Abstract

Abstract: The gist of Welsclie’s argument seems to be to pick up on an idea he attributes to Rawls, that in a true property-owning democracy, productive wealth would be distributed more broadly ‘ex ante’ rather than, as now, ‘ex post.’, the point of demarcation being the use of capital to generate wealth and income. As against this, I argue that ex ante distribution of capital is impossible, because business activity creates wealth, and thus we don’t know what there is to distribute ex ante. Moreover, the prospect of greater wealth for the producers ex post is what especially motivates them to produce, and without production we are poor. It is also noted that Rawls’s ‘difference principle’ does not in fact have the egalitarian implications he supposes, nor really any distributive implications, despite Rawls’s intentions.