I see from comments to “another thread”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001197.html that Daniel is preparing to argue against the British government’s case for top-up fees for universities. A good thing that we don’t have a CT party-line! Actually, I’m not sure I would be in favour of them either if the choice were between the current proposals and any alternative that I’d care to formulate for an ideal world. But that isn’t the case. British universities have been starved of resources for over two decades, academic pay is extremely poor (especially at the start) and we’ll face a real difficulty in recruiting people to teach some subjects if things don’t change (Daniel — fancy a job an a junior econ lecturer in a British university?). So since the extra money we need isn’t going to come from increasing taxation and isn’t going to come from a graduate tax (both of which I’d be perfectly happy with), and since the likely outcome of a government defeat is further drift and starvation — I hope Blair wins this one.

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The most popular theory of egalitarian justice at the moment is probably one that says that an individual’s fate should be a sensitive to their choices but insensitive to the brute luck they suffer (including their unchosen circumstances). I bring this up in the light of the often-unenlightening comments threads that ensue once someone here has posted on the situation of the poor (and especially of the _American_ poor), as Henry did on the Caroline Payne case, and I did some time ago on the health outcomes of black Americans.

For the standard response of our rightist friends is to tell us that the individuals who suffer these bad outcomes do so largely as a consequence of their own choices. So it is worth pointing out that, were that actually so, the most influential strand of egalitarian thinking on distributive justice would not find that a matter of concern.

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