Abstract
If there is a duty of justice to contribute to society, which asks individuals to produce a specific amount of goods and services that can be redistributed, we need a decision-procedure to know when we have done our part. This paper analyses and critically assesses the commonly suggested decision-procedure of relying on market prices to measure the value of one’s contribution. It is usually assumed that a high salary indicates that one’s talents are put to good use, but this presupposes both that market prices of labour are correct reflections of supply and demand, and that market prices are correct reflections of social value. I criticise both assumptions and argue that the social value of a contribution cannot simply be a function of its market value, but is also influenced by the principles of justice that support the duty to contribute. Further, the market solution is incapable of valuing contributions that lack market prices, like non-marketised care labour. The market solution thus fails as a decision-procedure under other than special circumstances. This does not mean, however, that we need to give up the idea of a duty to contribute.
Keywords
While much of the debate on distributive justice in the last decades has focused on how people’s responsibility for their choices determines what a just distribution is, the question of people’s responsibility to contribute to the production of that which is to be distributed justly has received less consideration. Yet since what is distributed must first be produced, the latter question clearly deserves more attention. One way of contributing is to accept that one’s income is taxed and redistributed according to some principle of justice. A second way not only requires that we tolerate taxation of what we have produced, but that we actually produce goods and resources to be redistributed. If we are expected to contribute in the former, less demanding way, we still freely decide how to divide our time between work and leisure. On the second, more demanding formulation, however, we would be expected to work until we have produced a specified minimum amount of goods and services.
A theory that supports the idea that there is a duty to contribute in the second sense should answer why, where and when it applies. For example, one common answer (Becker, 1980; White, 2003) to these three questions (to which we may remain uncommitted for the purposes of this article) is based on the idea of reciprocity, and says that those who take part of the goods of a society also have an obligation to contribute to their production. This view may be said to inform the increasingly common practice in many welfare states of making welfare provisions conditional on work effort (White, 2004). It can, but need not, be complemented by the Aristotelian or Marxian view that humans are social creatures for which it is natural and good to produce (Gomberg, 2016). Additionally, it is a fact that in the real world jobs that are important to justice are often not performed, and a duty of productive justice could also be justified because it would help reduce injustice in non-ideal circumstances (Stanczyk, 2012). In addition to these issues, there is also a motivational question of how to make sure that people are willing to contribute, and whether it could be done in a way that is consistent with a plausible view of individual freedom (see, for instance, Casal, 2013; Cohen, 2008; Lang, 2016; Murphy, 1999; Pogge, 2000; Wiens, 2016). Since much has been written about these problems I will not address them in the present context. 1 Instead, my focus is on another problem in need of a solution if we are to assess the idea of a duty to contribute: Even if citizens were motivated to do their bit, it would not do much good unless they knew what their bits were. Independently of our answer to whether there is a duty to contribute, and whether it is feasible that people will honour it, we need an answer to the question that is the focus of this article: what should count as making a socially valuable contribution?
In approaching this question, it is useful to view the duty to contribute as an account of right-making characteristics in need of a decision-making procedure (or decision-procedure for short). Just like some consequentialists (e.g. Bales, 1971) hold that an individual performs the right action if and only if there is no other available action that would have better consequences, we could correspondingly say that an individual fulfils a duty to contribute when he or she has produced something of sufficient value – regardless of whether we know what particular action fulfils this right-making criterion. For such an account to guide action, however, we also need a decision-procedure to help us pick out the particular action that has the best possible consequences or the particular contributions that are sufficiently valuable. How could an individual, for instance, decide whether a career in architecture or cartoon drawing would be a better way to fulfil a duty to contribute? In discussions concerning a duty to contribute, the most commonly suggested decision-procedure is the ‘market solution’, which holds that market prices of labour indicate the social value of a contribution. This view, ascribed below to thinkers like Joseph Carens, David Miller and Ronald Dworkin, holds that at least in properly idealised circumstances, markets collect and convey information regarding what is highly valued by market actors and thereby specify what a larger rather than smaller contribution is. It says that we fulfil our duty to contribute when our actual income is sufficiently high compared to our highest possible income, thus solving the problem described above.
