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Desert 07/12/17,
04/01/18 (Intentionality
A key theme within everyday…
Desert 07/12/17,
04/01/18
A key theme within everyday understandings of desert is that it tends to be grounded in some intentional action of the agent’s. Basic judgments about desert tend to be of the following form: ‘some agent A is said to deserve some benefit B on the basis of an activity or performance P... The important thing is that P should be in the relevant sense A's performance: that is, A should be responsible for P’ (Miller 1999, p.133). By including responsibility in this definition, agency and motive are included in the concept of desert: ‘[t]o deserve B on the basis of P, I must intend to perform P, and the performance of P must be sufficiently within my control’ (Miller 1999, p.134).
However, a distinction is made between intention and motive, with corresponding implications for desert due to performance, versus specifically moral forms of desert. The argument is that the moral forms are only a subset of desert in general; it is not the case that ‘that to deserve on the basis of P, one must have performed P out of a sense of duty, or in order to confer benefits on others’ (Miller 1999, p.134). In most cases, then, desert follows the intentional performance of an action irrespective of whether there is a moral motive behind it, and although the performance may evoke some moral appraisal, for instance due to the social utility of the action, this is not necessarily central to the desert in question (Miller 1999, p.135).
This is reflected in the intentionality test in homelessness legislation
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Scottish devolution as a rejection of desert and need-moderated norms in favour of a more (but not entirely as intentionality test was retained) rights-based approach.
Included provision of temporary accommodation during homelessness assessment - bypasses desert considerations to respond to need (on/through a rights-based framework)
- therefore acted to moderate or reduce the impact of the desert-oriented intentionality test
And there is a provision (not yet enacted) to reduce the intentionality test from a duty to an investigatory power, to be used at local authority discretion. This could further reduce the relevance of desert in the Scottish system.
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The intentionality test is an explicit indication that negative desert can preclude access to need-based support. It’s therefore very interesting that it may be dropped for children and young people. Raises questions about the normative rationale for this.
- young people unable to accrue negative desert due to lack of agency associated with adulthood?
- concerns relating to greater substantive need, or vulnerability, or utility over-riding issues of desert for this group?
NB: the drop is planned only in Wales from 2019 at the moment
This presents an interesting contrast to single people, for whom desert-based considerations are most salient/least mediated by norms of need and vulnerability. At least, without further qualifying conditions such as disability- and there’s a pretty high bar on this before it qualifies someone for different treatment.
A ruling of intentional homelessness substantially reduces local authorities’ duties to an applicant.. The restriction of entitlements/local authority duties to temporary accommodation only appears to reflect a judgment of negative desert; a loss of entitlement because the applicant was deemed to be somehow morally blameworthy.
Stage 3 of the Welsh legislation
Intentionality test remains in the legislation, but local authorities have discretion over whether to apply it to all groups. And reductions in the use of intentionality for families and young people are due in 2019.
However, the removal of entionality continues to be moderated on behavioural (performance, desert) groups, e.g. ‘unreasonable failure to coooperate’
Empirical evidence that a notable proportion of Welsh applicants exhaust their statutory options without resolving their housing need. ‘Unsuccessful discharge’. Following conditionality problems. Relates again to the performance, negative desert, failure to cooperate issue.
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Conceptual definition
Whilst there are various interpretations of what exactly constitutes desert, the concept seems to turn on something about the individual, such as their actions or personal characteristics (Miller 1976, p.26). If this is identified, then an individual’s deserving act is said to invoke ‘fitting forms of treatment’ which correspond to that specific performance (Miller 1976, p.85).
Positive desert
Tapers on Universal Credit
Represent a reward, or at least attempt not to punish, positive contribution desert. But what message is conveyed as the UC tapers become less generous?
Negative desert
There seems to be a background assumption, stemming from the pre-legislative provision, that there is negative desert associated with homelessness.
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Desirability of accommodation in the SRS
Single people receiving less attractive properties may relate to desert (negative) judgments applying more strongly than for other groups, for whom other normative considerations such as need and vulnerability may appear more salient, thereby moderating down the desert (negative) judgments associated with housing need and homelessness.
Evidence of greater sanctioning rate for single people (greater than what? Average?) may also point towards the greater salience or application of desert (negative judgments for this group.
Individualisation (as opposed to structural explanations) of homelessness orients the normative interpretation to one of desert/need, evoking a blame/weakness narrative
Prevention
Prevention strategies as a push-back against desert (negative) assumptions which maybe precluded or deterred provision from being made for single homeless people. Moved to rights - protected response to need; legally enforceable prevention and relief duties irrespective of priority need status.
See Housing Options, Welsh legislation, English HRA
More ‘meaningful support’ for single people, at least in principle
Housing Options, prevention and family mediation
Do reports/concerns of gatekeeping reflect a view that young people don’t deserve provision from the state - or is there something else going on? E.g. utility concerns re: resources
Social security
Benefits caps (inc. JSA, ESA, HB (LHA), UC etc.) are reflective of views about what those on social security deserve, not just what they need. The cap prevents provision from rising in response to that need (e..g for larger families who require properties with more bedrooms)
- what kinds of desert is this likely to reflect?
