Editing Distributive justice (section)

=== Egalitarianism ===
{{Main|Egalitarianism}}
Based on a fundamental notion of equal worth and moral status of human beings,<ref>{{Cite web|date=April 24, 2013|title=Egalitarianism|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egalitarianism/|access-date=May 15, 2020|website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> egalitarianism is concerned with equal treatment of all citizens in both respect and in concern, and in relation to the state as well as one another.<ref name=":6">Pierik, Roland. 2020. ''Developing responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism: A synthesis of five decades of liberal-egalitarian theorizing''. [[University of Amsterdam]]. Pp. 16–17.</ref>  Egalitarianism focuses more on the process through which distribution takes place, egalitarianism evaluates the justification for a certain distribution based on how the society and its institutions have been shaped, rather than what the outcome is.<ref name=":5" />  Attention is mainly given to ways in which unchosen person circumstances affect and hinder individuals and their life opportunities.<ref name=":6" /> As Elizabeth Anderson defines it, "the positive aim of egalitarian justice is...to create a community in which people stand in relation of equality to others."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Anderson|first=Elizanbeth|title=What is the Point of Equality?|publisher=Chicago University Press|year=1999|location=Chicago|pages=288–289}}</ref>

The main issue with egalitarian conceptions of distributive justice is the question concerning what kind of equality should be pursued. This is because one kind of equality might imply or require inequality of another kind.<ref name="Temkin">{{cite book |last1=Temkin |first1=Larry S. |title=Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy |chapter=Illuminating Egalitarianism |date=2009 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing Ltd |pages=159–160 |doi=10.1002/9781444310399.ch9 |isbn=9781444310399 |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444310399.ch9}}</ref> Strict egalitarianism, for instance, requires the equal allocation of material resources to every person of a given society.<ref name="Lamont">{{cite web |last1=Lamont |first1=Julian |title=Distributive Justice |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=11 March 2023}}</ref> The principle of strict equality therefore holds that even if an unequal distribution would make everyone better off, or if an unequal distribution would make some better off but no one worse off, the strictly egalitarian distribution should be upheld. This notion of distributive justice can be critiqued because it can result in Pareto suboptimal distributions. Thus, the Pareto norm suggests that principles of distributive justice should result in allocations in which it is no longer possible to make anyone better off without making anyone else worse off. <ref>{{cite book |last1=Arneson |first1=Richard J. |title=A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy |chapter=Equality |date=2017 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing Ltd |pages=604–606 |doi=10.1002/9781405177245.ch31 |isbn=9781405136532 |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405177245.ch31}}</ref>  This illustrates a concern for the equality of welfare, which is an ex post conception of equality as it is concerned with the  equality in outcomes. This conception has been critiqued by those in favour of ex ante equality, that is equality in people´s prospects, which is captured by alternative conceptions of equality such as those that demand equality of opportunity.<ref name="Temkin" />

While much academic work distinguishes between [[luck egalitarianism]] and [[social egalitarianism]], Roland Pierik presents a synthesis combining the two branches.<ref name=":6" /> In his synthesis, he argues that instead of focusing on compensations for unjust inequalities in society via redistribution of primary goods, egalitarianism scholars should instead, given the fundamental notion upon which the theory is built, strive to create institutions that creates and promotes meaningful equal opportunities from the get-go. Pierik thus moves egalitarianism's otherwise reactive nature by emphasising a need for attention to the development of fundamentally different institutions that would eradicate the need for redistribution and instead focus on the initial equal distribution of opportunities from which people then themselves be able to shape their lives.<ref name=":6" />