Although the authors discussed in this article have presented and defended versions of a market solution to the problem of valuing contributions, an overall assessment of the market solution and its applicability is lacking in the literature. This article thus sets out to critically assess the market solution as a decision-procedure by explicating whether, and in what circumstances, it could yield successful action guiding prescriptions, and when and why those prescriptions could fail to lead individuals towards the right-making characteristics of the duty to contribute.
I begin by illustrating that the market solution rests on the assumption that by working in the occupation where one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution. An argument for this assumption is then reconstructed, and I proceed to make a critical point in relation to two of its premises. First, one’s income is not only the outcome of market mechanisms, and second, the market price of goods and services cannot reasonably be seen as a reflection of their social value. I then, I consider what this implies for the market solution and draw two conclusions. First, the market solution presupposes prior non-market considerations in the form of the principle of justice from which the duty to contribute is derived. Second, its inability to recognise the value of contributions which lack a market price – like non-marketised care work – means we should ultimately reject the claim that we can maximise our contribution by maximising our income. The final section addresses a possible reply from proponents of the market solution, who might concede the points presented here and insist that although it is an imperfect and sometimes misleading decision-procedure, it is still the best available alternative.
The market solution
Two assumed functions of prices in a market economy are of relevance for assessing the market solution. First, prices are often said to coordinate productive decisions by indicating what the market values. A high salary indicates that a good or service is in high demand and that market actors value it. Second, prices motivate productive decisions. Insofar as individuals are motivated by a high salary, they will be directed towards more rather than less well-paid vocations (Roemer, 2010). Individuals that try to contribute according to abilities would hence, it seems, do well to take jobs with higher rather than lower salaries.
Joseph Carens (1981) has suggested that these functions can be separated, since non-pecuniary moral incentives might replace the motivating function of economic incentives. Individuals who believe in a duty to contribute would in effect, he argues, derive satisfaction from fulfilling it and value the satisfaction in a way that is similar to how people value monetary income. Given this admittedly utopian assumption, we can set income tax at 100% and distribute an equal post-tax income to all. How people then decide to spend their post-tax income will create market prices that indicate what is deemed valuable and important. Pre-tax incomes would thus need to remain unequal and correspond to market prices of different jobs, in order to retain the coordinating functions of markets. Given that market prices indicate what is valuable, Carens (1981: 25) believes the duty to contribute asks individuals to ‘earn as much pre-tax net income as they are capable of earning’ 2 and he describes this obligation as ‘a version of the socialist ideal “from each according to his abilities”’ (Carens, 1986: 33).
This principle, which Karl Marx (1970: 19) suggests would be inscribed on the banners in the ‘higher phase of communist society’ essentially captures one of the main insights in contemporary egalitarian political philosophy. By noting that ‘…one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time…’ Marx (1970: 18) recognises that the distribution of talents, and thereby people’s productive capacity, is the result of morally arbitrary factors. The according-to-abilities principle thus builds on a notion of fairness since it does not require everyone to make equal contributions in absolute terms, but rather that all make an equivalent contribution in relation to their own productive capacity. 3
The market solution is promising as a decision-procedure for spelling out what ‘according to abilities’ means. It is quite reasonable that if people are willing to pay for the goods and services you produce then your abilities are put to good use, and so is the corollary idea that if they are willing to pay a higher price or if more people are willing to pay you, you are putting your abilities to better use. As David Miller (1989: 160 f) puts it, ‘If customers will pay twice as much for a beaver as for a deer, this provides evidence that the activity of trapping a beaver is twice as valuable as that of hunting a deer’. Miller, Carens and other proponents of market mechanisms as integral to justice are thus taking the standard economic assumptions about prices being the outcomes of supply and demand and assume it also holds for the price of people’s labour and by extension their talents. 4 What seems to follow is the main claim of the market solution: By working in the occupation where one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution.
