Equality as a Moral Ideal

Harry Frankfurt

Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 1. (Oct., 1987), pp. 21-43.

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Equality as a Moral Ideal
Harry Frankfurt

First man: "How are your children?"

Second man: "Compared to what?"

Economic egalitarianism is, as I shall construe it, the doctrine that it is

desirable for everyone to have the same amounts of income and of wealth
(for short, "money").1Hardly anyone would deny that there are situations
in which it makes sense to tolerate deviations from this standard. It goes
without saying, after all, that preventing or correcting such deviations
may involve costs which-whether measured in economic terms or in
terms of noneconomic considerations-are by any reasonable measure
unacceptable. Nonetheless, many people believe that economic equality
has considerable moral value in itself. For this reason they often urge
that efforts to approach the egalitarian ideal should be accorded-with
all due consideration for the possible effects of such efforts in obstructing
or in conducing to the achievement of other goods-a significant priority.2
In my opinion, this is a mistake. Economic equality is not, as such,
of particular moral importance. With respect to the distribution of economic
assets, what is important from the point of view of morality is not that
everyone should have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone
had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had
more than others. I shall refer to this alternative to egalitarianism-

1. This version of economic egalitarianism (for short, simply "egalitarianism") might

also be formulated as the doctrine that there should be no inequalities in the distribution
of money. The two formulations are not unambiguously equivalent because the term
"distribution" is equivocal. It may refer either to a pattern of possession or to an activity
of allocation, and there are significant differences in the criteria for evaluating distributions
in the two senses. Thus it is quite possible to maintain consistently both that it is acceptable
for people to have unequal amounts of money and that it is objectionable to allocate money
unequally.
2. Thus, Thomas Nagel writes: "The defense of economic equality on the ground
that it is needed to protect political, legal and social equality . . . [is not] a defense of equality
per se-equality in the possession of benefits in general. Yet the latter is a further moral
idea of great importance. Its validity would provide an independent reason to favor economic
equality as a good in its own right" ("Equality," in his Mwtal Quationr [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 19791, p. 107).
Ethics 98 (October 1987): 21 -43
O 1987 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/88/9801-0002$01.00
22 Ethics October 1987
namely, that what is morally important with respect to money is for
everyone to have enough-as "the doctrine of s u f f i ~ i e n c ~ . " ~
The fact that economic equality is not in its own right a morally
compelling social ideal is in no way, of course, a reason for regarding it
as undesirable. My claim that equality in itself lacks moral importance
does not entail that equality is to be avoided. Indeed, there may well be
good reasons for governments or for individuals to deal with problems
of economic distribution in accordance with an egalitarian standard and
to be concerned more with attempting to increase the extent to which
people are economically equal than with efforts to regulate directly the
extent to which the amounts of money people have are enough. Even
if equality is not as such morally important, a commitment to an egalitarian
social policy may be indispensable to promoting the enjoyment of significant
goods besides equality or to avoiding their impairment. Moreover, it
might turn out that the most feasible approach to the achievement of
sufficiency would be the pursuit of equality.
But despite the fact that an egalitarian distribution would not nec-
essarily be objectionable, the error of believing that there are powerful
moral reasons for caring about equality is far from innocuous. In fact,
this belief tends to do significant harm. It is often argued as an objection
to egalitarianism that there is a dangerous conflict between equality and
liberty: if people are left to themselves, inequalities of income and wealth
inevitably arise, and therefore an egalitarian distribution of money can
be achieved and maintained only at the cost of repression. Whatever
may be the merit of this argument concerning the relationship between
equality and liberty, economic egalitarianism engenders another conflict
which is of even more fundamental moral significance.
To the extent that people are preoccupied with equality for its own
sake, their readiness to be satisfied with any particular level of income
or wealth is guided not by their own interests and needs but just by the
magnitude of the economic benefits that are at the disposal of others.
In this way egalitarianism distracts people from measuring the requirements
to which their individual natures and their personal circumstances give
rise. It encourages them instead to insist upon a level of economic support
that is determined by a calculation in which the particular features of
their own lives are irrelevant. How sizable the economic assets of others
are has nothing much to do, after all, with what kind of person someone

3. I focus attention here on the standard of equality in the distribution of money

chiefly in order to facilitate my discussion of the standard of sufficiency. Many egalitarians,
of course, consider economic equality to be morally less important than equality in certain
other matters: e.g., welfare, opportunity, respect, satisfaction of needs. In fact, some of
what I have to say about economic egalitarianism and sufficiency applies as well to these
other benefits. But I shall not attempt in this essay to define the scope of its applicability,
nor shall I attempt to relate my views to other recent criticism of egalitarianism (e.g.,Lany
S. Temkin, "Inequality,"Philosophy and Public Affairs 15 [1986]: 99- 121; Robert E. Goodin,
"Epiphenomena1Egalitarianism,"Social Research 52 [1985]: 99-1 17).
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 23
is. A concern for economic equality, construed as desirable in itself, tends
to divert a person's attention away from endeavoring to discover-within
his experience of himself and of his life-what he himself really cares
about and what will actually satisfy him, although this is the most basic
and the most decisive task upon which an intelligent selection of economic
goals depends. Exaggerating the moral importance of economic equality
is harmful, in other words, because it is alienating.4
To be sure, the circumstances of others may reveal interesting pos-
sibilities and provide data for useful judgments concerning what is normal
or typical. Someone who is attempting to reach a confident and realistic
appreciation of what to seek for himself may well find this helpful. It is
not only in suggestive and preliminary ways like these, moreover, that
the situations of other people may be pertinent to someone's efforts to
decide what economic demands it is reasonable or important for him to
make. The amount of money he needs may depend in a more direct way
on the amounts others have. Money may bring power or prestige or
other competitive advantages. A determination of how much money
would be enough cannot intelligently be made by someone who is concerned
with such things except on the basis of an estimate of the resources
available to those with whose competition it may be necessary for him
to contend. What is important from this point of view, however, is not
the comparison of levels of affluence as such. The measurement of in-
equality is important only as it pertains contingently to other interests.
The mistaken belief that economic equality is important in itself
leads people to detach the problem of formulatingtheir economic ambitions
from the problem of understanding what is most fundamentally significant
to them. It influences them to take too seriously, as though it were a
matter of great moral concern, a question that is inherently rather in-
significant and not directly to the point, namely, how their economic
status compares with the economic status of others. In this way the
doctrine of equality contributes to the moral disorientation and shallowness
of our time.
The prevalence of egalitarian thought is harmful in another respect
as well. It not only tends to divert attention from considerations of greater
moral importance than equality. It also diverts attention from the difficult
but quite fundamental philosophical problems of understanding just
what these considerations are and of elaborating, in appropriately com-
prehensive and perspicuous detail, a conceptual apparatus which would
facilitate their exploration. Calculating the size of an equal share is plainly

