The Ethics of Envy

To what extent does a feeling of envy entitle someone to have that feeling removed, and in what way? This might seem a strange question, because we are accustomed to thinking of envy as a vice, not something granting a moral entitlement. So, let me put the question another way: To what extent are people entitled to be treated fairly? Admittedly, that is not quite the same question, but I want to argue that a large portion of it is concerned with envy. And then, I want to answer the first question: Does envy grant moral entitlement, and if so, how much?

The Nature of Envy

What is envy? In general terms, the answer is clear; it is ill-will directed against another person because that person has something that the envier lacks. A few points should be clarified before launching into the discussion, however.

First, envy is different from the desire for the release from suffering. Someone who is extremely hungry might well envy someone with plenty to eat, but this is not the same as their desire to eat. A hungry person who was the only living human being would still desire to eat, but could not be envious. Similarly, if everyone were starving, then everyone would want to eat but no-one would be envious.

Second, envy is different from the desire for goods. Since release from suffering is a particular kind of good, this is a generalisation of the previous case. Someone might want to be beautiful, and envy those who are, but the two feelings are, again, distinct. If everyone was ugly a person might still want to be beautiful, but would not feel envy.

Finally, envy is satisfied either by benefiting the envier or harming the envied. A poor man will no longer envy a rich man if the poor man becomes rich, but equally the envy will dissipate if the rich man becomes poor. Desires for goods are only satisfied by benefiting the desirer; people remain hungry even if everyone else is hungry with them.

Fairness and Envy

The link between fairness and envy can now be drawn. Consider claims that it is unfair that Bill Gates has $50 billion while so many people are starving. Now, suppose that we took Mr Gates's money and divided it evenly across the world (which wouldn't actually be possible, because Microsoft shares would go down, and there wouldn't be $50 billion to distribute). Everyone would get about $10. This is not, in fact, enough to make any significant difference to their lives. For the most destitute, it might be three weeks' earnings. It might stave off starvation for a little while, but that's it. After a couple of weeks, the result of the effort is to create one more starving person -- Bill Gates.

The same point applies even more strongly to envy directed at people who merely have millions, as distributing their funds might give each individual a few pence. In this case, redistribution would do nothing.

So, consider the simplified case in which one person has $1 million, and the other fifty million people in the world have $1 each. Redistributing the wealth individual's capital provides everyone with two cents. This is hardly significant, so the only motivation for reducing the unfairness can be envy. The 'beneficiaries' do not gain anything that can compensate for what the victim has lost. Note that giving a thousand people a thousand dollars each is no more fair, because those thousand have to be chosen arbitrarily. At this level of abstraction, only an equal distribution can be fair. If we allow for dependence on personal effort, then maybe it is fair for one person to have a million times more than everyone else. The example simply doesn't say.

Of course, that isn't the situation. The actual situation is that there are lots of rich people, and even more poor people, and that distributing all wealth evenly would, in fact, make a difference to the poor.

So, now, we have to make a different argument. We have to argue that the poor deserve to have their desires fulfilled. This is a possible argument. You can argue that everyone deserves to have an equal fraction of the world's resources spent on fulfilling their desires, without relying on envy. The argument goes like this. Suppose there is only one person. Obviously, he is allowed to use all the world's resources on his desires. Now, as we add more people, they have their desires, so we can split the world into equal lumps, one for each person. This maximises the satisfaction of each person's desires.

Unfortunately, this argument is far too crude. Suppose that we start with such an equal distribution, and that we do not put strict requirements on what everyone does with their resources. Some people will waste them, and thus become poorer. Others will make good use of them, and thus become richer. (Suppose that the resources consist purely of farmland, for example.) Are we going to forbid the incompetent from swapping the land they can't manage for food to keep them alive? Are we going to forbid people from trading for items made with skill? Finally, are we going to forbid gifts? Clearly, we could do all of those things, but such a society is no longer an egalitarian society, it is a viciously oppressive police state.

Equality is an unstable situation, even if all abilities and opportunities are equal, as luck still intervenes. Thus, in order to preserve equality, we would have to intervene on a very close level. This, I take it, is a much worse evil than the good it generates.

So, we might argue that we should allow a certain amount of variation, and only clamp down on those who go above the top range. But redistributing the small amounts from people who pass the top will make no noticeable difference to everyone else, so we are back to injuring the prosperous for no benefit to others. We are back to envy.

We could also argue for a lowest level of prosperity, always helping those who fall below it. This is not a product of envy, because it concentrates on helping people. However, it is also nothing to do with fairness. If ten people were very rich and twenty million at the bottom line, this scheme would do nothing.

The point is even clearer with resources which cannot be redistributed. Consider the claim that it is unfair that some people are better at running marathons than others. A significant portion of this is genetic, so that it is not the case that anyone, with the right training, could be the world's greatest marathon runner. Of course, because there is nothing that we can do about it, no-one tries to do anything about it.

Envy and Justification

So, we come back to the first question. Does envy justify doing harm to some people for no real benefit to others beyond the curing of the envy? I would argue not. On general grounds, I would say that emotions wishing ill to another have no moral claim to satisfaction. It is true that people feel envy, and suffer as a result, but that suffering cannot be allowed to justify any action.

This means that equality, in itself, has no moral weight. It is not something to be desired or striven for. It may be that the best situation is one in which everyone is equal, but the merit of that situation will not, and cannot, depend on the fact that it is equal. It must be a side-effect of some other desirable. For example, if it were desirable for everyone to reach their maximum potential and to be able to fully exercise it at will, and if everyone had the same maximum state, then the best situation would be one in which everyone was equal. However, that depends on the non-moral fact that everyone has the same potential. If one person had a hundred times the potential of others, then the best state would be one in which that person was a hundred times better.

Let me put this another way. There are good ethical grounds for helping the poor: benefits can be conferred upon them relatively easily. Since resources are finite, this means taking some resources from the prosperous. This loss of resources is, however, an unfortunate side effect of helping the poor, and if it were possible to help them just as much without interfering with the rich, then we should do so. Without envy, we should, as far as ethically possible, minimise harm to everyone, including the rich.

David Chart
15 May 2003
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