Sinking Cohen's Flagship - or Why People with Expensive Tastes Should not be Compensated

Abstract

SØREN FLINCH MIDTGAARD abstract G. A. Cohen argues that egalitarians should compensate for expensive tastes or for the fact that they are expensive. Ronald Dworkin, by contrast, regards most expensive tastes as unworthy of compensation -only if a person disidentifies with his own such tastes (i.e. wishes he did not have them) is compensation appropriate. Dworkinians appeal, inter alia, to the so-called 'first-person' or 'continuity' test. According to the continuity test, an appropriate standard of interpersonal comparison reflects people's own assessment of their relative standing: Person A can only legitimately demand compensation from person B if he regards himself as worse off, all things considered, than B. The typical bearer of expensive tastes does not regard herself as being worse off than others with less expensive tastes. Hence, in the typical case, pace Cohen, compensation for expensive tastes is inappropriate.The article scrutinizes this rationale for not compensating for expensive tastes. Especially, we try to bolster the continuity test by relating it to Dworkin's distinction between integrated and detached values, pointing out that an argument for the continuity test can be built on the assumption that equality has integratedvalue. In brief, the point is that a metric of equality should be assessed, partly, in virtue of its consequences for related ideals. One of these is the kind of justificatory community promoted by the continuity test. We defend this view against an objection to the effect that equality is a detached value.We conclude that the continuity test constitutes a strong foothold for the resourcist egalitarian reluctance to compensate people for their expensive tastes.

Disadvantage, Autonomy, and the Continuity Test

“…An alternative motivation for the Continuity Test, somewhat along the same lines as the one just rehearsed, has been suggested in a recent article by Rasmus Sommer Hansen and Søren Flinch Midtgaard. 24 Hansen and Midtgaard's argument is as follows. With Dworkin, they claim that equality is an integrated value, with an integral connection to our lives going well.…”

Lowering Toilet Seats

“…higher welfare benefits or pensions) to people who are only satisfied eating clover's eggs and drinking pre-phylloxera claret than to those who are satisfied consuming cheaper foods and beverages, including regular eggs and wine (Dworkin, 1981; for further discussion, see e.g. Cohen, 2008;Hansen & Midtgaard, 2011;Holtug, 2015), so it seems they should not bear the extra cost of some people's preferences for peeing standing as detailed above. Another way of making this point is to say that in both cases, accommodating people's expensive preferences -or 'expensive tastes' as they are usually called in the literature -looks unfair given that the holders of these tastes can easily achieve the same basic functionings, namely those of getting adequate nutrition and emptying their bladder, in ways that are not expensive for the rest of society, which in the toilet case involves peeing sitting.…”

Political Theory: The Nordic Scene

“…Rasmus Sommer Hansen and Midtgaard address the question of expensive taste: What, if anything, should be done to compensate people who suffer because they can't, honestly, be content with anything but the best – say, tailored clothes rather than prêt‐à‐porter ? ‘Nothing’ is their answer (Hansen & Midtgaard ). These people are not in a relevant sense worse off than others with less expensive tastes.…”