1 Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. 2 Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: a to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and b attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. " John Rawls, "A Theory of Justice", 1971, p.302 Resources are scarce. This is the basic, dismal truth of the dismal science. The second truth is...
of both our shortcomings we are unable to construct a just distribution pattern which will also be practicable and of our abilities to barter investment risk for exclusive ownership - we embarked on the long road to mature, full bodied, capitalism. We are still not there : visionaries keep popping up with new just distribution patterns, governments keep intervening, incomes keep being redistributed, ownership keeps being contested. But these are phenomena of the past. As capitalism demonstrates its inexhaustible ability to increase well-being and the inexorability of this trend of increase becomes evident - the more inevitable the outcome.