4. It might be argued (as some of the editors of Ethics have suggested to me) that
pursuing equality as an important social ideal would not be so alienating as pursuing it as
a personal goal. It is indeed possible that individuals devoted to the former pursuit would
be less immediately or less intensely preoccupied with their own economic circumstances
than those devoted to the latter. But they would hardly regard the achievement of economic
equality as important for the society unless they had the false and alienating conviction
that it was important for individuals to enjoy economic equality.
24 Ethics October 1987
much easier than determining how much a person needs in order to
have enough. In addition, the very concept of having an equal share is
itself considerably more patent and accessible than the concept of having
enough. It is far from self-evident, needless to say, precisely what the
doctrine of sufficiency means and what applying it entails. But this is
hardly a good reason for neglecting the doctrine or for adopting an
incorrect doctrine in preference to it. Among my primary purposes in
this essay is to suggest the importance of systematic inquiry into the
analytical and theoretical issues raised by the concept of having enough,
the importance of which egalitarianism has m a ~ k e d . ~

There are a number of ways of attempting to establish the thesis that

economic equality is important. Sometimes it is urged that the prevalence
of fraternal relationships among the members of a society is a desirable
goal and that equality is indispensable to it.6 Or it may be maintained
that inequalities in the distribution of economic benefits are to be avoided
because they lead invariably to undesirable discrepancies of other
kinds-for example, in social status, in political influence, or in the
abilities of people to make effective use of their various opportunities
and entitlements. In both of these arguments, economic equality is endorsed
because of its supposed importance in creating or preserving certain
noneconomic conditions. Such considerations may well provide convincing
reasons for recommending equality as a desirable social good or even
for preferring egalitarianism as a policy over the alternatives to it. But
both arguments construe equality as valuable derivatively, in virtue of
its contingent connections to other things. In neither argument is there
an attribution to equality of any unequivocally inherent moral value.
A rather different kind of argument for economic equality, which
comes closer to construing the value of equality as independent of con-
tingencies, is based upon the principle of diminishing marginal utility.
According to this argument, equality is desirable because an egalitarian

5. I shall address some of these issues in Sec. VII below.

6. In the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University (which houses 8.5 million
volumes), there are 1,159 entries in the card catalog under the subject heading "liberty"
and 326 under "equality." Under "fraternity," there are none. This is because the catalog
refers to the social ideal in question as "brotherliness." Under that heading there arefour
entries! Why does fraternity (or brotherliness) have so much less salience than liberty and
equality? Perhaps the explanation is that, in virtue of our fundamental commitment to
individualism, the political ideals to which we are most deeply and actively attracted have
to d o with what we suppose to be the rights of individuals, and no one claims a right to
fraternity. It is also possible that liberty and equality get more attention in certain quarters
because, unlike fraternity, they are considered to be susceptible to more or less formal
treatment. In any event, the fact is that there has been very little serious investigation into
just what fraternity is, what it entails, or why it should be regarded as especially desirable.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 25
distribution of economic assets maximizes their aggregate utility.' The
argument presupposes: (a) for each individual the utility of money in-
variably diminishes at the margin and (b) with respect to money, or with
respect to the things money can buy, the utility functions of all individuals
are the same.8 In other words, the utility provided by or derivable from
an nth dollar is the same for everyone, and it is less than the utility for
anyone of dollar (n - 1). Unless b were true, a rich man might obtain
greater utility than a poor man from an extra dollar. In that case an
egalitarian distribution of economic goods would not maximize aggregate
utility even if a were true. But given both a and b, it follows that a marginal
dollar always brings less utility to a rich person than to one who is less
rich. And this entails that total utility must increase when inequality is
reduced by giving a dollar to someone poorer than the person from
whom it is taken.
In fact, however, both a and b are false. Suppose it is conceded, for
the sake of the argument, that the maximization of aggregate utility is
in its own right a morally important social goal. Even so, it cannot le-
gitimately be inferred that an egalitarian distribution of money must
therefore have similar moral importance. For in virtue of the falsity of
a and b, the argument linking economic equality to the maximization of
aggregate utility is unsound.
So far as concerns b, it is evident that the utility functions for money
of different individuals are not even approximately alike. Some people
suffer from physical, mental, or emotional weaknesses or incapacities
that limit the satisfactions they are able to obtain. Moreover, even apart
from the effects of specific disabilities, some people simply enjoy things
more than other people do. Everyone knows that there are, at any given
level of expenditure, large differences in the quantities of utility that
different spenders derive.

7. Nagel endorses this argument as establishing the moral importance of economic

equality. Other formulations and discussions of the argument may be found in: Kenneth
Arrow, "A Utilitarian Approach to the Concept of Equality in Public Expenditures," Quurterb
Journal of Economics 85 (1971): 409-10; Walter Blum and Harry Kalven, The Uneasy Case
fw Progressive Tamtion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Abba Lerner, The
E c m i c s of Conb-01 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Go., 1944); Paul Samuelson, Economics
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1973), and "A. P. Lerner at Sixty," in Collected Scientijic
Papers ofPaul A. Samuekon, ed. Robert C . Merton, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1972), vol. 3, pp. 643-52.
8. Thus, Arrow says: "In the utilitarian discussion of income distribution, equality of
income is derived from the maximization conditions if it is further assumed that individuals
have the same utility functions, each with diminishing marginal utility" (p. 409). And
Samuelson offers the following formulation: "If each extra dollar brings less and less
satisfaction to a man, and if the rich and poor are alike in their capacity to enjoy satisfaction,
a dollar taxed away from a millionaire and given to a median-income person is supposed
to add more to total utility than it subtracts" (Economics, p. 164, n. 1).
26 Ethics October 1987
So far as concerns a, there are good reasons against expecting any
consistent diminution in the marginal utility of money. The fact that the
marginal utilities of certain goods do indeed tend to diminish is not a
principle of reason. It is a psychological generalization, which is accounted
for by such considerations as that people often tend after a time to
become satiated with what they have been consuming and that the senses
characteristically lose their freshness after repetitive ti mu la ti on.^ It is
common knowledge that experiences of many kinds become increasingly
routine and unrewarding as they are repeated.
It is questionable, however, whether this provides any reason at all
for expecting a diminution in the marginal utility of money-that is, of
anything that functions as a generic instrument of exchange. Even if the
utility of everything money can buy were inevitably to diminish at the
margin, the utility of money itself might nonetheless exhibit a different
pattern. It is quite possible that money would be exempt from the phe-
nomenon of unrelenting marginal decline because of its limitlessly protean
versatility. As Blum and Kalven explain: "In . . . analysing the question
whether money has a declining utility it is . . . important to put to one
side all analogies to the observation that particular commodities have a
declining utility to their users. There is no need here to enter into the
debate whether it is useful or necessary, in economic theory, to assume
that commodities have a declining utility. Money is infinitely versatile.
And even if all the things money can buy are subject to a law of diminishing
utility, it does not follow that money itself is.'"' From the supposition
that a person tends to lose more and more interest in what he is consuming
as his consumption of it increases, it plainly cannot be inferred that he
must also tend to lose interest in consumption itself or in the money that
makes consumption possible. For there may always remain for him, no
matter how tired he has become of what he has been doing, untried
goods to be bought and fresh new pleasures to be enjoyed.
There are in any event many things of which people do not, from
the very outset, immediately begin to tire. From certain goods, they
actually derive more utility after sustained consumption than they derive
at first. This is the situation whenever appreciating or enjoying or otherwise
benefiting from something depends upon repeated trials, which serve as
a kind of "warming up" process: for instance, when relatively little sig-
nificant gratification is obtained from the item or experience in question
until the individual has acquired a special taste for it, has become addicted
to it, or has begun in some other way to relate or respond to it profitably.

