Grant John Rawls a lot of assumptions. Grant his moral epistemology of "reflective equilibrium," to start. Grant that justice consists of the broad institutional features of a society, and grant that THESE should be what hypothetical negotiators would cook up behind a "veil of ignorance." All those concessions still won't lead us to the conclusions that Rawls is set upon, unless we also agree with him about whether the negotiators would adopt the conclusion that Rawls thinks they will adopt? Would they adopt the equal liberty principle and difference principle, and would they do so in a lexical ordering? The decades since Rawls' elaboration of his views in A Theory of Justice have given people plenty of opportunities to spill out alternative outcomes of those negotiations. But James Mirrlees (pictured above) didn't need a lot of time. He did so almost instantly. I haven't read Mirrlees' paper, but a secondary source describes him as sayi...
