer suggests, for limitarians to be fundamentally interested in wealth taxation, rather than income taxation, as a means for ensuring political equality and economic sufficiency. Robeyns’s view is not, however, inconsistent with such an approach, entailing both wealth and income taxation (in the economic sense), to the extent that they exceed the riches line. 11 The conversion factor is the main input from the capability approach. When this factor takes the value of 1, which is maximal, then that person "is perfectly able to turn income into a valuable functioning" (Robeyns 2017: 22). If it takes values smaller than 1, this means that the individual has some impairment which prevents her from perfectly converting income into functionings (Robeyns 2017: 20-22). 7 view of justice. Once we have decided on which are the relevant capabilities necessary for a flourishing life, Robeyns argues that "we can calculate how much money would be needed for a typical person, whose conversion factor equals 1, to buy these goods and services. That amount gives us the riches line, expressed in monetary terms. Anyone whose PMR is greater than the riches line has more resources than she needs for a fully flourishing life and therefore counts as rich" (Robeyns 2017: 27). 3. Strong limitarianism and the democratic argument Let us now move to a deeper exploration of the democratic argument in favour of limitarianism. Synthesizing from the previous section, the central claim substantiating this argument is that rich people have the capacity to convert economic resources into political power and influence, which leads to undermining the ideal of political equality (Robeyns 2017: 6-10). Since limitarianism deems it morally impermissible for individuals to hold economic resources above the limit where these resources can be used in order to achieve a maximally flourishing life, a strong case can be made - and is indeed offered by Robeyns that implementing this doctrine would lead to political equality, as individuals would have no surplus money to spend on buying political influence. A first point of interest, which we will also examine later on in connection to the second argument, is of a rather conceptual nature. Namely, it is important to establish just what kind of view non-intrinsic limitarianism, as construed by Robeyns, is. In relation to the present argument, non-intrinsic limitarianism supposes that political equality is an important value, but it is not entirely reliant on this value in order to survive as a distinct view on justice. If, at the level of the theory of ideals, we would conclude that political equality is not valuable (either intrinsically or instrumentally), limitarianism could still fall back on the argument from unmet urgent needs (and perhaps other arguments as well). Thus, the core feature of limitarianism does not reside in its defence of one value or another, but rather in the fact that it marks bearers of particularly stringent duties attached to the instantiation of one value or another. Consequently, limitarianism does not seek to address the question of what a just state of affairs would look like, but rather the different question of what are the 8 normatively appropriate steps that we should take in order to bring about a more just state of affairs12. In the case of the democratic argument, we might say that there is a fundamental view of justice which takes political equality as its core value and which disintegrates if this is no longer considered a value. Call such a view political egalitarianism, which can be standardly defined as "the view that justice [...] requires substantive political equality, specifically equal availability of power or influence over collective choices that have legal force"13 (Estlund 2000: 127). Since in the version offered by Robeyns, limitarianism is instrumental in achieving political equality, we might alternatively state that strong limitarianism is simply a view on how to best operationalise the more fundamental view of justice which holds political equality as its central value. Thus, limitarianism is not in competition with political egalitarianism as a view on justice, but rather with other views on how to best instantiate this latter view. In fact, without making any reference to political egalitarianism, Robeyns also acknowledges that one competitor to limitarianism might be a view that requires the implementation of institutional measures to the effect of precluding the ability of rich people to use money in order to subvert political equality14. Thus, for the problem raised by large campaign donations provided to candidates which then act in the interest of donors rather than citizens we can enact strict anti-corruption legislation coupled with the public financing of elections. Or, for the problem raised by the differential ability to influence public opinion due to a disequilibrium in the financial power of competing candidates, we can enact legislation that obliges media outlets to offer an identical amount of exposure to all competing candidates and so forth. Call this the institutional measures view. Like the strong limitarian view proposed by Robeyns, the institutional measures view is also designed to safeguard the value of political equality and can also be considered a view on how to best implement political egalitarianism. In fact, the institutional measures view has been implemented to various degrees in political systems throughout the world but Robeyns argues that it should ultimately be rejected since "imposing formal institutional mechanisms in order to break the impact of money on politics is [...] feasible only to a limited extent" (Robeyns 2017: 10). So while Robeyns does not deny that implementing formal mechanisms to 12 Stated in the more familiar terminology proposed by Cohen (2003: 241) it could be argued that limitarianism is not a first principle of justice, but rather a principle of social regulation. This latter understanding of the view has been suggested to us, and endorsed, by Robeyns in a personal communication. 