What is "Rawlsian social welfare function"? (Please explain it thoroughly.)?
Answer:
In the olden days, the role of the criminal justice system was to maintain law & order, with the emphasis on order ... if a crime was committed, it did not matter who got punished, so long as the punishment was severe ... this was intended to scare people into behaving. There was no effort to apply the punishment to the guilty.
In our present day reality, the laws do not need to make any logical sense. They get passed to try to meet perceived needs where there is no obligation by the legislators to evaluate for any unintended consequences.
e.g. The schools are told that 100% of children need to be taught all the same subjects, no exceptions, so blind children need to be taught Driver's ed.
Philosopher John Rawls (for whom this stuff is named) came up with the notion that
1. Liberty for all requires same rules for all
2. All should have same social and economic opportunities
To help achieve this, there should be inequality to help the less well off be on an equal footing with those in better economic circumstances. Something like how do we achieve racial equality after centuries of discrimination.
So he writes a book about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/justice_as_...
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