Having too much

The case against extreme wealth

A discussion about merit, wealth, limitarianism

Vlad Bunea: As defined by Ingrid Robeyns, limitarianism “advocates that it is not morally permissible to have more resources that are needed to fully flourish in life. Limitarianism views having riches or wealth to be the state in which one has more resources than are needed for maximally flourishing in life, and claims that, in such a case, one has too much, morally speaking”. This concept has significant impacts on the consumerist culture, and in the way we understand the legitimacy of wealth accumulation. Let us take, for example, the concepts of merit and meritocracy. There is a sensible connection between limitarianism and merit. If we also add the concept of determinism from Robert Sapolksy that we do not have free will, the entire edifice of merit crumbles, and the case for limitarianism becomes even stronger. How do you see the connection between limitarianism and merit? How should competent people be rewarded, in accordance with limitarianism?

Alexandru Volacu: This is a very important question. I think there are three ways in which one might respond. The first is that limitarianism and merit are incompatible and that, therefore, we should abandon the idea of limitarianism, since the value of merit is paramount (or at least overrides whatever benefits limitarianism would bring). The second is that limitarianism and merit are incompatible, but from this we should draw the opposite conclusion: namely, that the whole idea of merit is of no importance when we are trying to think about what a just society would look like. Perhaps, as you say, such an idea would be strengthened if one adheres to hard determinism, but since this is itself a controversial (and ultimately metaphysical as opposed to political) position I would side-step it altogether. I must say that I don't find either of these two responses plausible or, more importantly, necessary. I am more inclined to take the third view, which is that limitarianism and merit, when articulated in a plausible manner are, in fact, not incompatible.

To start with, my sense is that the presumed incompatibility stems from a fairly rudimentary understanding of merit and meritocracy. Surely, in the public space this idea is ordinarily associated with a kind of libertarian mindset, where meritocracy supposedly requires that socio-economic positions and benefits are to be occupied and gained, respectively, by those who are best qualified or most deserving. The implication being that competition for these advantages should be as unrestricted as possible. It will come as no surprise that, like many other contemporary political theorists, I find this view to be mistaken, since it fails to account for the variety of ways in which such competitions might be unfair (e.g. due to structural conditions inherent in society, to the nature of the competition itself, to characteristics that arbitrarily differentiate between competitors and so forth). Because of this, many activists and even academics who are readily described as left-leaning tend to reject that the very notion of merit has any normative traction and dismiss it as a right-wing rhetorical device.

I disagree with this take, however, and am more aligned with the position adopted by various political theorists within the broader liberal egalitarian tradition, who have done much work to recover the idea of merit or desert from libertarian thought and reposition it as a central requirement of distributive justice (for interested readers, I suggest the book Desert and Justice edited by Serena Olsaretti and, for more recent discussions, Huub Browuer's PhD dissertation Desert, Luck, and Justice, which is publicly available and also touches directly on the problem of wealth limits and merit).

The basic idea is that a plausible conception of merit will not bind choices and outcomes in an excessively rigid way, but will instead allow for the possibility that individuals do not pay the full costs nor obtain the full benefits from outcomes that derive from their choices, due to the fact that other conditions outside of their control have also contributed to the outcome.

To take an influential example from this literature: say that a motorcyclist forgets to take her helmet one day and has an accident while riding. Had she wore a helmet she would have been relatively fine, but instead she is now in the hospital and the doctors could perform a somewhat expensive surgery to save her life. A rudimentary merit-based account might say that the doctors should not spend public resources on this surgery, since she deserves to die because it was her choice that put her in this position. But this seems wildly implausible. Conversely, it can plausibly be said that the choices and effort that someone who is economically productive has made and put in entitles them to having more economic benefits than others who made poor choices and did not put up much effort. But other factors that are beyond their control will also matter when it comes to economic outcomes.