13 Notably, the term political egalitarianism has also been employed in a somewhat different sense by Heath (2008), who uses it to "refer to a conception of egalitarian distributive justice that is capable of serving as the object of an overlapping consensus in a pluralistic society" (Heath 2008: 485). 14 See footnote 7 of the present article. 9 constrain the conversion of money into political influence and power is useful to some extent, she argues that it cannot go all the way in protecting political equality, as the respective conversion may still escape the workings of legislative measures15. But while Robeyns' position that the institutional measures view may not be able to fully extinguish political inequality is eminently defensible, we should not be so quick as to endorse strong limitarianism without reservations. Two arguments mainly underlie our scepticism. The first one is largely a reconstruction of the aforementioned incentives objection. Recall from the previous section that the thrust of this objection lied in the fact that taxing individuals at 100% after a certain level of income would constitute a disincentive for productive work after they reach that level, leading to less economic resources available for redistribution to the worse-off. Consequently, in a world where all urgent needs are not met, strong limitarianism would make it harder to move towards the goal of meeting them, since the fiscal policy it prescribes would not be revenue-maximizing. To the extent that we are fundamentally concerned with ensuring that no one is left facing condition of extreme poverty, such a fiscal policy would have importantly deleterious effects16. Furthermore, even in an idealized world, where all urgent needs are met17, we could still have plausible reasons to refrain from taxing people at 100% above a certain level. For instance, some wealthy people are strongly engaged in activities associated with combating climate change, from dissemination of scientific studies to the general population, to research in renewable energy etc.; others are fundamentally interested in funding great artistic endeavours such as sculptures, poetry and whatever can generally be accounted for under the label of artwork; others, still, use their wealth in order to contribute to the establishment and development of democracy-building non-governmental organisations in countries that are in a process of transition from autocratic or totalitarian regimes to democratic ones. And so forth. Now, assume that such persons have great economic skills and would be extremely rich, if permitted by the fiscal policies of the state. Suppose also, that most of what Robeyns defines as surplus money would be donated by these benevolent rich persons to causes with which they deeply identify. Under the fiscal policy required by strong limitarianism, none of the 15 Consider for instance, the idea that rich people can set up ideologically-driven think tanks which may then be used to influence public opinion to their own benefit (Robeyns 2017: 8). It is highly unlikely that institutional measures could be taken to ensure that such actions will not be undertaken by the rich, in a liberal democratic society, as this seems to severely curtail important freedoms such as the freedom of conscience and the freedom of association. 16 Though perhaps they could be partially mitigated by moving towards a limitarian social ethos and by devising a set of "non-monetary incentive systems" (Robeyns 2017: 36). 17 In which case, the tension between Robeyns’s two arguments in favour of limitarianism would disappear. 10 above mentioned transfers would be possible, due to the fact that instead of having an ample amount of surplus money which they could donate to these causes, the benevolent rich would have to relinquish all of it. If that is the case, it is possible that some of these people could prefer to be much less productive and therefore refrain from generating income above the riches line to begin with18. This, of course, is not in itself a knock-down argument against strong limitarianism, but it is meant to highlight that the view can entail some undesirable implications, which is particularly problematic if there are competing views (e.g. the institutional measures view) which avoid them, while at the same time going a long way in addressing the issue of political inequality. Our second objection to strong limitarianism cuts deeper, since it shows - if sound that strong limitarianism is in fact not guaranteed to genuinely safeguard political equality at all. Recall that Robeyns argues in favour of a distribuendum that consists of the power of material resources (PMR), which is an income index. The PMR-riches line itself takes into account a number of constraints and is supposed to be contextually built, with an eye on the time, place, cultural background, level of economic development etc. of the society in question. In any case, these features enter the picture as relevant for determining what the set of capabilities which lead to a maximally flourishing life - in respect to matters related to standard of living - should be for a particular society. A rich person is then defined as anyone who has a higher PMR than the cut-off point where the individual has maximal access to the established set of capabilities. And, subsequently, the argument discussed in this section claims that we should tax any income which exceeds this cut-off point in order to preserve the value of political equality. But since the distribuendum is an income index and what is ultimately valued as the metric of justice is the access of individuals to a certain set of capabilities, then