9. "With successive new units of [a] good, your total utility will grow at a slower and
slower rate because of a fundamental tendency for your psychological ability to appreciate
more of the good to become less keen. This fact, that the increments in total utility fall
off, economists describe as follows: as the amount consumed of a good increases, the
marginal utility of the good (or the extra utility added by its last unit) tends to decrease"
(Samuelson, Economics, p. 431).
10. Blum and Kalven, pp. 57-58.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 27
The capacity for obtaining gratification is then smaller at earlier points
in the sequence of consumption than at later points. In such cases marginal
utility does not decline; it increases. Perhaps it is true of everything,
without exception, that a person will ultimately lose interest in it. But
even if in every utility curve there is a point at which the curve begins
a steady and irreversible decline, it cannot be assumed that every segment
of the curve has a downward slope."

When marginal utility diminishes, it does not do so on account of any

deficiency in the marginal unit. It diminishes in virtue of the position of
that unit as the latest in a sequence. The same is true when marginal
utility increases: the marginal unit provides greater utility than its prede-
cessors in virtue of the effect which the acquisition or consumption of
those predecessors has brought about. Now when the sequence consists
of units of money, what corresponds to the process of warming up-at
least, in one pertinent and important feature-is saving. Accumulating
money entails, as warming up does, generating a capacity to derive, at
some subsequent point in a sequence, gratifications that cannot be derived
earlier.
The fact that it may at times be especially worthwhile for a person
to save money rather than to spend each dollar as it comes along is due
in part to the incidence of what may be thought of as "utility thresholds."
Consider an item with the following characteristics: it is nonfungible, it
is the source of a fresh and otherwise unobtainable type of satisfaction,
and it is too expensive to be acquired except by saving up for it. The
utility of the dollar that finally completes a program of saving up for
such an item may be greater than the utility of any dollar saved earlier
in the program. That will be the case when the utility provided by the
item is greater than the sum of the utilities that could be derived if the
money saved were either spent as it came in or divided into parts and
used to purchase other things. In a situation of this kind, the final dollar
saved permits the crossing of a utility threshold.'*

11. People tend to think that it is generally more important to avoid a certain degree
of harm than to acquire a benefit of comparable magnitude. It may be that this is in part
because they assume that utility diminishes at the margin, for in that case the additional
benefit would have less utility than the corresponding loss. However, it should be noted
that the tendency to place a lower value on acquiring benefits than on avoiding harms is
sometimes reversed: when people are so miserable that they regard themselves as "having
nothing to lose," they may well place a higher value on improving things than on preventing
them from becoming (to a comparable extent) even worse. In that case, what is diminishing
at the margin is not the utility of benefits but the disutility of harms.
12. In virtue of these thresholds, a marginal or incremental dollar may have conspicuously
greater utility than dollars that do not enable a threshold to be crossed. Thus, a person
who uses his spare money during a certain period for some inconsequential improvement
in his routine pattern of consumption-perhaps a slightly better quality of meat for dinner
every night-may derive much less additional utility in this way than by saving up the
28 Ethics October1987
It is sometimes argued that, for anyone who is rational in the sense
that he seeks to maximize the utility generated by his expenditures, the
marginal utility of money must necessarily diminish. Abba Lerner presents
this argument as follows:
The principle of diminishing marginal utility of income can be
derived from the assumption that consumers spend their income
in the way that maximizes the satisfaction they can derive from the
good obtained. With a given income, all the things bought give a
greater satisfaction for the money spent on them than any of the
other things that could have been bought in their place but were
not bought for this very reason. From this it follows that if income
were greater the additional things that would be bought with the
increment of income would be things that are rejected when income
is smaller because they give less satisfaction; and if income were
greater still, even less satisfactory things would be bought. The
greater the income the less satisfzctory are the additional things
that can be bought with equal increases of income. That is all that
is meant by the principle of the diminishing marginal utility of
income.'"
Lerner invokes here a comparison between the utility of G(n)-the goods
which the rational consumer actually buys with his income of n dol-
lars-and "the other things that could have been bought in their place
but were not." Given that he prefers to buy G(n) rather than the other
things, which by hypothesis cost no more, the rational consumer must
regard G(n) as offering greater satisfaction than the others can provide.
From this Lerner infers that with an additional n dollars the consumer
would be able to purchase only things with less utility than G(n); and he
concludes that, in general, "the greater the income the less satisfactory
are the additional things that can be bought with equal increases of
income." This conclusion, he maintains, is tantamount to the principle
of the diminishing marginal utility of income.
It seems apparent that Lerner's attempt to derive the principle in
this way fails. One reason is that the amount of satisfaction a person can
derive from a certain good may vary considerably according to whether
or not he also possesses certain other goods. The satisfaction obtainable
from a certain expenditure may therefore be greater if some other ex-