This conclusion cannot follow, however, from a single premise about market prices of labour being the outcomes of supply and demand. In addition, we would need to assume that social value is accurately reflected by market prices. We must therefore add a second premise, stating that market prices are measures of the social value of one’s contribution. The best reconstruction of an argument that would yield the main claim of the market solution as its conclusion is thus as follows:
The market argument
5
The market price of an individual’s talents is decided by what other people pay (the demand) for, and the relative scarcity (the supply) of, the goods and services the person produces.
6
The social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it.
7
The market price of an individual’s talents corresponds to the social value of his or her contribution (from 1 and 2).
8
∴ By working in the occupation where one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution.
9
I will go on in the next section to argue that premise 1 can only be true under highly idealised and special circumstances. This means that the market solution cannot be an adequate decision-procedure in other, less than ideal circumstances. Although this is not a ground for rejecting the market solution, it indicates that it has limited application. Additionally, however, I will argue that premise 2 is false, since market prices are often higher or lower than what we could call the social value of a good or service. This means that the market solution as reconstructed here fails in a more fundamental way, since it would be misleading even in idealised circumstances, and individuals who tried to maximise their contribution by maximising their income would be misled.
When market prices and social value come apart
Against the efficiency aspect of markets (premise 1)
The first premise of the market argument claims that the market mechanisms of supply and demand decide market prices of goods and services and in extension the market price of individuals’ talents. If I am capable of drawing both cartoons and houses, and market demand drives up the salaries of architects, I should give up cartoon drawing and become an architect instead. Historically, the efficiency aspect of markets has been invoked in comparisons with central planning solutions. The problem with central planning is that all the necessary information regarding what is valued and in demand is dispersed among citizens and seemingly impossible to collect and organise, at least in ways that are not invasive or too demanding. On the other hand, the price mechanisms of markets are often praised as excellent tools for coordinating the behaviour of many different individuals, especially when the knowledge necessary for coordination cannot be gathered and processed by a single institution.
Friedrich Hayek famously used the example of an increase in the price of tin and its effects on decisions made by producers and consumers of tin-based products, and its further effects on the supply and demand of substitute goods, to make the point that market actors do not need to know how the whole market reacts to decide how to react properly themselves. The fact that goods have prices and that these are interconnected is enough, argues Hayek, for all individuals to act ‘as a whole’, adapt supply and demand and reach a solution preferable to anything the central planning solution could construct. The fact that prices convey very limited information is thus heralded as a virtue (Hayek, 1945: 526). Market socialists like Carens also esteem the efficiency and simplicity of markets compared to planning solutions. He notes that even if we knew what the community wants done, without price signals we would be at a loss to prioritise among several goals and calculate our possible contributions to them, respectively. Market prices are necessary because when they exist, The amount the individual can contribute to any particular activity will be reflected in the amount he can earn from engaging in that activity. Thus, the relative usefulness of an individual’s contributions to alternative tasks and the relative importance which society places on achieving various goals interact without planning in the market as supply and demand. And the individual can be confident that he will contribute the most he can to what the community wants done if he simply maximizes his pre-tax income. (Carens, 1981: 196 f)
Even with the idealisation of equal buying power in place the first premise’s assumption that market prices are a result of supply and demand can be criticised, since the price of labour is almost always influenced by individual and collective wage negotiations and distorted by monopolies and oligopolies that depress or raise the price of goods and services, and thereby also wages, arbitrarily. Furthermore, market externalities mean that the cost of a productive activity does not reflect all of its consequences. Whenever production has negative non-market effects, neither producers nor consumers are paying the ‘true’ price of the good or service, which in extension means that the contributions by those producing the good or service are overvalued. 16 Further, it is well known that markets have a tendency towards underproduction of public goods like clean air and national defence, a category of goods characterised by the fact that it is impossible or too costly to regulate access to them in relation to contribution to their costs. The problem of freeriding means that public goods will be underproduced if we rely on markets to provide them since firms have an interest in excluding people who do not pay from consuming their products. Therefore, the economists’ argument goes, there will be a mismatch between supply and demand. Their market price, we could add, will thus be lower than their social value.