there is no guarantee on how exactly the economic resources to which individuals are entitled to under the limitarian doctrine would be spent, particularly since whatever the PMR-riches line is going to be, it cannot plausibly be set at such a low level so that it only encompasses absolutely fundamental needs of every human being, such as basic access to food, water, clean air etc. Consider, for instance, that the PMR-riches line is set at 200,000 euro/year, as Robeyns (2017: 27) exemplifies. Some individuals may consider that influencing the political arena is so important that they would voluntarily relinquish the 18 Perhaps this is because the government that has taxed them would not prioritize allocating resources to their preferred issues, or because they are warm-glow altruists, who "are not indifferent between gifts made by themselves and gifts made by other individuals or the government" (Andreoni 1990: 473), or because of some other reason altogether. 11 pursuit of some functionings (for instance, a somewhat expensive yearly holiday) in order to save that money for the purpose of buying political influence. So, perhaps, from the 200,000 euro/year, someone decides to set a mere 20,000 euro aside each year in order to contribute to the purchasing of TV ads for a local candidate in four years. Especially at the level of local elections, this sum is not negligible in itself, but consider what would further happen if that person belongs to a group of like-minded individuals who would do the same. A group which consists of as few as ten persons would be able to raise 200,000 euro, a sum that could, if properly used, tip the scale in favour of one candidate, if no institutional constraints are placed on campaign spending19. This hypothetical example can obviously be varied in many different ways, both in the number of individuals willing to invest resources into politics and in the amount invested, but its central point is that strong limitarianism appears ineffective as a view on how to implement political egalitarianism, since by simply introducing an upper threshold to the amount of economic resources that an individual may hold, we cannot directly preclude anyone from spending less than that amount on fulfilling personal material goals related to functionings and some of that amount in ways which would be instrumental in subverting political equality. To conclude this section then, while the democratic argument supports an intuitively plausible defence of strong limitarianism, there is a serious case to be made against this view. On the one hand, strong limitarianism is too broad, as it places an excessive fiscal burden on the benevolent rich; on the other one it is too narrow, as it ultimately fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. Thus, we argue that there are good reasons to reject strong limitarianism in favour of the institutional measures view as an operationalisation of political egalitarianism. Even though this latter view will also be unable to fully extinguish political inequality, it is not unreasonable to expect it would provide better results in this respect than strong limitarianism (although more empirical work would need to be done before a decisive stance can be taken on this issue). 4. Weak limitarianism and the argument from unmet urgent needs 19 As one anonymous reviewer points out, Robeyns (2017: 9-10) does not argue that institutional constraints should be removed or avoided, but only supplemented with limitarian policies. Though this is true, since the enactment of limitarian policies without institutional constraints would still allow for political equality to be undermined, it follows that institutional constraints, and not limitarianism, do the normative work required for instantiating political egalitarianism. Thus, even if limitarianism could perhaps be instrumental in reducing the extent of political inequalities which escape formal institutional constraints (e.g. the funding of ideologicallydriven think tanks), it would still be unable to fully extinguish them either. 12 As mentioned in the second section of this paper, the argument from unmet urgent needs in favour of limitarianism claims that in the non-ideal world in which we live in, where the conditions of: (1) extreme global poverty, (2) local or global disadvantages and (3) urgent collective action problems are met, it is morally wrong for some people to have economic resources above the amount required for flourishing, since those economic resources could be otherwise used in order to alleviate one of the enumerated circumstances (Robeyns 2017: 1011). Notice that like in the case of the democratic argument, the limitarian doctrine can again be construed as an account of how to best implement a distinct view of distributive justice which takes some value as fundamental to its existence. In this case, the value which limitarians ultimately seek to instantiate concerns the idea that it is morally important that everyone meets their urgent needs. In a slight rephrasing, we could restate this as the idea that everyone should have "enough" material resources in order to meet their urgent needs. Naturally, this points us to the more established conception of distributive justice embodied by sufficientarianism, which states, as a core thesis, that "what is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough [original emphasis]" (Frankfurt 1987: 22), that "what matters is whether individuals have enough" (Casal 2007: 297) or that "we have weighty non-instrumental reasons to secure at least enough of some good(s)" (Shields 2012: 106). If the meeting of urgent needs is valuable, then it is the sufficiency view, not the limitarian one, which makes this value central to its normative prescriptions and directly requires its instantiation to the furthest possible extent. By contrast, the non-intrinsic