extra money for a few weeks and going to see some marvelous play or opera. The threshold
effect is particularly integral to the experience of collectors, who characteristically derive
greater satisfaction from obtaining the item that finally completes a collection-whichever
item it happens to be-than from obtaining any of the bther items in the collection.
Obtaining the final item entails crossing a utility threshold: a complete collection of twenty
different items, each of which when considered individually has the same utility, is likely
to have greater utility for a collector than an incomplete collection that is of the same size
but that includes duplicates. The completeness of the collection itself possesses utility, in
addition to the utilityprovided individually by the items of which the collection is constituted.
13. Lerner, pp. 26-27.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 29
penditure has already been made. Suppose that the cost of a serving of
popcorn is the same as the cost of enough butter to make it delectable,
and suppose that some rational consumer who adores buttered popcorn
gets very little satisfaction from unbuttered popcorn but that he nonetheless
prefers it to butter alone. He will buy the popcorn in preference to the
butter, accordingly, if he must buy one and cannot buy both. Suppose
now that this person's income increases so that he can buy the butter
too. Then he can have something he enjoys enormously: his incremental
income makes it possible for him not merely to buy butter in addition
to popcorn but also to enjoy buttered popcorn. The satisfaction he will
derive by combining the popcorn and the butter may well be considerably
greater than the sum of the satisfactions he can derive from the two
goods taken separately. Here, again, is a threshold effect.
In a case of this sort, what the rational consumer buys with his in-
cremental income is a good-G(i)-which, when his income was smaller,
he had rejected in favor of G(n) because having it alone would have been
less satisfying than having only G(n). Despite this, however, it is not true
that the utility of the income he uses to buy G(i) is less than the utility
of the income he used to buy G(n). When there is an opportunity to
create a combination which is (like buttered popcorn) synergistic in the
sense that adding one good to another increases the utility of each, the
marginal utility of income may not decline even though the sequence of
marginal items-taking each of these items by itself-does exhibit a
pattern of declining utilities.
Lerner's argument is flawed in virtue of another consideration as
well. Since he speaks of "the additional things that can be bought with
equal increases of income," he evidently presumes that a rational consumer
uses his first n dollars to purchase a certain good and that he uses any
incremental income beyond that to buy something else. This leads Lerner
to suppose that what the consumer buys when his income is increased
by i dollars (where i is equal to or less than n) must be something which
he could have bought and which he chose not to buy when his income
was only n dollars. But this supposition is unwarranted. With an income
of (n + i) dollars, the consumer need not use his money to purchase
both G(n) and G(i). He might use it to buy something which cost more
than either of these goods-something which was too expensive to be
available to him at all before his income increased. The point is that if
a rational consumer with an income of n dollars defers purchasing a
certain good until his income increases, this does not necessarily mean
that he "rejected" purchasing it when his income was smaller. The good
in question may have been out of his reach at that time because it cost
more than n dollars. His reason for postponing the purchase may have
had nothing to do with comparative expectations of satisfaction or with
preferences or priorities at all.
There are two possibilities to consider. Suppose on the one hand
that, instead of purchasing G(n) when his income is n dollars, the rational
30 Ethics October 1987
consumer saves that money until he can add an additional i dollars to it
and then purchases G(n + i). In this case it is quite evident that his
deferral of the purchase of G(n + i) does not mean that he values it less
than G(n). On the other hand, suppose that the rational consumer declines
to save up for G(n + i) and that he spends all the money he has on G(n).
In this case too it would be a mistake to construe his behavior as indicating
a preference for G(n) over G(n + i). For the explanation of his refusal
to save for G(n + i) may be merely that he regards doing so as pointless
because he believes that he cannot reasonably expect to save enough to
make a timely purchase of it.
The utility of G(n + i) may not only be greater than the utility either
of G(n) or of G(i). It may also be greater than the sum of their utilities.
That is, in acquiring G(n + i) the consumer may cross a utility threshold.
The utility of the increment i to his income is then actually greater than
the utility of the n dollars to which it is added, even though i equals or
is less than n. In such a case, the income of the rational consumer does
not exhibit diminishing marginal utility.

The preceding discussion has established that an egalitarian distribution

may fail to maximize aggregate utility. It can also easily be shown that,
in virtue of the incidence of utility thresholds, there are conditions under
which an egalitarian distribution actually minimizes aggregate utility.14
Thus, suppose that there is enough of a certain resource (e.g., food or
medicine) to enable some but not all members of a population to survive.
Let us say that the size of the population is ten, that a person needs at
least five units of the resource in question to live, and that forty units
are available. If any members of this population are to survive, some
must have more than others. An equal distribution, which gives each
person four units, leads to the worst possible outcome, namely, everyone
dies. Surely in this case it would be morally grotesque to insist upon
equality! Nor would it be reasonable to maintain that, under the conditions
specified, it is justifiable for some to be better off only when this is in the
interests of the worst off. If the available resources are used to save eight
people, the justification for doing this is manifestly not that it somehow
benefits the two members of the population who are left to die.
An egalitarian distribution will almost certainly produce a net loss
of aggregate utility whenever it entails that fewer individuals than other-
wise will have, with respect to some necessity, enough to sustain life-
in other words, whenever it requires a larger number of individuals to
be below the threshold of survival. Of course, a loss of utility may also
occur even when the circumstances involve a threshold that does not
separate life and death. Allocating resources equally will reduce aggregate

14. Conditions of these kinds are discussed in Nicholas Rescher, Distributive Justice
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1966), pp. 28-30.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 31
utility whenever it requires a number of individuals to be kept below any
utility threshold without ensuring a compensating move above some
threshold by a suitable number of others.
Under conditions of scarcity, then, an egalitarian distribution may
be morally unacceptable. Another response to scarcity is to distribute the
available resources in such a way that as many people as possible have
enough or, in other words, to maximize the incidence of sufficiency. This
alternative is especially compelling when the amount of a scarce resource
that constitutes enough coincides with the amount that is indispensable
for avoiding some catastrophic harm-as in the example just considered,
where falling below the threshold of enough food or enough medicine
means death. But now suppose that there are available, in this example,
not just forty units of the vital resource but forty-one. Then maximizing
the incidence of sufficiency by providing enough for each of eight people
leaves one unit unallocated. What should be done with this extra unit?
It has been shown above that it is a mistake to maintain that where
some people have less than enough, no one should have more than anyone else.
When resources are scarce, so that it is impossible for everyone to have
enough, an egalitarian distribution may lead to disaster. Now there is
another claim that might be made here, which may appear to be quite
plausible but which is also mistaken: wheresomepeople have less than enough,
no one should have more than enough. If this claim were correct, then-in
the example at hand-the extra unit should go to one of the two people
who have nothing. But one additional unit of the resource in question
will not improve the condition of a person who has none. By hypothesis,
that person will die even with the additional unit. What he needs is not
one unit but five.15 It cannot be taken for granted that a person who has
a certain amount of a vital resource is necessarily better off than a person
who has a lesser amount, for the larger amount may still be too small to
serve any useful purpose. Having the larger amount may even make a
person worse off. Thus it is conceivable that while a dose of five units
of some medication is therapeutic, a dose of one unit is not better than
none but actually toxic. And while a person with one unit of food may
live a bit longer than someone with no food whatever, perhaps it is worse
to prolong the process of starvation for a short time than to terminate
quickly the agony of starving to death.
The claim that no one should have more than enough while anyone
has less than enough derives its plausibility, in part, from a presumption
that is itself plausible but that is nonetheless false: to wit, giving resources
to people who have less of them than enough necessarily means giving

15. It might be correct to say that he does need one unit if there is a chance that he
will get four more, since in that case the one unit can be regarded as potentially an integral
constituent of the total of five that puts him across the threshold of survival. But if there
is no possibility that he will acquire five, then acquiring the one does not contribute to the
satisfaction of any need.
32 Ethics October 1987
resources to people who need them and, therefore, making those people
better off. It is indeed reasonable to assign a higher priority to improving
the condition of those who are in need than to improving the condition
of those who are not in need. But giving additional resources to people
who have less than enough of those resources, and who are accordingly
in need, may not actually improve the condition of these people at all.
Those below a utility threshold are not necessarily benefited by additional
resources that move them closer to the threshold. What is crucial for
them is to attain the threshold. Merely moving closer to it either may
fail to help them or may be disadvantageous.
By no means do I wish to suggest, of course, that it is never or only
rarely beneficial for those below a utility threshold to move closer to it.
Certainly it may be beneficial, either because it increases the likelihood
that the threshold ultimately will be attained or because, quite apart from
the significance of the threshold, additional resources provide important
increments of utility. After all, a collector may enjoy expanding his collection
even if he knows that he has no chance of ever completing it. My point
is only that additional resources do not necessarily benefit those who
have less than enough. The additions may be too little to make any
difference. It may be morally quite acceptable, accordingly, for some to
have more than enough of a certain resource even while others have less
than enough of it.

