Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

R o e m e r – T h e i d e o l o g i c a l r o o t s o f i n e q u a l i t y. . . 301a substantial fraction) of the electorate. Now the electorate may have poorinformation, or may have learned an ideology which does not serve its trueinterests, or may subscribe to a social ethos which prizes a kind of de jureindividual freedom over a secure livelihood, but in the end, the electoratemust acquiesce to social policy in our advanced democracies. This is surelyone great accomplishment of the political revolutions that began in 1776 and1789.Today, I think the most important problem for the social science ofinequality is understanding how electorates have come to acquiesce topolicies which increase inequality, and to try and reverse this acquiescence.To an extent, revealing the logic of the micro mechanisms is one strategy fordoing so. A second strategy is the philosophical one, of arguing that justicerequires equality – the last 40 years in political philosophy have seen a livelydebate about exactly what kind of, and how much of that kind of equality, isrequired. A third strategy is showing how the inequality-increasing policiesthat electorates have agreed to have been aggressively advocated andproselytized by the wealthy, in order to maintain their material privileges.This work is mainly done by historians and some political scientists. Afourth strategy is critiquing the social ethos of individualism and greedwhich has grown immensely since 1980: the ethos to replace it is one ofsolidarity. This strategy overlaps with the third one, since (I believe) thenurturing of the individualistic ethos has been a conscious strategy of thewealthy, and perhaps its most powerful weapon. Finally, I believe, as I havesaid, that we must do the research to challenge the view that interfering withthe incentives the market provides necessarily reduces economic welfare.We face a situation where we must move from describing the phenomenonwe study, to figuring out how to bring evidence to bear against the ideologywhich sanctions it. That ideology has created a monster, capable of inflictingtruly disastrous consequences on civilization. Because theory and ideas areour métier, we have a vital role to play.ReferencesBETTS, J. & ROEMER, J. (2007), 'Equalizing opportunity for racial andsocioeconomic groups in the United States through educational finance reform',in P. Peterson (ed.), Schools and the equal opportunity problem, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 209-238.COHEN, G. (1997), 'Where the action is: On the site of distributive justice', Philosophy& Public Affairs, 26: 3-30.ROEMER, J. (2010), 'Incentive provision and coordination as market functions',Journal of Labour Market Research, 43: 6-16.