Thus, a desert-based account of justice will allow for some economic inequalities, but it would be implausible to think that it could justify the claims of some to hold, say, hundreds of millions of dollars, while others who are working just as much are living in poverty. Of course, we cannot precisely say what level of wealth is problematic without a specific account of merit, which is beyond the scope of this interview, but if we accept the general outline, then limitarianism and merit are not necessarily incompatible. As a side-note, I should mention that it was actually a concern of this kind (though phrased in terms of responsibility, rather than merit) that animated my first discussion of limitarianism, in a paper published in Philosophia back in 2018 together with my colleague Adelin Dumitru, where we defended a version of limitarianism that would be sensitive to responsibility (and, to some extent, merit) constraints.

VB: Thank you for this careful unpacking of concepts. It seems to me that in the conceptual backstage of this grand theatre of values there are some actors that are yet unengaged. When you write “obtain the full benefits from outcomes that derive from their choices” and about “choices and effort that someone who is economically productive”, I think about proportionality, namely the extent to which effort should we rewarded with unlimited wealth. One could argue that the effects of these efforts made by super rich people, do not scale up in society. The super rich need employees to labor for them. There is no such thing as a “self-made billionaire”. They are all “society-made”. Moreover and to the contrary, as some limitarianists argue, above the riches limit, more wealth may actually be harmful to its owner and to society. The super rich are rewarded exorbitantly more in relation with their efforts. Desert, merit, contingencies (as Michael Sandel describes them in The Tyranny of Merit), or plainly said luck, are our stage actors, while this doctrine of proportionality is the director sitting backstage. Moreover, this scheme is codified into corporate law (as described by Katharina Pistor in The Code of Capital), in the one share = one vote principle etc. Yes, let us reward competence and effort more. However, do these rewards have to be in exponential relation, or even linear relation, to effort? Do you think phasing out this doctrine of proportionality may as well be part of the limitarianist package?

AV: That's right, and the language of proportionality has actually been used in these debates quite often (see, for instance, Serena Olsaretti's works). Perhaps interestingly, the same language has also sometimes been used in the literature on economic limits: in his book How Rich Should the 1% Be?, Nunzio Ali defends a view that he calls "proportional justice", which basically requires that the economic inequality between the best and worst-off is not disproportionately high. So this would suggest another kind of economic limit than the one Ingrid Robeyns originally develops, one that is relative rather than absolute.

This point aside, I fully agree with the idea that billionaires are society-made to a significant extent. This is not meant to say that the very rich have gained their economic status purely arbitrarily, except when they inherit all or most of their wealth. When the latter does not happen it is clear that at some point they made choices that were conducive to wealth accumulation, they often take risks that should be economically rewarded, and they often (but not always) produce something that is of value to society - material goods, entertainment, jobs, and so forth.

So I'm not of the view that things such as these don't matter, just that they justify some to be richer than others to an extent, as opposed to justifying any level of economic inequality (what precisely this level is will probably be a normative, empirical and even democratic question, but just because none is obviously the right choice does not mean that there is no better choice than the current status-quo which permits unlimited wealth).

Why this is the case is the question that lies at the heart of the literature on limitarianism. You actually touch upon the very broad distinction that can be drawn in this literature, when you say that "above the riches limit, more wealth may actually be harmful to its owner and to society". I myself am more inclined to reject the idea that wealth limits can be compellingly justified by appealing to the fact that they would be harmful to their owners (though this is the position that some political theorists have taken, maybe most influentially Danielle Zwarthoed, in an early paper called "Autonomy-Based Reasons for Limitarianism"), since it will likely be based on some controversial account of well-being. My own position aligns much more with Ingrid Robeyns' first anchoring of limitarianism in the problems that wealth concentration raises for democracy and in the fact that these economic resources are hoarded by a narrow group of individuals, when many others are in dire need of them.

VB: Thank you Alexandru for this very interesting conversation. How can people contact you and follow your work?

AV: Thanks as well, it was a pleasure. I try to keep my website fairly updated, so if anyone is interested in my work they can find it there and I'm happy to answer any inquiries at the e-mail address that is also available there.

Photo credit Jeremy Thomas