Quite often, advocacy of egalitarianism is based less upon an argument

than upon a purported moral intuition: economic inequality, considered
as such, just seems wrong. It strikes many people as unmistakably apparent
that, taken simply in itself, the enjoyment by some of greater economic
benefits than are enjoyed by others is morally offensive. I suspect, however,
that in many cases those whp profess to have this intuition concerning
manifestations of inequality are actually responding not to the inequality
but to another feature of the situations they are confronting. What I
believe they find intuitively to be morally objectionable, in the types of
situations characteristically cited as instances of economic inequality, is
not the fact that some of the individuals in those situations have less
money than others but the fact that those with less have too little.
When we consider people who are substantially worse off than our-
selves, we do very commonly find that we are morally disturbed by their
circumstances. What directly touches us in cases of this kind, however,
is not a quantitative discrepancy but a qualitative condition-not the fact
that the economic resources of those who are worse off are smaller in
magaitude than ours but the different fact that these people are so poor.
Mere differences in the amounts of money people have are not in them-
selves distressing. We tend to be quite unmoved, after all, by inequalities
between the well-to-do and the rich; our awareness that the former are
substantially worse off than the latter does not disturb us morally at all.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 33
And if we believe of some person that his life is richly fulfilling, that he
himself is genuinely content with his economic situation, and that he
suffers no resentments or sorrows which more money could assuage, we
are not ordinarily much interested-from a moral point of view-in the
question of how the amount of money he has compares with the amounts
possessed by others. Economic discrepancies in cases of these sorts do
not impress us in the least as matters of significant moral concern. The
fact that some people have much less than others is morally undisturbing
when it is clear that they have plenty.
It seems clear that egalitarianism and the doctrine of sufficiency are
logically independent: considerations that support the one cannot be
presumed to provide support also for the other. Yet proponents of egal-
itarianism frequently suppose that they have offered grounds for their
position when in fact what they have offered is pertinent as support only
for the doctrine of sufficiency. Thus they often, in attempting to gain
acceptance for egalitarianism, call attention to disparities between the
conditions of life characteristic of the rich and those characteristic of the
poor. Now it is undeniable that contemplating such disparities does often
elicit a conviction that it would be morally desirable to redistribute the
available resources so as to improve the circumstances of the poor. And,
of course, that would bring about a greater degree of economic equality.
But the indisputability of the moral appeal of improving the condition
of the poor by allocating to them resources taken from those who are
well off does not even tend to show that egalitarianism is, as a moral
ideal, similarly indisputable. To show of poverty that it is compellingly
undesirable does nothing whatsoever to show the same of inequality. For
what makes someone poor in the morally relevant sense-in which poverty
is understood as a condition from which we naturally recoil-is not that
his economic assets are simply of lesser magnitude than those of others.
A typical example of this confusion is provided by Ronald Dworkin.
Dworkin characterizes the ideal of economic equality as requiring that
"no citizen has less than an equal share of the community's resources
just in order that others may have more of what he lacks."16 But in
support of his claim that the United States now falls short of this ideal,
he refers to circumstances that are not primarily evidence of inequality
but of poverty: "It is, I think, apparent that the United States falls far
short now [of the ideal of equality]. A substantial minority of Americans
are chronically unemployed or earn wages below any realistic 'poverty
line' or are handicapped in various ways or burdened with special needs;
and most of these people would do the work necessary to earn a decent
living if they had the opportunity and capacity" (p. 208). What mainly
concerns Dworkin-what he actually considers to be morally

16. Ronald Dworkin, "Why Liberals Should Care about Equality,"in his A Matter of
Principle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 206. Page numbers in
parentheses in the text refer to this work.
34 Ethics October 1987
important-is manifestly not that our society permits a situation in which
a substantial minority of Americans have smaller shares than others of
the resources which he apparently presumes should be available for all.
His concern is, rather, that the members of this minority do not earn de-
cent livings.
The force of Dworkin's complaint does not derive from the allegation
that our society fails to provide some individuals with as much as others
but from a quite different allegation, namely, our society fails to provide
each individual with "the opportunity to develop and lead a life he can
regard as valuable both to himself and to [the community]" (p. 211).
Dworkin is dismayed most fundamentally not by evidence that the United
States permits economic inequality but by evidence that it fails to ensure
that everyone has enough to lead "a life of choice and value" (p. 212)-
in other words, that it fails to fulfill for all the ideal of sufficiency. What
bothers him most immediately is not that certain quantitative relationships
are widespread but that certain qualitative conditions prevail. He cares
principally about the value of people's lives, but he mistakenly represents
himself as caring principally about the relative magnitudes of their economic
assets.
My suggestion that situations involving inequality are morally dis-
turbing only to the extent that they violate the ideal of sufficiency is
confirmed, it seems to me, by familiar discrepancies between the principles
egalitarians profess and the way in which they commonly conduct their
own lives. My point here is not that some egalitarians hypocritically accept
high incomes and special opportunities for which, according to the moral
theories they profess, there is no justification. It is that many egalitarians
(including many academic proponents of the doctrine) are not truly
concerned whether they are as well off economically as other people are.
They believe that they themselves have roughly enough money for what
is important to them, and they are therefore not terribly preoccupied
with the fact that some people are considerably richer than they. Indeed,
many egalitarians would consider it rather shabby or even reprehensible
to care, with respect to their own lives, about economic comparisons of
that sort. And, notwithstanding the implications of the doctrines to which
they urge adherence, they would be appalled if their children grew up
with such preoccupations.