This means that under circumstances like those we are familiar with, market prices of contributions usually are not, and often should not be, merely the outcome of market mechanisms. No serious defender of market mechanisms in this context would defend laissez-faire markets, however, but would most likely endorse market mechanisms as complemented and assisted by whatever political institutions are necessary to ensure that they work well. For instance, Carens suggests that demand may be the result of both individual and government consumption, so that taxes, subsidies and other government regulations can be used to adjust prices to make them reflect the real costs and benefits to society (Carens, 1981: 188–95;197 f, 2014: 69 f). 17 Miller and White have both suggested that some goods should be provided by the public sector, at a level decided through some legitimate collective decision, and that people employed in the public sector could use their incomes as indicators of the value of their contribution at least in those circumstances. 18
Although it is no ground for a rejection, this qualifies the first premise of the market solution by illustrating that whenever the idealisations of equalised buying power and the sufficient correction of externalities and public goods do not hold, which is the general condition in which we all live, the market solution is a misleading decision-procedure, since its prescriptions fail to direct individuals towards fulfilling their duty. This does not mean that the market solution fails as a decision-procedure in all possible circumstances, although it severely limits its applicability. 19 Neither does it mean that it is not the best available decision-procedure under non-ideal circumstances. What is more problematic, however, is that even if the idealisations introduced above save the first premise from counterexamples based on flaws of real markets, the very fact that they are necessary gives us reasons to doubt the assumption made in the second premise: that the social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it. For our intuitions that real markets will often yield distorted prices must come from somewhere, and I suggest they derive from a more fundamental rift between market prices as a decision-procedure and the criterion of rightness that describes a valuable contribution. This point is developed by turning to some examples that challenge the second premise of the argument for the market solution.
Against the value feature of markets (premise 2)
A second reason for preferring markets to a central planning solution is that not only do markets communicate decentralised information, but they in effect also decentralise decision making to individuals. Call this the value feature of markets since it supports the second premise, which stated that the social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it.
On a market, all actors are part of the process that decides what will be produced and sold, unlike a central planning solution where decision-making is removed from individuals. Supporters of a duty to contribute point out that contributions are only contributions when – and because – they satisfy a desire or preference held by individuals (Becker, 1986: 107; White, 2003: 100). A proponent of the market solution could thus defend the second premise by claiming that not only is no one in a better position to assess the value of something to an individual than that individual, but the value of any good or service is simply its value to individuals, aggregated into a market price. The idea is that since demand is the aggregation of decentralised private decisions about what people value, market prices function as grounds for action-guiding prescriptions for individuals motivated to discharge their duty to make a valuable contribution.
Dworkin’s conception of equality of resources elaborates this idea and makes it fundamental to distributive justice. The general point of Dworkin’s hypothetical auction example is that ‘…the true measure of the social resources devoted to the life of one person is fixed by asking how important, in fact, that resource is for others’ (Dworkin, 2000: 70). On this view, an ideal market is the only procedure through which we access the value that people attach to resources, as well as skills and talents. If real markets functioned as ideal markets, they could indeed be seen as a procedure for defining an equal share of resources, regardless of its outcome (Dworkin, 1985: 207). Although Dworkin does not endorse a duty to contribute, his market-based approach extends to the valuing of productive contributions, since market prices on labour could tell individuals the value of their choice of work over leisure, and one career over another (Dworkin, 1978: 130 ff). 20 Miller’s example of beaver being twice as valuable as deer also illustrates this position. The benefits of relying on market prices, argues Miller, are that value becomes empirically detectable and that we get an acceptable and applicable public standard of value. On this view, the demand for a good or service, and how well a contribution responds to that demand, is thus the proper basis for valuing that contribution. Prices ‘provides evidence’ about relative value and are superior compared to the ‘lofty vantage-point’ of assigning intrinsic non-market values (Miller, 1989: 160 ff.). 21
It is important to note, however, that even if the idealisations introduced to deal with objections to the first premise are in place, we would still be too quick if we concluded that the prices resulting from market mechanisms adequately rank contributions according to their value. A first reason is that satisfying some preferences seems to be undesirable all things considered, and such preferences should therefore be ruled out beforehand. Although the market price of opiates, for instance, reflects the supply and demand for them, working as a heroin dealer, though highly lucrative, should arguably not count as contributing to society. 22 Thus, if one considers whether to make a career in drug trafficking or in an alternative business, the duty to contribute should not gear one towards drug trafficking – even if that would indeed be the only way to make good use of one’s talents – since the market price of addictive goods is higher than their social value. A parallel case is that of offensive preferences, such as the preference of people who take pleasure in ‘subjecting others to a lesser liberty as a means of enhancing their self-respect’ (Rawls, 1999: 27 f). 23 It is clear that if there existed a market in a good or service that catered to some people’s offensive preferences, working in such a market and satisfying such preferences should not count as contributing anything of social value.
