Capitalism addresses inequality through redistribution as a means of attaining “equal opportunity” in the market

One part of the case for reform liberals’ goals and policies, then, is the insistence that if a democratic society is to be a just society it cannot be content to let the free market provide the final word when it comes to the distribution of wealth and income. Instead, they contend, some redistribution is morally appropriate, perhaps even morally obligatory, in order to redress the significant role of what Cahn called “morally capricious inequalities” in creating the disparities of wealth and income generated by the dynamics of the marketplace. How then should a society motivated by a sense of (in)justice go about dealing with the moral and practical challenges presented by the arbitrary inequalities and the nonproportionate relationship between merit and reward within them? What is the appropriate standard of redress? And how might it be institutionalized? The standard perhaps offered most often is to provide “equal opportunity” to all members of the society. In fact, that standard is endorsed to some extent by laissez-faire and reform liberals alike. But important ambiguities attend the notion of equal opportunity, and the two camps tend to understand its meaning in importantly different ways. Market-oriented liberals largely identify equal opportunity with institutional nondiscrimination. And that principle, they believe, is embodied in three ways— all of which are found in free-market democracies. First, there is the legal nondiscrimination embodied in the precepts of “rule of law,” especially in the requirements of “equal protection” that were crucial to classic accounts of liberal legitimacy and that are in this country enshrined in our constitution. Second is the political nondiscrimination institutionalized in universal suffrage and the equal weight accorded to every vote. Third is the nondiscriminatory force of the free market, which renders its judgments and offers its rewards on the basis of individuals’ economic worth or merits, without regard to any ascriptive social status (such as feudal ranks and privileges) or regard to anyone’s race, color, gender, or creed. 5 So, say free-market liberals, the kind of society that we champion— a combination of popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and a free- market economy— represents and embodies the proper understanding of what “equal opportunity” is all about. Reform liberals certainly agree that one-person/one-vote democracy and equal protection of the law are crucial to affording all citizens the opportunity to succeed. And they also recognize and value the ways that free markets may penalize discriminatory practices: as the saying goes, “The only color that matters in the marketplace is green.” But they find quite unconvincing the claim that nondiscrimination alone can either count as or be capable of producing genuinely equal opportunity. For even with all these important and admirable constraints on discrimination in place, it could still be the case that vast numbers of young people would arrive at their point of entry into the competitive marketplace quite unprepared. With a childhood of dependency upon impoverished adults, and absent some communal resources to draw upon, they might well enter into adulthood poorly educated, undersocialized, and even physically and mentally stunted from malnourishment. In that event, it would be a mockery for a society to congratulate itself for providing equal opportunity. So to provide some redress for arbitrary inequalities, which are as Cahn observed presumptively unjust, any society that aspires to be fair and just, reform liberals argue, must take some affirmative steps toward achieving greater equality of real opportunity. And these steps logically would include providing all our children with access to a good education (something that my state of North Carolina has in fact enshrined in its constitution, where the relevant provision reads: “The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools . . . wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students”), protection against malnutrition, and access to health care. 6 Providing people with genuine opportunity also may go beyond ensuring that all children receive the education and health care needed to have a chance to succeed in life. In a racially, ethnically, and religiously pluralistic society, equal opportunity may require placing some constraints on marketplace behaviors in the form of antidiscrimination laws. No one, of course, can be prevented— for both practical and moral reasons— from patronizing establishments of their own choosing. So if I want, for reasons of personal comfort or prejudice, to buy from people who look and act and believe like me, I should be allowed to do that. But if a company operates a business open to the public, or is a large-scale employer, or is a provider of large-scale rental housing, a society dedicated to basic principles of justice and to equal protection of the law can require of it some showing that it is not engaged in systematic discrimination against certain groups within society. Although reform liberals are not the only ones who have supported the concrete embodiment of this logic in the enactment of equal-opportunity legislation in public accommodations, employment, and housing, they have been the principal proponents of these laws. And many laissez-faire liberals have opposed these government regulations on the grounds that even large corporate businesses are private actors whose property rights entitle them to discriminate if they want to. 7