The fundamental error of egalitarianism lies in supposing that it is morally

important whether one person has less than another regardless of how
much either of them has. This error is due in part to the false assumption
that someone who is economically worse off has more important unsatisfied
needs than someone who is better off. In fact the morally significant
needs of both individuals may be fully satisfied or equally unsatisfied.
Whether one person has more money than another is a wholly extrinsic
matter. It has to do with a relationship between the respective economic
 Franhfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 35
assets of the two people, which is not only independent of the amounts
of their assets and of the amounts of satisfaction they can derive from
them but also independent of the attitudes of these people toward those
levels of assets and of satisfaction. The economic comparison implies
nothing concerning whether either of the people compared has any
morally important unsatisfied needs at all nor concerning whether either
is content with what he has.
This defect in egalitarianism appears plainly in Thomas Nagel's
development of the doctrine. According to Nagel: "The essential feature
of an egalitarian priority system is that it counts improvements to the
welfare of the worse off as more urgent than improvements to the welfare
of the better off. . . . What makes a system egalitarian is the priority it
gives to the claims of those . . . at the bottom. . . . Each individual with
a more urgent claim has priority . . . over each individual with a less
urgent claim."" And in discussing Rawls's Difference Principle, which
he endorses, Nagel says: the Difference Principle "establishes an order
of priority among needs and gives preference to the most urgent."18 But
the preference actually assigned by the Difference Principle is not in
favor of those whose needs are most urgent; it is in favor of those who
are identified as worst off. It is a mere assumption, which Nagel makes
without providing any grounds for it whatever, that the worst off individuals
have urgent needs. In most societies the people who are economically
at the bottom are indeed extremely poor, and they do, as a matter of
fact, have urgent needs. But this relationship between low economic
status and urgent need is wholly contingent. It can be established only
on the basis of empirical data. There is no necessary conceptual connection
between a person's relative economic position and whether he has needs
of any degree of urgency.lg
It is possible for those who are worse off not to have more urgent
needs or claims than those who are better off because it is possible for
them to have no urgent needs or claims at all. The notion of "urgency"
has to do with what is important. Trivial needs or interests, which have
no significant bearing upon the quality of a person's life or upon his
readiness to be content with it, cannot properly be construed as being
urgent to any degree whatever or as supporting the sort of morally
demanding claims to which genuine urgency gives rise. From the fact
that a person is at the bottom of some economic order, moreover, it

17. Nagel, p. 118.

18. Ibid., p. 117.
19. What I oppose is the claim that when it comes to justifying attempts to improve
the circumstances of those who are economically worst off, a good reason for making the
attempt is that it is morally important for people to be as equal as possible with respect to
money. The only morally compelling reason for trying to make the worse off better off
is, in my judgment, that their lives are in some degree bad lives. The fact that some people
have more than enough money suggests a way in which it might be arranged for those
who have less than enough to get more, but it is not in itself a good reason for redistribution.
36 Ethics October 1987
cannot even be inferred that he has any unsatisfied needs or claims. After
all, it is possible for conditions at the bottom to be quite good; the fact
that they are the worst does not in itself entail that they are bad or that
they are in any way incompatible with richly fulfilling and enjoyable lives.
Nagel maintains that what underlies the appeal of equality is an
"ideal of acceptability to each i n d i ~ i d u a l . "On
~ ~ his account, this ideal
entails that a reasonable person should consider deviations from equality
to be acceptable only if they are in his interest in the sense that he would
be worse off without them. But a reasonable person might well regard
an unequal distribution as entirely acceptable even though he did not
presume that any other distribution would benefit him less. For he might
believe that the unequal distribution provided him with quite enough,
and he might reasonably be unequivocally content with that, with no
concern for the possibility that some other arrangement would provide
him with more. It is gratuitous to assume that every reasonable person
must be seeking to maximize the benefits he can obtain, in a sense requiring
that he be endlessly interested in or open to improving his life. A certain
deviation from equality might not be in someone's interest because it
might be that he would in fact be better off without it. But as long as it
does not conjict with his interest, by obstructing his opportunity to lead
the sort of life that it is important for him to lead, the deviation from
equality may be quite acceptable. To be wholly satisfied with a certain
state of affairs, a reasonable person need not suppose that there is no
other available state of affairs in which he would be better off.21
Nagel illustrates his thesis concerning the moral appeal of equality
by considering a family with two children, one of whom is "normal and
quite happy" while the other "suffers from a painful handicap."22If this
family were to move to the city the handicapped child would benefit
from medical and educational opportunities that are unavailable in the
suburbs, but the healthy child would have less fun. If the family were
to move to the suburbs, on the other hand, the handicapped child would
be deprived but the healthy child would enjoy himself more. Nagel stip-
ulates that the gain to the healthy child in moving to the suburbs would
be greater than the gain to the handicapped child in moving to the city:
in the city the healthy child would find life positively disagreeable, while
the handicapped child would not become happy "but only less miserable."
Given these conditions, the egalitarian decision is to move to the
city; for "it is more urgent to benefit the [handicapped] child even though
the benefit we can give him is less than the benefit we can give the
[healthy] child." Nagel explains that this judgment concerning the greater
urgency of benefiting the handicapped child "depends on the worse off
position of the [handicapped] child. An improvement in his situation is

20. Nagel, p. 123.

21. For further discussion, see Sec. VII below.
22. Quotations from his discussion of this illustration are from Nagel, pp. 123-24.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 37
more important than an equal or somewhat greater improvement in the
situation of the [normal] child." But it seems to me that Nagel's analysis
of this matter is flawed by an error similar to the one that I attributed
above to Dworkin. The fact that it is preferable to help the handicapped
child is not due, as Nagel asserts, to the fact that this child is worse off
than the other. It is due to the fact that this child, and not the other,
suffers from a painful handicap. The handicapped child's claim is important
because his condition is bad-significantly undesirable-and not merely
because he is less well off than his sibling.
This does not imply, of course, that Nagel's evaluation of what the
family should do is wrong. Rejecting egalitarianism certainly does not
mean maintaining that it is always mandatory simply to maximize benefits
and that therefore the family should move to the suburbs because the
normal child would gain more from that than the handicapped child
would gain from a move to the city. However, the most cogent basis for
Nagel's judgment in favor of the handicapped child has nothing to do
with the alleged urgency of providing people with as much as others. It
pertains rather to the urgency of the needs of people who do not have
enough.23
VII
What does it mean, in the present context, for a person to have enough?
One thing it might mean is that any more would be too much: a larger
amount would make the person's life unpleasant, or it would be harmful
or in some other way unwelcome. This is often what people have in mind
when they say such things as "I've had enough!" or "Enough of that!"
The idea conveyed by statements like these is that a limit has been reached,
beyond which it is not desirable to proceed. On the other hand, the
assertion that a person has enough may entail only that a certain requirement
or standard has been met, with no implication that a larger quantity would
be bad. This is often what a person intends when he says something like
"That should be enough." Statements such as this one characterize the
indicated amount as sufficient while leaving open the possibility that a
larger amount might also be acceptable.
In the doctrine of sufficiency the use of the notion of "enough"
pertains to meeting a standard rather than to reaching a limit. To say that
a person has enough money means that he is content, or that it is reasonable
for him to be content, with having no more money than he has. And to
say this is, in turn, to say something like the following: the person does
not (or cannot reasonably) regard whatever (if anything) is unsatisfying
or distressing about his life as due to his having too little money. In other
words, if a person is (or ought reasonably to be) content with the amount
of money he has, then insofar as he is or has reason to be unhappy

