Status Updates From Sovereign Virtue: The Theor...

This book went downhill all too quickly. To his credit, Dworkin attempted to tackle the dynamic nature of life, which Nozick correctly pointed out would wreck any equality literally the second after it was created. But his attempt to solve this is to somehow (there's a lot, a LOT, of "somehows" in this book) redistribute wealth, not so that things are always equal, but that they in the long run balance. Insane.

Props for trying to tackle the problem of the origin of resources, but he's gone off the rails now. We'll periodically redistribute resources gained by genetic ability above a society's average, and people will just keep working hard for some reason.

He's danced around this a bit, but finally comes to recognize that "equality" requires an objective standard. He wants this about values, not money, but that means somehow quantifying values... objectively. We'll see if he 1)accomplishes this and 2)incorporates the creation of resources and not just it's distribution. Can't distribute if you don't create.

20 pages in and I'm already puzzled by what he's talking about. "Equality" is the theme, but what that means to Dworkin seems to be a jumble. I'm not saying things have to be easy to understand in order to be correct, but some level of coherency is necessary.

I got a bad feeling about this.