Distributive Justice
This chapter develops the implications of liberal relational egalitarianism for the distribution of goods produced by social cooperation. It shows that there are not only strong instrumental reasons to set stringent limits to inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity, on grounds of both non-domination and social status, but, contrary to what both many critics and proponents of relational equality argue, strong non-instrumental, expressive reasons to do so, as well: since participants in social cooperation are equals, all inequalities in social goods need to be justified by justice-relevant reasons even where they do not lead to domination or social status inequality. Rightly understood, relational egalitarianism thus requires a concentric attack on material inequality in society as well as on its sources in power inequality, through a plurality of rationales.