23. The issue of equality or sufficiency that Nagel's illustration raises does not, of
course, concern the distribution of money.
38 Ethics October 1987
with the way his life is going, he does not (or cannot reasonably) suppose
that money would-either as a sufficient or as a necessary condition-
enable him to become (or to have reason to be) significantly less unhappy
with it.24
It is essential to understand that having enough money differs from
merely having enough to get along or enough to make life marginally
tolerable. People are not generally content with living on the brink. The
point of the doctrine of sufficiency is not that the only morally important
distributional consideration with respect to money is whether people have
enough to avoid economic misery. A person who might naturally and
appropriately be said to havejust barely enough does not, by the standard
invoked in the doctrine of sufficiency, have enough at all.
There are two distinct kinds of circumstances in which the amount
of money a person has is enough-that is, in which more money will
not enable him to become significantly less unhappy. On the one hand,
it may be that the person is suffering no substantial distress or dissatisfaction
with his life. On the other hand, it may be that although the person is
unhappy about how his life is going, the difficulties that account for his
unhappiness would not be alleviated by more money. Circumstances of
this second kind obtain when what is wrong with the person's life has to
do with noneconomic goods such as love, a sense that life is meaningful,
satisfaction with one's own character, and so on. These are goods that
money cannot buy; moreover, they are goods for which none of the
things money can buy are even approximately adequate substitutes.
Sometimes, to be sure, noneconomic goods are obtainable or enjoyable
only (or more easily) by someone who has a certain amount of money.
But the person who is distressed with his life while content with his
economic situation may already have that much money.
It is possible that someone who is content with the amount of money
he has might also be content with an even larger amount of money. Since
having enough money does not mean being at a limit beyond which
more money would necessarily be undesirable, it would be a mistake to
assume that for a person who already has enough the marginal utility
of money must be either negative or zero. Although this person is by
hypothesis not distressed about his life in virtue of any lack of things
which more money would enable him to obtain, nonetheless it remains
possible that he would enjoy having some of those things. They would
not make him less unhappy, nor would they in any way alter his attitude
toward his life or the degree of his contentment with it, but they might
bring him pleasure. If that is so, then his life would in this respect be
better with more money than without it. The marginal utility for him of
money would accordingly remain positive.
24. Within the limits of my discussion it makes no difference which view is taken
concerning the very important question of whether what counts is the attitude a person
actually has or the attitude it would be reasonable for him to have. For the sake of brevity, I shall
henceforth omit referring to the latter alternative.
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 39
To say that a person is content with the amount of money he has
does not entail, then, that there would be no point whatever in his having
more. Thus someone with enough money might be quite willing to accept
incremental economic benefits. He might in fact be pleased to receive
them. Indeed, from the supposition that a person is content with the
amount of money he has it cannot even be inferred that he would not
p-efr to have more. And it is even possible that he would actually be
prepared to sacrijice certain things that he values (e.g., a certain amount
of leisure) for the sake of more money.
But how can all this be compatible with saying that the person is
content with what he has? What does contentment with a given amount
of money preclude, if it does not preclude being willing or being pleased
or preferring to have more money or even being ready to make sacrifices
for more? It precludes his having an active interest in getting more. A
contented person regards having more money as inessential to his being
satisfied with his life. The fact that he is content is quite consistent with
his recognizing that his economic circumstances could be improved and
that his life might as a consequence become better than it is. But this
possibility is not important to him. He is simply not much interested in
being better off, so far as money goes, than he is. His attention and
interest are not vividly engaged by the benefits which would be available
to him if he had more money. He is just not very responsive to their
appeal. They do not arouse in him any particularly eager or restless
concern, although he acknowledges that he would enjoy additional benefits
if they were provided to him.
In any event, let us suppose that the level of satisfaction that his
present economic circumstances enable him to attain is high enough to
meet his expectations of life. This is not fundamentally a matter of how
much utility or satisfaction his various activities and experiences provide.
Rather, it is most decisively a matter of his attitude toward being provided
with that much. The satisfying experiences a person has are one thing.
Whether he is satisfied that his life includes just those satisfactions is
another. Although it is possible that other feasible circumstances would
provide him with greater amounts of satisfaction, it may be that he is
wholly satisfied with the amounts of satisfaction that he now enjoys. Even
if he knows that he could obtain a greater quantity of satisfaction overall,
he does not experience the uneasiness or the ambition that would incline
him to seek it. Some people feel that their lives are good enough, and
it is not important to them whether their lives are as good as possible.
The fact that a person lacks an active interest in getting something
does not mean, of course, that he prefers not to have it. This is why the
contented person may without any incoherence accept or welcome im-
provements in his situation and why he may even be prepared to incur
minor costs in order to improve it. The fact that he is contented means
only that the possibility of improving his situation is not important to him.
It only implies, in other words, that he does not resent his circumstances,
40 Ethics October 1987
that he is not anxious or determined to improve them, and that he does
not go out of his way or take any significant initiatives to make them
better.
It may seem that there can be no reasonable basis for accepting less
satisfaction when one could have more, that therefore rationality itself
entails maximizing, and, hence, that a person who refuses to maximize
the quantity of satisfaction in his life is not being rational. Such a person
cannot, of course, offer it as his reason for declining to pursue greater
satisfaction that the costs of this pursuit are too high; for if that were
his reason then, clearly, he would be attempting to maximize satisfaction
after all. But what other good reason could he possibly have for passing
up an opportunity for more satisfaction? In fact, he may have a very
good reason for this: namely, that he is satisjied with the amount ofsatisfaction
he already has. Being satisfied with the way things are is unmistakably an
excellent reason for having no great interest in changing them. A person
who is indeed satisfied with his life as it is can hardly be criticized, ac-
cordingly, on the grounds that he has no good reason for declining to
make it better.
He might still be open to criticism on the grounds that he should not
be satisfied-that it is somehow unreasonable, or unseemly, or in some
other mode wrong for him to be satisfied with less satisfaction than he
could have. On what basis, however, could this criticism be justified? Is
there some decisive reason for insisting that a person ought to be so hard
to satisfy? Suppose that a man deeply and happily loves a woman who
is altogether worthy. We do not ordinarily criticize the man in such a
case just because we think he might have done even better. Moreover,
our sense that it would be inappropriate to criticize him for that reason
need not be due simply to a belief that holding out for a more desirable
or worthier woman might end up costing him more than it would be
worth. Rather, it may reflect our recognition that the desire to be happy
or content or satisfied with life is a desire for a satisfactory amount of
satisfaction and is not inherently tantamount to a desire that the quantity
of satisfaction be maximized.
Being satisfied with a certain state of affairs is not equivalent to
preferring it to all others. If a person is faced with a choice between less
and more of something desirable, then no doubt it would be irrational
for him to prefer less to more. But a person may be satisfied without
having made any such comparisons at all. Nor is it necessarily irrational
or unreasonable for a person to omit or to decline to make comparisons
between his own state of affairs and possible alternatives. This is not only
because making comparisons may be too costly. It is also because if
someone is satisfied with the way things are, he may have no motive to
consider how else they might be.25

