Andrew Williams, in his paper, Incentives, Inequality and Publicity, takes to task Cohen’s analysis of Rawls’ remarks concerning what the basic structure of society consists in. Drawing on a close examination of Rawls’ comments on the subject, Williams’ posits a characterisation that pushes to the fore the idea of publicity. The upshot of William’s analysis is that Cohen’s attempt to broaden the definition of the basic structure to capture individual choices, and in so doing identify society possessing an egalitarian ethos as a demand of justice, fails because it is not consistent with Rawls’ publicity requirements. The difference principle, Williams maintains, “is inherently restricted” and “applies only to a society's fundamental social, political, and economic institutions, which Rawls terms its basic structure”. Williams concedes that Cohen correctly identifies the dispositional (profound influence on people’s lives) and intrinsic (coercive institutions) properties Rawls ascribes to the basic structure, but argues that the a more accurate characterisation, drawing on a more thorough reading of Rawls’ texts, points towards a different intrinsic property: publicity. In other words, Williams plans to make the case that one can determine from Rawls the same dispositional property (profound influence on people’s lives) but “some further intrinsic property other than legal coerciveness” by considering the fact that the basic structure “is always said by Rawls to be a set of institutions”. According to Rawls, an institution is “a public system of rules which defines offices and positions with their rights and duties, powers and immunity and the like.” Williams interprets this as Rawls confirming that there is a publicity condition that must be met in order for a justice baring institution to be counted as such. As a result, an analysis of these publicity conditions needs to be understood before assessing Cohen’s critique: “Rawls’s classificatory remarks suggest he does not regard all norm-governed activity as institutional. Instead he reserves the term for activity that realizes a certain type of norm, which is, in some sense, public. So, to clarify Rawls’s conception of the basic structure, we need a firmer grasp on the distinguishing marks of public rules.” Williams claims that, as Rawls sees it, publicity is achieved when individuals are able to ascertain knowledge of the rules’ “(i) general applicability, (ii) their particular requirements, and (iii) the extent to which individuals conform with those requirements”. It follows that not all rules attributable to society can be considered ‘public’: if individuals cannot deduce their applicability, what they require, specifically, and/or know that others are confirming to them. The relevant definition of ‘institutions’, then, consists of the dispositional property of having a profound influence on peoples’ lives with respect to acquiring primary goods and the intrinsic property of being ‘public’; individual choices that violate public rules, even if they have a profound influence of peoples’ lives, cannot be analysed within the institutional context Rawls has in mind. Such is the case, Williams argues, with respect the individual choices demanded by Cohen’s broader, egalitarian application of the difference principle: “…the non-public strategies and maxims that individuals employ in making those choices need not be assessed as just or unjust by means of Rawlsian principles[...]among such non-institutional choices is the decision to become a market-maximizer rather than extend egalitarian conviction to
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To do this, Williams, argues, “we need to establish whether an individual of above average income has discharged her distributive duties, we need, inter alia, to check whether her additional income compensates for her special labor burdens or is legitimized by an agent-centered prerogative”. The key problem is that this is too informationally demanding to establish, since it “ is extremely unlikely that individuals could obtain reliable information about each others' relative levels of job satisfaction, the extent to which their past decisions render them responsible for inequalities in those levels, and the appropriate amount of financial compensation for any remaining unchosen disadvantages ”. Ultimately, demand of occupational compensation “resists institutionalisation for epistemic reasons”. Further, even if these epistemic reasons could be established, it is not at all clear a what point and under what conditions it becomes acceptable to allow agent-centred prerogatives to trump the egalitarian distribution. The crux of Williams argument, then, is that individual choices prescribed by a wide ethos are ambiguous and are therefore difficult to characterise by appealing to public standards. Williams
To do this, Williams, argues, “we need to establish whether an individual of above average income has discharged her distributive duties, we need, inter alia, to check whether her additional income compensates for her special labor burdens or is legitimized by an agent-centered prerogative”. The key problem is that this is too informationally demanding to establish, since it “ is extremely unlikely that individuals could obtain reliable information about each others' relative levels of job satisfaction, the extent to which their past decisions render them responsible for inequalities in those levels, and the appropriate amount of financial compensation for any remaining unchosen disadvantages ”. Ultimately, demand of occupational compensation “resists institutionalisation for epistemic reasons”. Further, even if these epistemic reasons could be established, it is not at all clear a what point and under what conditions it becomes acceptable to allow agent-centred prerogatives to trump the egalitarian distribution. The crux of Williams argument, then, is that individual choices prescribed by a wide ethos are ambiguous and are therefore difficult to characterise by appealing to public standards. Williams