What Is Fair? 什麼是公平？

🔊Parents know one such rule. Two children are to share a cake, so one cuts and the other chooses. The child with the knife does not know which piece will be hers, and so she cuts as evenly as she can. No one has to trust anyone’s good will. The fairness comes from a procedure in which a person decides before she knows where she will end up. The most influential theory of justice of the last hundred years is that kitchen rule applied to a whole society.

做父母的知道一條這樣的規則。兩個孩子要分一塊蛋糕；那就一個切，另一個選。拿刀的孩子不知道哪一塊會是她的，所以她盡可能切得一樣大。誰也不必信任誰的善意。公平來自一個程序：一個人在知道自己最後會落在哪裡之前，就先做了決定。過去一百年裡最有影響力的正義理論，就是把這條廚房裡的規則，用在一整個社會上。

🔊Aristotle gave the first careful account. Justice in distribution, he said, is a kind of proportion. Quarrels arise “when either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals equal shares.” If two people worked on a job and one worked twice as long, equal pay would be unfair. He then identified the real difficulty. Everyone agrees that shares should follow merit, and they do not agree about what merit is. Democrats say it is being a free citizen, oligarchs say wealth, and aristocrats say excellence.

亞里斯多德給出了第一個仔細的說明。他說，分配上的正義是一種比例。爭吵的起因是：「相等的人擁有或得到了不相等的份，或者不相等的人得到了相等的份。」如果兩個人做同一件工作，而其中一人做了兩倍的時間，那麼同酬就是不公平的。接著他指出了真正的困難。人人都同意，份額應該依照「配得」；而他們對「配得」是什麼，意見並不一致。民主派說是自由公民的身分；寡頭派說是財富；貴族派說是卓越。

🔊The argument has not changed much since. One side holds that shares should follow contribution, another that they should follow need, and a third that they should simply be equal. Chinese thinkers divided along the same lines. Mencius, arguing against a reformer who wanted goods of the same size sold at the same price whatever their quality, replied that “it is the nature of things to be unequal,” and that to treat them alike would throw the world into confusion. The Daodejing took the other side: the way of Heaven takes from what has too much and gives to what has too little, while the way of men takes from those who have too little to offer to those who have too much.

從那以後，這場爭論並沒有改變多少。一方主張份額應該跟著貢獻走；另一方說跟著需要走；第三方說就該相等。中國的思想家也沿著同樣的線分開。有一位改革者主張，大小相同的貨物不論品質都賣同一個價錢；孟子反駁他說：「夫物之不齊，物之情也」，把它們一律看待，是把天下搞亂。《道德經》站在另一邊：「天之道，損有餘而補不足。人之道則不然，損不足以奉有餘。」

🔊In 1971 the American philosopher John Rawls proposed a way to settle the matter without first agreeing on merit. Imagine that the members of a society meet to choose the principles that will govern it. They know the general facts about economics and human psychology. They do not know anything about themselves: whether they will be rich or poor, clever or slow, healthy or sick, male or female, of which race or which religion. Rawls called this condition the veil of ignorance. Since no one can design rules to favor his own case, whatever is chosen there is fair, for the same reason the cake is fairly cut.

1971 年，美國哲學家約翰・羅爾斯提出了一個辦法：不必先對「配得」有共識，就能把這件事定下來。想像一個社會的成員聚在一起，要選出將來治理這個社會的原則。他們知道關於經濟與人類心理的一般事實。他們對自己一無所知：自己會是富是窮、聰明還是遲鈍、健康還是多病、是男是女、屬於哪個種族或哪個宗教。羅爾斯把這種狀況稱為「無知之幕」。既然沒有人能設計出偏袒自己那種情況的規則，那麼在那裡選出來的不管是什麼，都是公平的；理由跟蛋糕切得公平是同一個。

🔊Rawls argued that people in that position would choose two principles. The first gives everyone the same basic liberties, such as freedom of speech and conscience and the vote. The second allows inequalities of wealth and position on two conditions: the positions must be open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and the inequalities must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. He called this last condition the difference principle. A surgeon may earn more than a porter if paying surgeons more makes the porter better off than he would be under any other arrangement. The reasoning is that of someone who may turn out to be the porter.

羅爾斯主張，處在那個位置的人會選出兩條原則。第一條給每個人同樣的基本自由，例如言論與良心的自由、投票權。第二條容許財富與地位的不平等，但有兩個條件：那些職位必須在公平的機會平等之下對所有人開放；而那些不平等必須對處境最不利的人最有好處。他把最後這個條件稱為「差異原則」。外科醫師可以賺得比搬運工多，如果付給外科醫師更多錢，會讓搬運工過得比在任何別的安排之下都好。這是一個「最後可能發現自己就是搬運工」的人的推理。

🔊Behind the veil lies a claim about luck. Nobody chooses his parents, his native talents, or the country and century of his birth. “No one deserves his greater natural capacity,” Rawls wrote, “nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.” If so, the fortunate may keep the fruits of their gifts only on terms that the unlucky could accept.

幕的後面，有一個關於運氣的主張。沒有人選擇自己的父母、天生的才能，或是出生的國家與世紀。羅爾斯寫道：「沒有人應得他那較高的天生能力，也沒有人配得一個在社會裡較有利的起點。」如果是這樣，那麼幸運的人要保有他們天賦的果實，就只能依照不幸的人也能接受的條件。

🔊Three years later Robert Nozick, a younger colleague of Rawls in the Harvard philosophy department, published the best-known reply. Begin, he said, with whatever distribution you think is just. Call it D1. Now suppose that the basketball star Wilt Chamberlain signs a contract under which twenty-five cents from every ticket goes to him. In the course of a season a million people gladly drop their quarters in a box, and Chamberlain ends up with $250,000, far more than anyone else. The new distribution, D2, no longer fits your pattern. Yet everyone began with a just share and moved to D2 by free choices, so it is hard to see what could make D2 unjust.