25. Compare the sensible adage: "If it's not broken, don't fix it."
 Frankfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 41
Contentment may be a function of excessive dullness or diffidence.
The fact that a person is free both of resentment and of ambition may
be due to his having a slavish character or to his vitality being muffled
by a kind of negligent lassitude. It is possible for someone to be content
merely, as it were, by default. But a person who is content with resources
providing less utility than he could have may not be irresponsible or
indolent or deficient in imagination. On the contrary, his decision to be
content with those resources-in other words, to adopt an attitude of
willing acceptance toward the fact that he has just that much-may be
based upon a conscientiously intelligent and penetrating evaluation of
the circumstances of his life.
It is not essential for such an evaluation to include an extrinsic com-
parison of the person's circumstances with alternatives to which he might
plausibly aspire, as it would have to do if contentment were reasonable
only when based upon a judgment that the enjoyment of possible benefits
has been maximi~ed.If someone is less interested in whether his cir-
cumstances enable him to live as well as possible than in whether they
enable him to live satisfyingly,he may appropriately devote his evaluation
entirely to an intrinsic appraisal of his life. Then he may recognize that
his circumstances do not lead him to be resentful or regretful or drawn
to change and that, on the basis of his understanding of himself and of
what is important to him, he accedes approvingly to his actual readiness
to be content with the way things are. The situation in that case is not
so much that he rejects the possibility of improving his circumstances
because he thinks there is nothing genuinely to be gained by attempting
to improve them. It is rather that this possibility, however feasible it may
be, fails as a matter of fact to excite his active attention or to command
from him any lively interest.26

APPENDIX
Economic egalitarianism is a drily formalistic doctrine. The amounts of money
its adherents want for themselves and for others are calculated without regard
to anyone's personal characteristics or circumstances. In this formality, egalitarians
resemble people who desire to be as rich as possible but who have no idea what
they would do with their riches. In neither case are the individual's ambitions,
so far as money is concerned, limited or measured according to an understanding
of the goals that he intends his money to serve or of the importance of these
goals to him.

26. People often adjust their desires to their circumstances. There is a danger that
sheer discouragement, or an interest in avoiding frustration and conflict, may lead them
to settle for too little. It surely cannot be presumed that someone's life is genuinely fulfilling,
or that it is reasonable for the person to be satisfied with it, simply because he does not
complain. On the other hand, it also cannot be presumed that when a person has accom-
modated his desires to his circumstances, this is itself evidence that something has gone
wrong.
42 Ethics October1987
The desire for unlimited wealth is fetishistic, insofar as it reflects with respect
to a means an attitude-namely, desiring something for its own sake-that is
appropriate only with respect to an end. It seems to me that the attitude taken
by John Rawls toward what he refers to as "primary goods" ("rights and liberties,
opportunities and powers, income and ~ e a l t h " ) ~ tends
' toward fetishism in this
sense. The primary goods are "all purpose means," Rawls explains, which people
need no matter what other things they want: "Plans differ, since individual
abilities, circumstances, and wants differ. . . ; but whatever one's system of ends,
primary goods are a necessary means" (Rawls, p. 93). Despite the fact that he
identifies the primary goods not as ends but as means, Rawls considers it rational
for a person to want as much of them as possible. Thus, he says: "Regardless of
what an individual's rational plans are in detail, it is assumed that there are
various things which he would prefer more of rather than less. While the persons
in the original position do not know their conception of the good, they do know,
I assume, that they prefer more rather than less primary goods" (Rawls, pp.
92-93). The assumption that it must always be better to have more of the primary
goods rather than less implies that the marginal utility of an additional quantity
of a primary good is invariably greater than its cost. It implies, in other words,
that the incremental advantage to an individual of possessing a larger quantity
of primary goods is never outweighed by corresponding incremental liabilities,
incapacities, or burdens.
But this seems quite implausible. Apart from any other consideration, pos-
sessing more of a primary good may well require of a responsible individual that
he spend more time and effort in managing it and in making decisions concerning
its use. These activities are for many people intrinsically unappealing; and they
also characteristically involve both a certain amount of anxiety and a degree of
distraction from other pursuits. Surely it must not be taken simply for granted
that incremental costs of these kinds can never be greater than whatever increased
benefits a corresponding additional amount of some primary good would provide.
Individuals in the original position are behind a veil of ignorance. They do
not know their own conceptions of the good or their own life plans. Thus it may
seem rational for them to choose to possess primary goods in unlimited quantities:
since they do not know what to prepare for, perhaps it would be best for them
to be prepared for anything. Even in the original position, however, it is possible
for people to appreciate that at some point the cost of additional primary goods
might exceed the benefits those goods provide. It is true that an individual behind
the veil of ignorance cannot know atjust what point he would find that an addition
to his supply of primary goods costs more than it is worth. But his ignorance of
the exact location of that point hardly warrants his acting as though no such
point exists at all. Yet that is precisely how he does act if he chooses that the
quantity of primary goods he possesses be unlimited.
Rawls acknowledges that additional quantities of primary goods may be, for
some individuals, more expensive than they are worth. In his view, however, this
does not invalidate the supposition that it is rational for everyone in the original
position to want as much of these goods as they can get. Here is how he explains
the matter:

27. John Rawls, A Themy $Justice (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971),
p. 92. Additional references to this book appear in parentheses in the text.
 Franltfurt Equality as a Moral Ideal 43
I postulate that they [i.e., the persons in the original position] assume that
they would prefer more primary social goods rather than less. Of course,
it may turn out, once the veil of ignorance is removed, that some of them
for religious or other reasons may not, in fact, want more of these goods.
But from the standpoint of the original position, it is rational for the parties
to suppose that they do want a larger share, since in any case they are not
compelled to accept more if they do not wish to, nor does a person suffer
from a greater liberty. [Rawls, pp. 142-431
I do not find this argument convincing. It neglects the fact that dispensing with
or refusing to accept primary goods that have been made available is itself an
action that may entail significant costs. Burdensome calculations and deliberations
may be required in order for a person to determine whether an increment of
some primary good is worth having, and making decisions of this sort may involve
responsibilities and risks in virtue of which the person experiences considerable
anxiety. What is the basis, moreover, for the claim that no one suffers from a
greater liberty? Under a variety of circumstances, it would seem, people may
reasonably prefer to have fewer alternatives from which to choose rather than
more. Surely liberty, like all other things, has its costs. It is an error to suppose
that a person's life is invariably improved, or that it cannot be made worse, when
his options are increased.28

28. For pertinent discussion of this issue, see Gerald Dworkin, "Is More Choice Better
than Less?" in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, ed. P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), vol. 7, pp. 47-61.
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Equality as a Moral Ideal
Harry Frankfurt
Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 1. (Oct., 1987), pp. 21-43.
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[Footnotes]

3
Inequality
Larry S. Temkin
Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 2. (Spring, 1986), pp. 99-121.
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7
A Utilitarian Approach to the Concept of Equality in Public Expenditures
Kenneth J. Arrow
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 85, No. 3. (Aug., 1971), pp. 409-415.
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