Say, for instance, that in a society with equalised buying power and well-functioning markets you and I both want a piece of land by the sea, but you want it in order to build a house with an ocean view, while I want it only to frustrate your preference because I believe that people like you should not be allowed to own houses with an ocean view. And say that my satisfaction from preventing you is greater than your preference for a beach house, so that I am willing to bid higher in an auction for the property; I am indeed willing to use almost all of my resources for this aim. Once I win the auction I proceed to destroy the site’s natural beauty by turning it into a waste compound. We now have an envy-free distribution even though upon reflection it might seem that a different distribution would have greater social value. And, more importantly, the real estate agent and the people employed by me to destroy the site should not, upon reflection, be viewed as discharging their duty to contribute when generating their income, since they are catering to demand that is based on an offensive preference. 24
Now say that citizens divide themselves into different ethnic groups and have weak preferences to be around people from the same ethnic group. It has been suggested in economic research that such preferences at the individual level may give rise to segregation on the macro level (Schelling, 1971). Assuming that people want to ride on buses where their group is in majority, there might therefore be a sufficiently large customer base for me to start a company that runs a segregated bus route with different buses for each ethnic group. If my calculations were correct, perhaps I could make much more money as an owner and you as a bus driver in this company compared to a regular non-segregated bus company. Yet we would at the same time contribute to a segregated society that most would find worth striving to avoid, on grounds of justice. Even when people’s preferences are not as unmistakably offensive as in the first example, there might thus be cases where catering to a demand, though lucrative, should not be counted as making a contribution, or at the very least that this social value is clearly outweighed by the social disvalue and injustice of segregation. In short, just like in the case of addictive goods, the market prices of occupations catering to offensive preferences are higher than their social value. From a not-so-lofty vantage point outside of the market, we clearly see that market prices and social value come apart.
The opposite holds for a fact that is often abstracted from in theorising about justice. Although society requires and will continue to require that some people care for others, notably children and elderly as well as people that due to sickness, injury or other circumstances need much assistance, care work is typically an activity that we think of primarily in non-market terms and it consequently lacks a price set by market mechanisms. So long as we believe non-professional care work has some positive social value – we need not make any strong assumptions that caring is one of the most important human activities – it means that market prices fail to capture this, since the market price of such care work is zero. And so, although caring for others, including children, are necessary tasks for ensuring the continuation of a society over time and for even approximating equality of opportunity, the market solution cannot recognise non-marketised care as a contribution. Additionally, since most people can be employed at some salary, this means that even very modest contributions in paid work will be valued higher by the market than the decision of becoming an unpaid full- or part-time carer for a family member or a friend. Indeed, the only way your work as a carer could even count is if it were converted into a market relationship, for example by letting the person hire you as a private nurse or by giving children vouchers so they can employ you as a parent. 25 Even then it is unlikely that one’s set of talents were such that caring was one’s best way to contribute, however, and even when this is true, it is unlikely that caring for a particular loved one would be the best way to contribute, since someone else is probably worse off and has greater need for one’s caring. Yet to the extent that parents, for instance, identify their preference for parenting as part of providing a service to the person receiving the care and to the community, it appears to be a valid contribution even though it is not paid work. 26
In sum, since care work will continue to be required for the continuation of society and to ensure some level of equality of opportunity, and because many people identify it as valuable, we should ensure that the duty to contribute is such that it revalues care work and brings it on par with other kinds of productive work. Further, we should do so without reinforcing the gendered division of labour based on the traditional view of male breadwinners working in the productive sphere and female housewives working in the reproductive sphere. 27 How this can be achieved is a discussion too large for the present context, but even without a scheme for measuring the exact value of care work, the facts that we do not want to deny that it has some positive value and that this cannot be recognised by market prices mean that the example demonstrates that there is nothing in prices themselves that tell us whether they should be accepted as good indicators of social value or if we have reasons to think they are distorted in some way. This suggests we should reject the unqualified premise 2, that the social value of a good or service is what people pay for it.
