John Rawls & The Veil of Ignorance

I found the in-class relationship between group one and the inevitably-antagonistic rest of the class to be of particular interest today. Group one attempted to justify their decision-making process as completely altruistic. I actually completely agree with this point, however, I feel it is not genuine enough to be taken as true good-natured sharing. The difference in this situation and one in which group one could have truly looked after the class is the lack of competition. Emily, Nate, Rachel, and Rob came into class with no one but themselves present, and they all stood to gain from a mutual agreement as far as seating arrangements went. Had there been a competitive rush for scarce resources, I can nearly guarantee group one would have thrown altruistic motives out the window and joined in out of the assumption that no actor was rational, and that there would be no pause to fairly distribute resources. They wouldn't have taken them because they threw altruistic motives out the window, but because everyone else assumed all of the others in the room would and protected their own interests. This is "game theory" at its finest. This leads into what I actually wanted to talk about, that being what I see as the flaw in John Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness."

Our class today was basically the reason that Rawls's "veil of ignorance" doesn't really happen. He even concedes in the introduction of one of his novels, Justice As Fairness, that in order for his theory to work, all actors in the decision-making process must be rational, with "rational" being defined as taking into the account of all involved parties equally. This rarely if ever happens. All parties, regardless of their supposed objectivity, have a certain agenda they attempt to push. This is an inescapible aspect of the human mind. Take Supreme Court Justices. they are supposed to be the ultimate representation of Constitutional decision-making, supposedly objective in all their decisions. However, whether the justice is Antonin Scalia or Stephen Breyer, all have their respective motivations and interpretation of what it means to be "rational." The veil of ignorance seems to hold people to a sort of impossible-to-reach standard of rationality that separates human desires and wants from any equation.