John Rawls is probably the most influential political theorist of the last 100 years. The American philosopher is widely credited with providing a rational basis for political and economic policies promoting equality.
Rawls, who served in the US army in the second World War, was greatly influenced by his mother – an advocate for women’s rights – but it was the death of two of his brothers, when John was aged just seven, that is regarded as the most formative experience of his life.
Both had caught a disease that the future philosopher had initially contracted. The role of chance – good and bad luck – would be a central theme of Rawls’s work.
Rawls asked us to consider what legal and political arrangements we would put in place if we stood behind a “veil of ignorance”, not knowing what gender, wealth-bracket, ethnicity and level of ability – or disability – we had. A rational person in this “original position”, Rawls argued, would want to live in a society that protected the most vulnerable – since that could be any of us.
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From this starting point, Rawls developed two key principles. First, that each person’s basic freedoms should be guaranteed. Second, that social and economic inequalities should be tolerated only if they are of most benefit to the least advantaged members of society, and in circumstances where there is equality of opportunity.
This concept of “justice as fairness” remains persuasive. A beauty of the theory is that it doesn’t seek to harmonise belief systems. You can be Christian, Muslim, religious, atheist, left, right, conservative or liberal – it doesn’t matter what faith or ideology you have, Rawls argued; logic will compel you to reach the same conclusion on how to order society.
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But there is a catch. Critics of Rawls’s theory point out that decision-makers in the original position are risk-averse. Some people may opt for a winner-takes-all scenario rather than going for the safe option of a society with safety nets.
Look around the world today, and you can see how risk-taking behaviour threatens Rawls’s vision. In Silicon Valley, the world’s richest men are making big bets on sketchy innovations. Two in particular stand out: cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI). One has the potential to crash the world economy, with US president Donald Trump pledging to embed crypto in the wider financial system. The other has the potential to destroy democracies; in fact, that process may already have started thanks to the algorithms of Meta and X.
If the United States wants to gamble with social cohesion and democracy – with the promise of enriching a tiny minority – let them at it. But European governments must stand firm in the public interest. For Ireland, that may mean some short-term financial losses. Long-term consequences are more important
Rawls’s work is more urgent than ever as income inequality climbs to unprecedented levels. But citizens concerned about social justice will struggle to persuade tech billionaires and others embedded in positions of advantage to see things from the “original position”.
There was no persuading Sam Bankman-Fried, for example. The cryptocurrency entrepreneur was unapologetic about his casino lifestyle until he was jailed last March for 25 years for fraud and related offences. At his trial, his former colleague and ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison said Bankman-Fried confided he “would be happy to flip a coin if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be, like, more than twice as good”.
In online manifestos and media interviews, Bankman-Fried portrayed his greed as a kind of altruism. As his crypto firm FTX imploded, he expressed his view on financial accountability to one reporter: “F*** regulators”.
Bankman-Fried is in jail but his brand of “innovation” is being turbocharged in the new US administration. While Trump once denounced bitcoin as fake currency “based on thin air”, he had his head turned by an industry which has donated millions of dollars to his campaign. The US president is now planning a “bitcoin strategic reserve” – which promises to have the American taxpayer pick up the tab once crypto prices start to tumble.
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Emboldened by the new economic order, tech companies are piling the pressure on Europe, lobbying for an easing of regulations on not just crypto but social media, new financial services and AI. Cheerleaders for deregulation include Elon Musk – a video games fanatic who is “addicted to risk”, according to his biographer Walter Isaacson. But now is exactly the wrong time to cut red tape.
If the United States wants to gamble with social cohesion and democracy – with the promise of enriching a tiny minority – let them at it. But European governments must stand firm in the public interest. For Ireland, that may mean some short-term financial losses. Long-term consequences are more important.
In the 1990s, Irish economic policy was framed as a choice between Boston or Berlin. Today our choice is more like Squid Game versus Sweden: Either a winner-takes-all scenario – which, like the Netflix series, promises a grim fate for losers – or a society oriented towards equality and fairness.
Gambling recklessly with people’s futures is incompatible with social justice. Rawls showed this in theory. Tech industries and their hired hands in politics are showing it in practice – with potentially ruinous results for our democracies and our planet.