三年後，羅伯特・諾齊克發表了最有名的回應；他是羅爾斯在哈佛哲學系裡較年輕的同事。他說：從任何一個你認為正義的分配開始。叫它 D1。現在假設籃球明星張伯倫簽了一份合約：每張門票有二十五分錢歸他。一個球季下來，有一百萬人高高興興地把他們的二十五分錢丟進一個箱子裡；張伯倫最後有了二十五萬美元，遠比任何人都多。新的分配 D2，不再符合你的模式了。然而每個人都是從正義的一份開始，並且經由自由的選擇走到 D2；那就很難看出，是什麼能讓 D2 不正義。

🔊Nozick concluded that justice depends on how holdings came about and that no particular shape of distribution is required. What a person acquired fairly and received by free exchange or gift is his. To preserve any pattern, a government would have to interfere with people’s choices without end. Hume had made the same point in 1751: “Render possessions ever so equal, men’s different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality.” Nozick drew a sharper conclusion than Hume did. Taxing earnings, he wrote, is “on a par with forced labor.”

諾齊克的結論是：正義取決於持有物是怎麼來的；它並不要求任何特定形狀的分配。一個人公平地取得的、以及經由自由交換或餽贈得到的東西，就是他的。要維持任何一種模式，政府就得沒完沒了地干涉人們的選擇。休謨在 1751 年已經說過同樣的話：「就算把財產分得再怎麼平等，人們在技藝、用心與勤勉上的不同程度，也會立刻打破那個平等。」諾齊克得出的結論比休謨更尖銳。他寫道：對勞動所得課稅，「與強迫勞動無異」。

🔊Rawls’s reply was that his principles govern the basic structure of society, meaning its tax system, its schools, and its law of property and inheritance. They do not govern each transaction. Within fair background rules, people may trade as they like. Without such rules, Chamberlain’s children start the next game with an advantage they did nothing to earn, and their children with a greater one.

羅爾斯的回應是：他的原則管的是社會的「基本結構」，也就是它的稅制、學校、財產法與繼承法。它們不管每一筆交易。在公平的背景規則之內，人們愛怎麼交易就怎麼交易。沒有這樣的規則，張伯倫的孩子在下一場比賽開始時，就帶著一份他們什麼都沒做而得來的優勢；而他們的孩子，帶著更大的一份。

🔊A second objection accepts the veil and disputes what would be chosen behind it. The economist John Harsanyi had used a similar device some years before Rawls, and he drew the opposite conclusion. A rational person who has an equal chance of being anyone would choose the society with the highest average, and that is the utilitarian answer. To insist on the best possible worst case is to reason like someone who never crosses a street. Rawls answered that the stake here is one’s whole life, with no second draw, and that no one could honestly ask the losers to accept their lot for the sake of a higher average.

第二個反駁接受了那道幕，而對「幕後會選出什麼」提出異議。經濟學家約翰・海薩尼比羅爾斯早幾年就用過一個類似的設計，而他得出了相反的結論。一個理性的人，如果有同等的機會成為任何一個人，就會選擇平均最高的那個社會；而那是功利主義的答案。堅持「最壞的情況要盡可能地好」，就像一個從來不過馬路的人的推理。羅爾斯回答說：這裡的賭注是一個人的整個人生，沒有第二次抽籤；而沒有人能誠實地要求輸的人，為了一個較高的平均而接受他們的命運。

🔊In the 1980s two political scientists, Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer, tried the experiment on real people. Groups of students were asked to agree on a rule for dividing income before they knew what their own income would be. Almost none chose Rawls’s difference principle, and few chose the highest average. Most groups, in several countries, settled on a mixed rule: guarantee a floor below which no one may fall, and above it let the total grow as large as it can.

1980 年代，兩位政治學家諾曼・弗羅利希與喬・歐本海默，在真人身上做了這個實驗。他們請一組一組的學生，在知道自己的收入會是多少之前，先對一條分配收入的規則達成共識。幾乎沒有一組選擇羅爾斯的差異原則；選擇最高平均的也很少。在好幾個國家，多數的小組都落在一條混合的規則上：保證一個誰都不會跌破的底線；在那之上，讓總量能長多大就長多大。

🔊None of this has ended the argument. What Rawls gave to both sides is a test for our own opinions. Most views about fairness fit the interests of those who hold them. The well-paid tend to believe in desert, and the badly paid in need. The veil asks one question: would you still favor this rule if you did not know which side of it you would be on? It is the question the child with the knife has to answer. A rule that passes may still be mistaken, but it is not merely self-serving.

這一切都沒有終結這場爭論。羅爾斯給了雙方的，是一個檢驗自己意見的方法。大多數關於公平的看法，都很合乎持有這些看法的人的利益。高薪的人傾向於相信「應得」；低薪的人傾向於相信「需要」。這道幕只問一個問題：如果你不知道自己會落在這條規則的哪一邊，你還會贊成它嗎？這就是拿刀的那個孩子必須回答的問題。通過了的規則仍然可能是錯的；但它不只是為自己打算。