The Levelling-Down Objection and the Additive Measure of the Badness of Inequality

Johan Gustafsson

doi:10.1017/S0266267120000085

The Levelling-Down Objection and the Additive Measure of the Badness of Inequality

Johan Gustafsson

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The Levelling-Down Objection is a standard objection to monistic egalitarian theories where equality is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Most egalitarians, however, are value pluralists; they hold that, in addition to equality being intrinsically valuable, the egalitarian currency in which we are equal or unequal is also intrinsically valuable. In this paper, I shall argue that the Levelling-Down Objection still minimizes the weight that the intrinsic badness of inequality could have in the overall intrinsic evaluation of outcomes, given a certain way of measuring the badness of inequality, namely, the Additive Individual-Complaints Measure.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	401-406
Number of pages	6
Journal	Economics and Philosophy
Volume	36
Issue number	3
Early online date	9 Jul 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267120000085
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 9 Jul 2020

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10.1017/S0266267120000085

levellingdown_objection_and_the_additive_measure_of_the_badness_of_inequality
© 2020, The Author(s).
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Cite this

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