Implications for the market solution
The remainder of this article reiterates the three main claims of the critical discussion above and discusses what they imply for the market solution to the problem of valuing contributions.
The first claim was that a decision-procedure grounded on the market solution will often be misleading, since market prices will often not reflect what people actually want produced. Doubt is cast on the first premise of the reconstructed argument and the efficiency feature of the market solution since public goods will be undervalued and goods with negative externalities will be overvalued, and unequal buying power will mean prices reflect the demand of the better off. This does not constitute grounds for rejecting the market solution wholesale, because no reasonable proponent could believe it holds under other than idealised circumstances. The proper response is thus to advocate a market solution where markets approximate the ideal and buying power is equal. Nevertheless, the examples illustrate the very limited applicability of the market solution as a procedure for guiding individuals to fulfil a duty to contribute under less than such ideal conditions.
The second, more challenging, claim was the critique of the assumption in the second premise: that the social value of a contribution is what other people pay for it. The examples of addictive goods and offensive preferences clearly show that social value and market prices are not the same thing. Even when buying power is equalised, production to satisfy market demand cannot be assumed to produce the most social value, since the satisfaction of some desires and preferences frustrate rather than advance justice. This means that even under idealised circumstances, market prices cannot, on their own, ground a decision-procedure for people inspired to discharge their duty to contribute. An account of what makes a contribution valuable must rely on something thicker than market prices alone
Both these responses, however, fall short because of the third claim, which is the most uncomfortable for proponents of the market solution: Even in the best of circumstances described above, the market solution is still insufficient, because it can only ever tell us the social value of a good or service with a market price. Unless we are willing to radically change the way we understand and organise care labour, the market solution will hence systematically and persistently mischaracterise contributions made through non-marketised care work as lacking social value. Even if markets work ideally and demand is checked by principles of justice, the outcome of the market solution would still be misleading since non-marketised care labour cannot be compared with other ways to discharge one’s duty to contribute.
What are the implications of these claims for the thinkers discussed above? They do not, after all, offer a dogmatic libertarian defence of markets but rather the more modest view that markets, given certain background conditions, have a fundamental role in specifying the demands of justice.
In fairness, their general theories are equipped to and actually do address the first and second claims above. We saw, for instance, that no one defends a market solution where buying power is unequal. Further, in reply to the example of offensive preferences, Dworkin could point to his principle of independence, which checks the outcomes of his auction so that bids made for reasons of contempt, dislike or prejudice are not allowed to shape its outcome. And he could repeat the view that in a properly idealised world, efficient markets checked by this principle would indeed offer the very definition of equal shares of resources, including talents (Dworkin, 1985: 207, 2000: 161 f). Similarly, Miller (1989: 72–97) shows that markets are unable to cater to non-commodity-based conceptions of the good such as workplace democracy, since co-operatives will be discriminated against in market economies, including market socialism. In his discussion of public goods, he also notes that society might recognise everyone’s basic need for physical mobility and so decide to provide subsidised public transportation. Answering the worries of the second claim, the value of the contribution of Miller’s publically employed bus driver is thus decided by our answer to a prior question of justice (Miller, 1999: 197). Finally, although Carens (2003: 156, n. 10) admits his discussion of whether market prices are reliable indicators of productive contributions is ‘very preliminary’, he notes that he is sketching an ideal system, with suitably regulated markets, where demand is originated by individuals or legitimate collective processes that may take into account broader conceptions of social good, and where distorted prices are corrected (Carens, 1981: 195, 1986: 33, 2003: 156 n. 10, 2014: 70). 28