limitarian view makes no direct claims about the value of meeting urgent needs, its central claim being that if some conditions are met, then it is morally impermissible to hold economic resources over and beyond a certain amount. Limitarianism is thus not a competitor to the sufficientarian view, but rather a specific way in which we might operationalise the latter. To see that this is the case and to understand some of its implications, consider the following example: PMR Distribution. Suppose a PMR of 25 monetary units is required for the full meeting of urgent needs and 100 monetary units are required for living a flourishing life. In a society of three individuals, Diana has 5 monetary units, Eric has 90 monetary units and Fiona has 120 units (call this distribution D1). Applying an absolute sufficientarian conception of justice – i.e. one that "assigns absolute priority to the badly off" (Benbaji 2005: 331) - which sets the PMR level required to meet 13 basic needs as a threshold tells us that we need to redistribute the economic resources existing in the society so as to raise Diana to the level of 25 units. Since it is an absolutist conception, this latter statement holds regardless of the size of benefits or the number of individuals above the threshold. But while the sufficiency view considers that the distribution which raises Diana to the PMR level required to meet basic needs would be better than the initial one, it is not committed to prescribe any particular redistribution that would enact this state of affairs20. One way in which Diana could be raised to the level of 25 would be to take 10 units from each of the other two individuals involved, thus giving us the distribution D2 [Diana – 25; Eric – 80; Fiona – 110]. The move from D1 to D2 would rely on a principle which states that agents whose urgent needs are met have a duty to shoulder an equal share of the burden in order to bring agents whose urgent needs are not met to that level. Call this the equal shares view. Another way in which Diana could be raised to the level of 25 would be to take a different amount of units from Eric and Fiona, depending on the absolute levels of PMR where each of them is placed. Thus, we might, for instance take 5 units from Eric and 15 from Fiona, as she is better placed, giving us distribution D3 [Diana – 25; Eric – 85; Fiona – 105]. The move from D1 to D3 relies on a principle which states that agents whose urgent needs are met have a duty to shoulder some share of the burden in order to bring agents whose urgent needs are not met to that level, but that his burden should be weighted according to the PMR levels of each agent. Call this the weighted shares view. A third way in which Diana could be raised to the level of 25 would be to take all of the required units from Fiona, as she is not only better positioned than Eric, but has a higher PMR than the one required for flourishing. Thus, under this view, we should take 20 resources from Fiona, giving us distribution D4 [Diana – 25; Eric – 90; Fiona – 100]. The move from D1 to D4 relies on a principle which states that agents whose urgent needs are met and who have more than required for flourishing have a duty to shoulder all the weight in order to bring agents whose urgent needs are not met to that level. This is the limitarian view. On the face of it, limitarianism appears to be the more plausible view in light of PMR Distribution. In both the equal shares view and the weighted shares view we are committed to taking resources from Eric, even though he could benefit from those resources in leading a more flourishing life through a better achievement of his functionings. Limitarianism, on the other hand, only asks us to take money from Fiona, who even after the redistribution is still able to reach a maximally flourishing life, from the point of view of achieving basic 20 Although some sufficientarian theories may directly take positions on this issue as well. 14 functionings related to the standard of living dimension. But while this conclusion is warranted, it may also be too quick. We might have further reasons, which are distinct from the levels of individual PMRs, to favour a shift in the moral duties attached to agents above the threshold of meeting urgent needs. One set of such reasons may be connected to the differential exercises of responsibility that might have led to the initial distribution of PMRs. While the idea that differential exercises of responsibility have taken place may be interpreted in several distinct ways, some plausible forms include the following: (1) a person has knowingly determined, or contributed to the process of causing disadvantages for another person, thereby being agent-responsible (Vallentyne 2008) for the low PMR level of the respective person; (2) two persons have not faced effectively equivalent arrays of options (Arneson 1989), as one of them has been presented with more and/or better valuable opportunities than another, (3) one person has been a beneficiary of injustice, while the other has been the victim of injustice, even if neither of them have contributed to bringing about the unjust state of affairs (Butt 2007)21. Returning to PMR Distribution, consider for instance that Eric is responsible in a direct way for Diana's situation, as he was the manager of the firm where she worked and he decided to pay her a wage below that required for meeting urgent needs, even though his fiduciary duties would have allowed for the payment of a significantly higher wage. Or, assume alternatively, that while Diana and Fiona initially had an identical set of opportunities, starting from a similar socio-economic background and with a similar set of skills and internal endowments, Eric has taken advantage of a much more extended set of opportunities, perhaps due to his gender status. Assume for instance that during