Ethics

• G. A. Cohen, "If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?," Journal of Ethics 4, no. 1–2 (2000): 1–26.:

According to John Rawls, and to liberals quite generally, principles of justice apply to the rules of the basic structure of society, and not to the choices people make within that structure, beyond their choices about whether or not to promote, support, and comply with, the rules of a just basic structure.

It follows that some aims that are rightly pursued by government, whose legislation and policy decide the character of at least a large part of the basic structure, are not aims that citizens themselves can and/or should be expected to pursue (apart from the pursuit of them in which citizens engage when they support those aims politically). According to Rawls, the demands placed by justice on government do not belong on the backs of individuals, as such: individuals discharge those demands collectively, through the government that represents them...

I have argued, against that position, that justice in personal choice, within a just ethos, is necessary for a society to qualify as just....: I ask whether egalitarians who live in an unequal society (one, that is, whose government, for whatever reason, fails to establish the equality that these egalitarians favour) are committed to implementing, so far as they can, in their own lives, the norm of equality that they prescribe for government.

I did not finish the article, but it is well written and worth reading.