Dworkin's Paradox
Physics and Society
2012-07-02 v1 Social and Information Networks
Abstract
How to distribute welfare in a society is a key issue in the subject of distributional justice, which is deeply involved with notions of fairness. Following a thought experiment by Dworkin, this work considers a society of individuals with different preferences on the welfare distribution and an official to mediate the coordination among them. Based on a simple assumption that an individual's welfare is proportional to how her preference is fulfilled by the actual distribution, we show that an egalitarian preference is a strict Nash equilibrium and can be favorable even in certain inhomogeneous situations. These suggest how communication can encourage and secure a notion of fairness.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1206.6921,
title = {Dworkin's Paradox},
author = {Seung Ki Baek and Jung-Kyoo Choi and Beom Jun Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.6921},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
15 pages, 4 figures