By now, we can say that the main claim of the market solution – that by working in the occupation where one maximises one’s income, one maximises one’s contribution – should be, and is, defended as true only when qualified and preceded by arrangements like the ones described above. It is true that a contribution is only socially valuable if it is valued by someone, but what we have learned is that its value also depends on the conception of justice that is held to be the right one in a just society. We can also note that since the idea of a duty to contribute is derived from distributive justice more generally, it will be spelled out differently depending on what theory of distributive justice we start with. Thus, we cannot know what a contribution is unless we know why justice requires that we contribute, and what our contributions are for. On a luck egalitarian conception of justice, for instance, the true measure of the social value of a contribution cannot only be its market price, but must also be influenced by whether it frustrates or contributes to the realisation of a fundamental luck egalitarian principle, such as the one stating that it is morally bad – unjust or unfair – if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own (Cohen, 2008: 7; Temkin, 1993: 13). For so-called social egalitarians, it is the absence of asymmetric social relationships – ‘hierarchy, snobbery, servility and oppression’ (Wolff, 2015: 216) – that is essential to justice. The true measure of the social value of a contribution must therefore depend on whether it prevents or contributes to citizens being social equals. And on the conception of justice that Carens himself subscribes to, economic equality is desirable because it is required for individuals to be equally free to pursue their plans of life (Carens, 1986: 37). The true measure of social value under such a conception must therefore be whether it contributes to people’s chances of pursuing their plans of life or whether it counteracts that aim. 29
A charitable interpretation of the theorists discussed here is hence that they are defending this qualified understanding of the role of markets in the market solution, and that they to some extent could avoid any critical edge present in the first and second claims above. The deepest worry about the market solution, however, is the one raised by the third claim. Just like our implicit commitment to non-market, prior moral principles tell us that buying power must be equalised, public goods should be provided and offensive preferences should be disregarded, it also suggests care work should be revalued. Yet the very nature of the market solution renders it incapable of doing so. While Miller and Dworkin have not discussed care work, White (2003: 109–114) offers an illuminating account, to which I am partly indebted, as to why care work should be recognised as valuable, although he does not discuss the market solution’s incapacity to do so. Carens has brought up the problem, and notes that in a society without the duty to contribute, ‘If a parent wants to stay home to care for her children rather than work, that is her business. If she wants to work and make child-care arrangements, she is also free to do that’ (Carens, 2003: 163). In a society with Carens’s duty to contribute, however, she ought to choose the second arrangement, and he concedes that ‘The principle of “from each according to abilities” turns a stay-at-home mom (or dad) into a moral failure’ (Carens, 2003: 163). But Carens is obviously too quick here, since it is not the according-to-abilities principle itself that leads to the stated conclusion, but rather the market solution’s requirement that all contributions have a price. With another decision-procedure for valuing contributions, care work could very well be recognised as a valid way of discharging the duty to contribute, but the market solution cannot easily be revised to do so. Unlike the cases above, neither equalised buying power nor taxes and subsidies can be used to correct a misleading market price, since care work lacks such a price. And if we do not want to turn all personal caring relationships into paid market relationships, the most feasible method of giving its non-pecuniary value an artificial market price is to rely on so-called satellite accounts, which are often based on time study surveys that map how much unpaid work is done in an economy and who performs it. Apart from the difficulties in employing this strategy, 30 it cannot solve the problem on its own terms, however. Satellite accounts can at most estimate the total value of care work being performed in an economy, regardless of who performs it. But the market solution under scrutiny here is about finding out who could do it most efficiently, and what its value is in relation to other possible uses for our talents.
There are three possible solutions to the problem mentioned in Carens’s body of work on the topic. First, we could hope that expanded childcare arrangements resolve the tension (Carens, 2003: 163 n. 17). Likewise, all other kinds of non-professional care work would arguably need to be performed by professionals. Many probably find this unattractive for a range of reasons, and it does not really solve the problem since it in effect says that we should not take on private caring relationships but leave them to a market actor, at least part of the time. Second, in a discussion on the work of artists and inventors engaged in projects not properly valued by their peers, Carens compares them to people engaging in civil disobedience with unjust laws, and says that ‘pioneers of genius’ will eventually be recognised in the long run (Carens, 1981: 202 f). But this is an unattractive solution, since parents and carers are not ‘pioneers of genius’ and the value of their work is already recognised in at least informal currencies in many societies. Finally, parenting could be recognised as a full-time job that would count as a way to make a contribution for at least one adult per household, even though it lacks a market price (Carens, 2003: 163, n. 17). This is not so much a mechanism to value care work as a recognition that care work is valuable, however, and does not resolve the problems identified in the last paragraph, which require non-market considerations to be addressed.