his studies Eric had benefitted from a Rhodes scholarship before 1977, when such scholarships were unavailable to women. And that, afterwards, he worked in a country where women had less opportunities for high-paying jobs than men, with less income being received, on average, by women for equal amounts of work on identical positions. Even if we hold to the idea that there is something valuable in having enough monetary resources to maximally achieve functionings associated with the standard of living, there are also strong reasons to hold that in both cases, Eric too should be responsible for sharing at least some part of the 21 Some authors, such as Knight, argue that the second and third possibilities are conceptually identical, and that "it becomes more pressing to identify those who are advantaged or disadvantaged by differential brute luck, whether by acts or injustice or by natural misfortune" (Knight 2013: 598). According to Haydar and Øverland (2014: 349), Knight's position implies scepticism about the existence of a moral duty not to benefit from injustice. They criticize this position, arguing that amassing advantages pursuant to an unjust act should be condemned and that benefiting from brute luck is conceptually distinct from benefiting from injustice. 15 redistributive burden, if not even more than Fiona. Of course, the precise moral weight that the differential exercise of responsibility would bear is to be established on a case-by-case basis, and here for instance, it intuitively seems that Eric would be liable to shoulder more of the burden in the former case than in the latter. But the general idea of a responsibility constraint is compatible with weak limitarianism. Under the view generated at the conjunction of weak limitarianism and the responsibility constraint outlined above, we therefore have a pro tanto moral duty not to be rich, which is weakened by both considerations related to efficiency22 and to differential exercises of responsibility. Call this view responsibility-catering weak limitarianism23. In order to both draw out the contrast between a standard version of weak limitarianism and responsibility-catering weak limitarianism and to further explore the normative desirability of limitarianism in general, it is useful to consider two possible scenarios concerning the viability of meeting urgent needs through redistribution from the well-off to the worse-off24. In the first scenario, assume that not even the most extensive transfer of economic resources from the well-off to those below the threshold of urgent needs would manage to raise everyone to at least that threshold. In this case, weak limitarianism would demand that the rich should be taxed at the revenue-maximising level, in order to produce as much wealth as possible for redistribution. Furthermore, most limitarians would probably defend the idea that those between the urgent needs threshold and the riches line should also be taxed, though at a lower rate than those above the riches line, since they still do not enjoy a maximal level of flourishing25. Our responsibility-catering weak limitarian view offers identical prescriptions for those above the riches line, since the moral weight of meeting urgent needs overrides identical exercises of responsibility between the rich and the very poor, but it qualifies the demands that we impose on persons between the two thresholds. Thus, our view is able to account for the idea that some of the people who are not yet maximally flourishing but have their urgent needs met, might have the respective PMR level because they have harmed the more disadvantaged or because they have taken 22 As weak limitarianism seeks to enact revenue-maximising tax policies (Robeyns 2017: 34). We borrow the first part of the term from Arneson (2000b), who constructs a version of what he calls responsibility-catering prioritarianism. Some authors (e.g. Blake and Risse 2004; Armitage 2005; Devooght 2008) also use the term responsibility-catering egalitarianism to refer to what is more commonly known as luck egalitarianism. 24 By well-off we subsequently refer to all individuals above the threshold of meeting urgent needs and by worse-off we refer to all individuals who are positioned below this threshold. 25 Note that, if they would ask that these persons should also be taxed at the revenue-maximising level, the limitarian doctrine would be empty, in this respect, since the riches line would no longer bear any moral salience. 23 16 advantage of more favourable opportunities or other forms of injustice and should carry more of the fiscal burden because of these facts. The normative plausibility of limitarianism is thereby enhanced through the responsibility-catering view, as it plausibly distinguishes between those who are below the riches line, but above the urgent needs threshold: (1) because they have caused and benefited from injustice, (2) because they have benefitted – though not caused – injustice or (3) through neither causing, nor benefitting from injustice, and, in turn, can place different redistributive burdens on each of these categories. In the second scenario, assume that transferring some significant part of the resource share of the well-off to the worse-off would be sufficient for bringing everyone to the level of urgent needs. This scenario is not as implausible as it might initially appear, and may indeed be the actual case in the contemporary world. For instance, in 2001, Pogge reported that "a 1% GRD would currently raise about $300 billion annually. This is $250 per year for each person below the international poverty line, over three times their present average annual income. More broadly spread, $300 billion is $107 per year for each person below the doubled poverty line, 82% of their present average annual income" (Pogge 2001: 67). Considering the fact that in 1999, close