Equality versus Solidarity

Equality of Opportunity versus Equality of Opportunity Sets

We characterize two different approaches to the idea of equality of opportunity. Roemer’s social ordering is motivated by a concern to compensate for the effects of certain (non-responsibility) factors on outcomes. Van de gaer’s social ordering is concerned with the equalization of the opportunity sets to which people have access. We show how different invariance axioms open the possibility to ...

Equitable Selection of Subjects: Equality Versus Fairness?

Social Preferences under Risk: Equality of Opportunity versus Equality of Outcome

X and Y are brothers who like to share everything, whenever possible. They are also both huge fans of football. One day, X finds an envelope in the park that contains just one ticket to the next Super Bowl. X agonizes over whether to (i) attend the game secretly, which would make him feel guilty; or (ii) tell his brother about it and suggest they flip a coin to decide who gets to go. From an ex...

Digital Solidarity

Over the last two decades, the Internet has been a laboratory for social innovation. One of the most unexpected collective discoveries has been the existence of another mode of organization to achieve large−scale co−ordination. This mode relies neither on the market, where price signals perform important co−ordinating functions horizontally (as Friedrich Hayek famously stated), nor on public an...

[Tuberculosis and solidarity].

Tuberculosis is very probably the oldest human epidemic and the one that has inflicted the most harm in the history of the species. Recent studies have estimated tuberculosis to be about 3 million years old,1 and during much of that time this disease has been our greatest scourge. It is difficult to accept that tuberculosis has been causing harm for so many millions of years and that even today...