Sebastian inherited a tomato farm from his father. It’s a very productive farm of 2,000 acres. In his first year, Sebastian had a bumper crop and made over a million dollars.

Does Sebastian deserve all those tomatoes?

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argued that justice requires fairness and fairness consists of liberty and equality.

The liberty principle says that everyone should have the same fundamental freedoms. Everyone should be free and have an equal right to vote, equal access to public office and to be treated according to the rule of law.

The equality principle has two parts:

1. Everyone should have equal access to opportunity.
2. Inequality is only allowed if it helps the least well-off (this one is complicated and I will come back to it).

Rawls would say that Sebastian did not deserve to inherit his tomato farm just because he was lucky enough to have rich parents. Following the equality principle, everyone should have equal access to opportunity and most people will not inherit a tomato farm.

According to Rawls, no one deserves any reward that results from luck.

Let’s consider another scenario.

More talent = more tomatoes

Theresa has a natural talent for growing tomatoes. Theresa grew up in a poor family but a teacher gave her a tomato plant when she was young. Theresa nutured that plant and discovered that she was good at growing tomatoes. Every year, she sells her tomatoes and uses the profits to buy more plants and more land to grow her tomato plants. By the time she was twenty-three, Theresa had acquired 2,000 acres and was making over a milllion dollars a year.

Does Theresa deserve all those tomatoes?

According to Rawls, none of us deserves rewards that result from ‘accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance’. Theresa was lucky to have a natural talent for growing tomatoes. Her talent is an accident of natural endowment. So, according to Rawls, Theresa does not deserve her tomato farm and she does not deserve the rewards that accrue from it.

A quick aside about the distinction between deserving a reward and being entitled to a reward. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes the following distinction (my phrasing and examples),

1. An entitlement is created by a social institution such as the rules of a lottery. If the rules say that the winner will be awarded £100, then the winner is entitled to the prize money.
2. By contrast, desert comes from a moral sense that someone deserves a reward. A team that cheats to win a World Cup quarter-final might be entitled to go through to the semi-final but they did not deserve it (I’m not still bitter, honest).

Rawls would say that Theresa does not deserve her tomato plants either because her natural talent for growing tomatoes is an accident of luck but I think Rawls is wrong on this point. I believe that someone who has a natural talent for growing tomatoes deserves the tomatoes that she grows and the profits she makes from selling them.

Here’s another case.

Hard work = more tomatoes

Miguel has no talent for growing tomatoes and he did not inherit a tomato farm from his parents. However, Miguel works hard. Theresa hires Miguel to work on her tomato farm and pays Miguel a portion of the profits. Miguel works hard and makes a lot of money from his hard work.

According to Rawls, Miguel’s predisposition to work hard also results from luck. Perhaps Miguel was born with Hard-Work genes or perhaps Miguel’s parents instilled in him the propensity to work hard. Either way, according to Rawls, Miguel was just lucky to develop a character trait that lazy people do not enjoy and Miguel does not deserve the rewards that accrue from his hard work.

It seems to me that Rawls’s account does violence to the meaning of the word deserve. If we can’t reward talent, hard work, diligence, kindness or determination (all accidents of natural endowment or social circumstance) then the word means nothing useful at all.

I propose that contra Rawls, we absolutely should reward talent, hard work, diligence, kindness and determination. The people who have these attributes and put them to productive use should be rewarded more highly than people who do not. I believe it’s a moral issue. Morally, I think that Theresa and Miguel deserve their tomatoes. They worked hard for their tomatoes and the tomatoes belong to them legally (entitlement) and morally (desert).

Rawls said that, although they do not deserve special rewards, talented and hard-working citizens would be entitled to additional rewards if and only if they resulted in benefits to the least well-off in society and I will consider this in a separate post.