to the time when Pogge advanced this assessment, and 2012, the global poverty rate had fallen from 1,747 million people to 902 million people in absolute terms, and from 29% of the global population to 12.8%, in relative terms, with projections showing a continual decrease on both counts (Cruz et al. 2015: 2), there is an even stronger case to be made that extreme poverty could be neutralized through the reallocation of resources in our current state of the world. If this is the case, and moreover, taxing only those above the riches line would be sufficient for meeting everyone's urgent needs, weak limitarianism entails that only they would be taxed, since those below the riches line could still use their wealth in order to further pursue their own flourishing. However, without any additional qualifications, weak limitarianism would not prescribe a determinate fiscal policy in this case, since in its general form it provides no rule of prioritizing between the rich, when not all of their wealth is required for meeting urgent needs. Responsibilitycatering weak limitarianism, by contrast, does provide a determinate response, once responsibility considerations are properly identified and weighted, in that it entails that more resources should be taken from those who are not only rich, but also less responsible for amassing that fortune or more responsible for the plight of the worse-off. Furthermore, under the view proposed here, the riches line is still morally salient but is no longer absolutized. Thus, responsibility-catering weak limitarianism is exempt from what could be seen as an 17 unattractive feature of the standard limitarian view. More specifically, if enough resources can be redistributed from the well-off to the worst-off so that the latter category can be raised from extreme poverty, responsibility-catering weak limitarianism suggests that those who are not maximally flourishing but have played a part in causing that poverty share at least some, and perhaps even most, of the fiscal burden. By contrast, even if some people who are blameworthy in this way exist, unqualified weak limitarianism would hold that they should not share any of the fiscal burden - since, by stipulation, they are not maximally flourishing -, which should be fully placed on the shoulders of the rich, even if the rich had neither caused, nor benefitted, from injustice. Thus, since we argued above that (1) weak limitarianism is superior to alternative views such as the equal shares view and the weighted shares view when no differential exercises of responsibility have taken place and (2) responsibility-catering weak limitarianism is superior to the unqualified version, we conclude that this amended limitarian version is the most plausible view on how to operationalise the fundamentally sufficientarian principle that everyone's urgent needs are met. 5. Conclusions In this paper we aimed to examine a novel view offered by Robeyns (2017), labelled limitarianism, as an alternative to more established views on distributive justice such as egalitarianism, prioritarianism or sufficientarianism. One of our first contentions was that, to the extent that limitarianism is to be given a non-intrinsic justification, the view does not actually compete with standard egalitarianism, prioritarianism or sufficientarianism but rather with views on how to best operationalise these theories26. An important related objection, which we have not discussed in the main part of the article, might be that the limitarian view is not a view on justice at all, since it is simply the implication of a particular theory of distributive justice under certain circumstances. For instance, according to this objection, in a world without unmet urgent needs and where individuals lack a desire to influence politics in an unequal way, the implication of Robeyns' non-intrinsical version of limitarianism would be a policy of no taxation, but that cannot plausibly be considered a view on distributive justice. If we do not make the stronger claim that limitarianism is a fundamental view of 26 We therefore engaged here with one of the points outlined by Robeyns (2017: 36) in her "research agenda" for limitarianism, which is to study the relation between this view and other distributive rules. 18 justice, but rather a particular view on how to prioritize duty-bearers, we see that the objection lacks its initial force. Since fundamental views of distributive justice are not always committed to specifying precisely who the agents from which we should transfer resources are, the limitarian view does address questions of justice in a non-vacuous way, by advancing the general claim that there is a morally salient threshold for prioritizing between dutybearers. Since this general claim can be construed in different ways, we examined the two central possibilities outlined by Robeyns (2017). First, we argued that strong limitarianism, which draws its force from what Robeyns calls the democratic argument, is both unable to fully bring about political equality and has additional undesirable side-effects, which the alternative, institutional measures, view avoids. While rejecting strong limitarianism, we then advanced the claim that weak limitarianism, which draws its force from what Robeyns calls the argument from unmet urgent needs, is highly plausible as an operationalisation of absolute sufficientarianism – whose positive thesis is concerned with mitigating the plight of the worst off and, as such, with meeting urgent needs – particularly when coupled with a responsibility constraint. We arrived at this latter conclusion by comparing what we termed responsibility-catering weak limitarianism with alternative operationalisations, such as the equal shares view, the weighted shares view and unqualified weak limitarianism. 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