The Importance of What We Care About: A Solidarity Approach to Resource Allocation
| Author | Kristi A Olson |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720972872 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720972872
Political Studies
2022, Vol. 70(2) 502 –518
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720972872
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The Importance of What
We Care About: A Solidarity
Approach to Resource
Allocation
Kristi A Olson
Abstract
At some point in your life, you will need to allocate resources among individuals, but how should
you do so? One prominent suggestion is the envy test: the envy test is satisfied when and only
when no one prefers someone else’s bundle. In Part I, I explain and then reject Tom Parr’s
recent attempt to justify the envy test. Yet, like Parr, I believe the envy test captures something
important. Thus, in Part II, I distinguish two approaches to resource allocation. Parr’s defense of
the envy test assumes what I will call an individualist approach: what matters are each individual’s
preferences. In lieu of the individualist approach, I endorse the solidarity approach: what matters
are everyone’s preferences. After explaining the distinction, I show that the envy test—or at least
something like it—can be defended using the solidarity approach even if it cannot be defended
using the individualist approach.
Keywords
envy, resource allocation, relational equality, Tom Parr, inequality
Accepted: 20 October 2020
At some point in your life—perhaps today—you will need to allocate resources among
individuals. In some scenarios, the best course of action will be straightforward: you
should give each individual with a morally identical claim an identical bundle. Yet, in
other scenarios, identical bundles will not be an option. To illustrate the type of scenario
I have in mind, suppose an executor is dividing household property among equally
deserving heirs, a food bank is distributing groceries to equally needy individuals, or a
college dean is dividing committee work and perks among equally situated professors. In
these scenarios, it will typically be impossible to give each individual an identical bundle,
absent throwing some goods away or leaving some committees unfilled. Yet, scenarios
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, USA
Corresponding author:
Kristi A. Olson, Bowdoin College, 8400 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011-8421, USA.
Email: kolson@bowdoin.edu
972872PSX0010.1177/0032321720972872Political StudiesOlson
research-article2020
Article
Olson 503
such as these are common and, in some cases, important. In such scenarios, how should
resources be allocated and why?1
A first thought might be that the division of goods and bads into bundles does not mat-
ter, provided that the bundles are assigned by a fair lottery. An exclusive reliance on fair
lotteries, however, faces two problems. First, in some scenarios, a fair lottery will not be
possible. To return to the examples above, if some professors lack the requisite qualifica-
tions to serve on some committees, then the bundles cannot be randomly assigned.
Second, even when it is possible to assign all bundles randomly, we sometimes care about
the content of the bundles as well as their assignment. To take an extreme example, imag-
ine a food bank giving all the groceries to one randomly selected individual. Or imagine
a college dean assigning all the committee work to one randomly selected professor and
all the perks to a different randomly selected professor. Such distributions are consistent
with fair lotteries, but nonetheless suboptimal, especially when the distributions are per-
manent and life-altering. Fair lotteries, then, are not enough; the content of the bundles
also matters.
A second thought might be that the goods and bads should be allocated such that no
one strictly prefers someone else’s bundle to her own.2 Such a distribution is said to sat-
isfy the envy test.3 Unlike fair lotteries, the envy test provides guidance on both the
assignment and content of bundles. Each individual, after all, must receive a bundle she
weakly prefers. Yet, the envy test also faces two problems. First, in some scenarios, there
will be multiple envy-free distributions, and some of these envy-free distributions are
intuitively unfair, or at least less fair, than other distributions.4 Imagine, for example, that
you and I are distributing two cakes between us. One cake is chocolate; the other is
vanilla. If I am indifferent between them but I know you have eyes only for chocolate,
there will be a variety of envy-free distributions between us. For example, I could take the
vanilla cake, leaving you the chocolate cake, or, alternatively, I could take the lion’s
share, leaving you just a smidgeon more than half the chocolate cake. Given our prefer-
ences, both distributions satisfy the envy test. If we want to pick out one of these distribu-
tions as fairer than the other, we must supplement the envy test with additional instructions;
the test itself does not distinguish between them.5 But even if we supplement the envy test
with additional instructions, there is still a second problem: namely, there will be some
scenarios in which no envy-free distribution exists, and, in those scenarios, the envy test
provides no guidance at all.6
Both limitations to the envy test are important. Nonetheless, both limitations are com-
patible with the claim that, when envy can be eliminated, we should do so. And indeed,
this claim is widely endorsed in the resource allocation literature.7 The envy test is also
touted as a way to solve problems in our daily lives: the website, Spliddit.org, for exam-
ple, helps housemates allocate bedrooms and rent, describing the envy-free outcome as
“provably fair.” The envy test is thus a popular candidate for guiding resource allocation.
Yet, we still lack an explanation: why exactly should we use the envy test (if we should)?
Given the implications of the envy test for both local and global resource allocation, the
question is an important one. The purpose of this essay is to provide an answer.
Let me mention, in order to set aside, one possible answer. According to Steven Brams
and Alan Taylor (1996: 4), the virtue of the envy test is that it “quench[es] the flames of
envy, which Webster defines as a ‘painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed
by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage’.” This answer, however,
will not do. The envy test, after all, simply tracks preferences over bundles—and not
painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another.8 To illustrate, if I
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