Benjamin Hale sum up why it is Americans end up voting for policies that actually thwart their interests: they make decisions about justice according to a "veil of opulence," the opposite of the "veil of ignorance" advocated by Rawls:
Those who don the veil of opulence may imagine themselves to be fantastically wealthy movie stars or extremely successful business entrepreneurs. They vote and set policies according to this fantasy.
...
But the veil of opulence operates only under the guise of fairness. It is rather a distortion of fairness, by virtue of the partiality that it smuggles in. It asks not whether a policy is fair given the huge range of advantages or hardships the universe might throw at a person but rather whether it is fair that a very fortunate person should shoulder the burdens of others. That is, the veil of opulence insists that people imagine that resources and opportunities and talents are freely available to all, that such goods are widely abundant, that there is no element of randomness or chance that may negatively impact those who struggle to succeed but sadly fail through no fault of their own. It blankets off the obstacles that impede the road to success. It turns a blind eye to the adversity that some people, let’s face it, are born into. By insisting that we consider public policy from the perspective of the most-advantaged, the veil of opulence obscures the vagaries of brute luck.
This is the philosophical answer to the question asked by Thomas Frank in What's the Matter with Kansas
-- Wes
the competing definitions of fairness, and the realities of luck/contingency, are vital to any discussion of our public life but by what research method does the good prof. come to his diagnosis of mass delusion of this particular type/symptomatology?
http://newbooksinintellectualhistory.com/crossposts/thomas-wheatland-the-frankfurt-school-in-exile-university-of-minnesota-press-2009/
maybe someday you guys can get Brian Leiter to come on and talk about Nietzsche and social darwinism.
http://newbooksinhistory.com/2009/10/09/jennifer-burns-goddess-of-the-market-ayn-rand-and-the-american-right/
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
John Steinbeck
I would go one step further, or maybe just a half step further. When it comes to material and social success in life “the realities of luck/contingency” are not the only inhibiting factor. In our class society wherein the majority must work for a wage and produce a social surplus, the majority must also face many necessary constraints against opulence and power. That is, while on a case by case, individual by individual, basis a combination of luck and moral character are determining the outcome, the majority taken together face an impediment that is impersonal and necessary. That is, no amount of hard work or luck could possibly lead the majority into opulence and empowerment, nor could either emancipate the collective from the necessity of wage labor and exploitation.
we can more or less measure factors like access to resources, and capacity to manage one’s time/efforts, and various other social/institutional interactions, and so flush out something akin to environmental affordances and resistances, but speculating about motives is a much more opaque matter so it raises interesting questions about what sorts of rigor/methods would separate philosophy from mere (say Thomas Friedman or Andrew Sullivan style) punditry?
Actually, I think the point about the Veil of Opulance is it’s a bit stronger than just that it’s the opposite of the Veil of Ignorance. The idea is that our notion of fairness, if it isn’t properly policed, has a tendency to fall into the trap of the Veil of Opulance. So one very stark example will be that the Golden Rule, do unto others, actually really isn’t a very useful rule if what we’re interested in is moral reasoning because it fools us into thinking that just as long as we put ourselves in someone else’s position we’ll be able to come upon the right solution: it’s incredibly self-directed and as a tool for moral reasoning leads to all the wrong sorts of conclusions. The distinction therefore between the Veil of Ignorance and the Veil of Opulance is meant to be the same as the distinction between the Veil of Ignorance or Kant’s Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule.
As a personal bugbear, this is most stark if you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to deal with the particularly annoying kind person who gets “morally” indignant if you call them out for being rude and inconsiderate.
I take the point about subjective considerations undermining the attempt to be fair.
However, I think there also may be something to the point that adopting a God’s eye view and putting all the pieces in society in their places to make things most fair is exactly the prohibited move if you’re trying to prevent anything like tyranny.
An alternative is to admit that government is for adjudicating competing complaints, so you DO have to consider fairness from particular points of view, but you just make sure to have the underprivileged (or their representative) at the table to make demands as well.
On Aristotle’s view, you’re not ultimately trying to make things most abstractly fair, but to prevent revolution without resorting to repression, and since the rich are going to be more of a worry in this respect per capita, they do effectively get more of a voice, but the poor need appeasing too.
(I’m not sure I buy this but am trying to explore the alternative…)