It is beyond the scope of this article to offer such an evaluative mechanism, however, and the point of this section is rather that although the market solution is more attractive than the central planning solution since it does not emulate or guess what people want, it is just as incapable of estimating the value of what people want when what they want cannot be expressed in market prices. And this means that as long as we do not want to deny that non-marketised care work is socially valuable, the market solution would yield misleading action guiding prescriptions even in idealised circumstances where market shortcomings are corrected and nothing demanded is incompatible with the conception of justice held in a society.
The market solution as the second best?
The critical assessment offered in this article makes it clear that whatever merit the market solution as reconstructed above has is limited to special, idealised circumstances where imperfections of real markets are corrected and it is preceded and complemented by considerations based on principles of justice that have nothing to do with markets. This raises a question of whether it should be conceived of as a market solution, and, further, whether it really is a solution to the problem of what should count as making a valuable contribution. Now, although it would systematically yield misleading action guiding prescriptions for individuals seeking to discharge their duty to contribute, its proponents do not defend it merely as an intellectual exercise in ideal theory. Carens pursues a social mechanism that should help to clarify, and realise, egalitarian ideals (Carens, 2014: 52), and Miller (1989: 161 f) stresses that he seeks a mechanism for valuing contributions that can be part of the basis of a social practice. They are indeed suggesting a decision-procedure to direct us towards fulfilling certain criteria of rightness. As a final defence, they could point out that this article only has offered a critique and no alternative solution. Just like we should not stop using a medical test because it sometimes generates false positives or false negatives, it is not a persuasive objection to point out that the market solution is a less than perfect decision-procedure. It might well be our preferred basis for valuing contributions if there are no better options. 31
In reply, I believe we should keep in mind that following an imperfect decision-procedure is only a wise strategy if we can be certain that the consequences of doing so are not objectionable on the grounds we have to motivate the decision-procedure. If we want to save lives, we should think twice about making mandatory a medical test to discover a minor ailment if the test mostly works but is sometimes fatal. Now, Carens (2014: 54, 58–60) suggests the obligation to make a contribution is a moral, and not a legal, duty. Although people should not be coerced into discharging it, he believes they may legitimately be encouraged to do so by the social mechanism of an egalitarian ethos awarding praise and respect to those who discharge their duty and shame to those who do not. Relying on a flawed decision-procedure would thus not only mean some goods and services are produced to a too large or small extent, but also that the distribution of praise and blame of those attempting to discharge the duty to contribute would be unfair. If the market solution is to be used in the real world, it will have real consequences. While non-coercive social sanctions against non-contributors probably can be defended by those sympathetic to the idea of an egalitarian ethos, social sanctions against those whose valuable contributions in, for instance, non-marketised care work, go unregistered by the market solution cannot.
If the market solution employed in non-ideal circumstances would be misleading in too many cases, we might therefore wish to abstain from encouraging a duty to contribute in those circumstances. Returning to the distinction offered at the outset of this article. This would not disqualify the duty to contribute as an account of right-making characteristics, however. Even if we are primarily interested in knowing what the right action is, and not only what it is like, the lack of a decision-procedure simply does not entail that the account of right-making characteristics is false. Hence, there might well be a duty to contribute something of sufficient value even if we reject the market solution and consequently do not know how to fulfil the duty. 32
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this article were presented in November 2015 at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University and at the Nordic Network for Political Theory in Copenhagen. I thank the participants in these seminars, and especially Eva Erman, Simon Birnbaum, Andreas Albertsen, Søren Flinch Midtgaard, Sune Lægaard, as well as two anonymous reviewers for comments that greatly helped develop the ideas and clarify the claims in this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.