Justice for grasshoppers

Reassessing the effort principle in distributive justice

Bibliographic Data

ID10808556
AuthorsNethanel Lipshitz (0000-0001-6768-4425, Bar-Ilan University, corresponding author), Tammy Harel Ben Shahar (0000-0002-8956-5563, University of Haifa)
Year2025
Volume206
Issue2
Publication date2025-07-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSynthese (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0039-7857 • E-ISSN: 1573-0964
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11229-025-05108-1
OpenAlexW4412729073
LanguageEN
References cited31

According to the effort principle , those who expend much effort deserve to earn more than those who expend little. While accepted by some philosophers and popular outside academic philosophy, the effort principle, that rewards the industrious ants rather than the idle grasshoppers, has been criticized for being unfair and impractical. This paper develops a novel argument against this principle. It targets the claim, implied by advocates of the effort principle, that it can be derived from a more fundamental desert principle, one that identifies moral responsibility, economic contribution, or compensation as the fundamental desert bases for income. We argue that the effort principle cannot be derived from any such principle. Thus, even if one endorses these principles, one need not accept the effort principle. Furthermore, we show how intuitions that seem to support the effort principle can be vindicated without it. We conclude by endorsing skepticism about the effort principle and by gesturing at an alternative possible role that the notion of effort can play in a theory of distributive justice

Distributive justice · Distributive property · Economic Justice · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Metaphysics · Philosophy of language · Philosophy of science · Political science · Pure mathematics · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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