The second of Williams’ examples to highlight the difference between capability and resourcist metrics is that of Dan and Ella. Dan and Ella are deaf in a society in which most people can hear. However, while Ella abhors her condition, Dan does not feel any envy towards those who can hear. This is because his deafness allows him to be a member of the deaf community, which he values very highly. According to the continuity test,282 Dan does not have a resource deficit in this case, while Ella does. This is because Ella can claim hypothetical-insurance based compensation for her
281 Providing financial compensation for disadvantages may not be an adequate response to these
issues, as it might entrench divisions between the parties rather than resolve them.
282
95 disadvantage while Dan cannot, since Dan does not envy those with hearing. The capability approach, on the other hand, insists that both individuals are disadvantaged.
The challenge to equality of resources is therefore that the capability approach can propose to compensate the disadvantaged in cases which resource egalitarianism cannot. Dworkin responds to Williams’ example by insisting that most hypothetical insurance outcomes will be offered in kind, which Dan could therefore choose not take up.283 This response highlights that the case is not particularly troubling; people have assignment responsibility over their lives and can reject compensation that others receive. Since compensation that would increase capabilities would usually be offered in the form of services rather than money it is not clear that anyone would receive resources for reasons that they would not approve.
The issue would be troubling in severe cases, of course, in which people rejected what might be considered fundamental capabilities. In the unlikely case that an individual’s autonomy were threatened by his lack of the capability, then—of course—his capability would be restored in order to ensure the authenticity of his decisions.284 However, as long as the autonomy of the capability-rejecting individual is not violated we need not worry that he might reject capabilities that most other people would value.
The continuity test is one area in which there is a clear distinction; it is possible to value resources on the basis of the continuity test, but valuing capabilities and welfare in such a way is problematic. This also provides an advantage for the resourcist approach. Incommensurable capabilities cannot be valued on a personal basis from a position of equality, as it is impossible to consider an auction-like device whereby people can trade
283 Dworkin, 'Sovereign Virtue Revisited', at 138-40. Dworkin also takes the opportunity to question
the valuation of the various capabilities.
284 A good example of this, suggested to me by Liam Shields, is that of someone who refuses medical
treatment that would cause them to enter a vegetative state. Equality of resources would allow the imposition of such treatment in order to ensure autonomy.
96 and value their own capabilities and the cost of their capabilities to others.285 This, then, relates to the differences in the valuation exercise in the capability and resource approaches. If it is possible for people to place their personal value on capabilities in a universal fashion, then the approach can be equivalent to equality of resources. However, this need not be the case, in which case the points raised in this section and the previous section mark differences. However, these differences do not establish that the capability approach is a superior approach to distributive justice and taxation.
It is thus possible to pick out several dimensions in which the capabilities approach differs from equality of resources. The first is that the capability approach has a greater ability to make a direct attack on social norms. However, I have shown that this issue should not make us give up on equality of resources as an approach to taxation. The second difference is that equality of resources allows people to value resources themselves according to their personal plan of life (or theory of the good), while the capability approach is less amenable to such valuation. The third difference is that equality of resources is arranged in such a way that equality is integral, while this is not necessarily the case with the capability approach. In the following section (2.10) I will consider capability-based attacks on equality of resources, and then assess the case for capability-based taxation in section 2.11.
285 Dworkin is wrong to insist that the capability view must collapse into either opportunity for
welfare or equality of resources; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue at 300-1. I suggest that this mistake arises from two assumptions that Dworkin appears to make. The first, as mentioned above, is that there would be a unitary measure of capability. Sen, however, imagines multiple capabilities that are incommensurable. So whereas resources are all valued on a single scale according their market price, capabilities cannot be placed on such a scale. The second of Dworkin’s apparent assumptions is that capabilities should be equalized in some fashion. However, while Sen takes the idea of equality seriously, he—along with all prominent capability advocates—does not advocate strict equality of capabilities; Sen, The Idea of Justice at 295. Thus, while it is possible that there would be analogies between equality of opportunity for welfare and equality of capabilities—if capabilities were defined in terms of their welfare-properties—there are alternative approaches to capabilities that do not rest on equality of this kind.
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