relative to opportunity).
This does not restore our ability to access the original position
described in Rawls’ theory but allows us to a fair outcome. This is
because even though the original position is inaccessible in practice,
the above selection model would be preferred by any rational individual
in an imperfect original position. For instance, imagine that, in the
original position, individuals know and are forced to accept that
societies have inequalities, that other individuals are aware of these
inequalities and will attempt to benefit from them, but each individual
does not know which side of these inequalities (e.g., rich vspoor) they will belong to. The fair outcome – the outcome that all
individuals can and will agree upon – is that of a fair process through
which individuals will be selected, based on the inequalities that are
present in the society, to have access to goods. For an individual in
the lower side of inequalities (e.g., poor), the best possible outcomea priori of knowing its place in this inequality is to demand
that (s)he is to be judged relative to the inequalities that (s)he will
have experienced, and not based on the average experience of the society
(let alone the average amongst those on the other side of the
inequalities). In this way, the individual capacity to perform above the
expected from the individuals’ environment is measured, rather than the
capacity of an individual to perform relative to the average of the
society. This approach, if adopted widely across academic institutions,
is what I argue will make academia a system of fair equality to
opportunities.