Again, probably the assumption of negative desert in those who receive social security. OR receiving benefits which bring quality of life in line with people in work (making an economic contribution) requires some evidence of positive desert?
Moderating desert
Vulnerability - to be addressed more extensively in its own section - is a norm which, when applied, may be used to moderate the salience of, or impact of, negative desert judgments.
Most of the vulnerability decisions seem conceptually divorced from issues of desert. But the area of discretion available to local housing officers in deciding the application of the label - and evidence that contextual factors such as applicants’ ‘service worthiness’ could affect those decisions - suggest that some desert-related considerations may be relevant at that point.
Prevention and relief
Challenges the desert narrative around homelessness by acknowledging the role that structural/systemic things can have in reducing homelessness. Implicitly, then, it acknowledges that they may also have a causal role. If external factors are identified as contributing to homelessness, then individual performances (upon which desert judgments depend) cannot be the only explanation. Therefore the significance of desert as a governing norm must be reduced.
Young people
Moved out of the protected category for children, desert-related norms become a little more relevant to young people. However, the interaction between need and desert-based considerations seems to work a little differently than for older adults.
The relevance of desert is presumably linked to social ideas about adulthood, agency and responsibility?
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What kind of performance may be identified as deserving, and the sort of treatment that ought to follow from that, are presented as situationally dependent: ‘...the good I am distributing will determine the type of desert that is relevant’ (Miller 1976, p.114). In terms of social justice, goods include things such as material wealth, housing and education (Miller 1976, p.118). Miller distinguishes between two main bases for desert, according to which goods might be distributed; contribution, and effort.
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Social Rented Sector
o DHPs in the SRS
Why are they discretionary? Application of funds is patchy and underspent
o Bedroom tax marketed as a ‘spare room subsidy’
Using language to imply unearned privileges
o Targeting of the SRS – assumption of negative desert re: those not in the private sector, either in PRS or home ownership?
Welfare reform
o Discourse of rights and responsibilities. Implicit irresponsibility? Suggestion people are getting ‘something for nothing’
o Conditionality: sanctions, penalty
o Cap on working age benefits – designed to stop claimants getting more than the average wage. Implication that they don’t deserve more than that?
Conditionality
The point of conditionality is ‘earning’ or avoiding losing desert. It is very behaviour/performance oriented. Application of conditionality to groups that had previously been exempt also raises questions about the need/vulnerability/desert interaction. What change in norms or priorities led to the inclusion, and escalation, of conditionality upon lone parents?
Young people are subject to greater conditionality through the Young Obligation. Conditionality is attached to performance. Do young people need to perform even more than other adults in order to be attributed the same levels of desert? It’s not even on the same level - it’s still at a disadvantageous rate, compared with older single people.
Youth Obligation scheme does include more intensive support though. Suggestive of an exchange - other norms in operation?
The welfare conditionality reports show an increased likelihood of being sanctioned as a young person. Performance desert again. Punitive treatment reflects negative desert interpretation.
Additional behavioural conditionality to YP receipt of HB under New Labour. Requirements to comply with terms of ASBOs etc.
Young people
Disadvanatges of young people in social security and housing = a reflection of a lack of contribution desert? This wouldn’t quite make sense, as out of work benefits already have a two-tiered system of contribution rate and assistance rate, which helps to reflect contribution-desert issues.
Where the YP disadvantages extend all the way to 35 (SAR) i.e. older adulthood, is it still plausible to apply the contribution-desert narrative?
Exceptions to SAR - care leavers, disabled people, homeless over 3 months - are needs-based. Suggestive of the desert-need mediation/moderation relationship, which could indicate that desert IS a relevant norm here.
Contribution and effort
Drawing from the common intuition that a deserving performance warrants some corresponding benefit, an obvious form of desert is that which is based upon contribution. The grounds for this type of desert are described as ‘the value which each individual has contributed to the common stock of society, or more strictly that portion of the value which is due to his own efforts, skills and abilities’ (Miller 1976, pp.118–119).
Contribution-desert operates most plainly in relationships of ‘instrumental association’. These relationships are predicated upon market-style interactions wherein an individual’s performance is intended to make a contribution to some mutually agreed end. Justice based on contribution-desert then requires that the agent ‘receives back by way of reward an equivalent to the contribution he makes’ (Miller 1999, p.28).
This type of desert is related to the principle of equity, which has been described as justifying ‘unequal rewards on the grounds of differential investment or abilities’ (Lewin-Epstein et al. 2003, p.4). A desert-based principle of justice may therefore be used to legitimate social inequalities, through pointing to differential contributions to common (social) ends.
Against contribution
However, the justice of a distribution based on contribution-desert can be challenged with reference to the uneven starting distribution of natural abilities and talents. It is plain that some individuals may be able to contribute more in a market-style interaction than others, as a result of characteristics or capacities for which their responsibility is partial at best. Common intuitions about contribution as a basis for desert seems specifically concerned with those elements of contribution over which the individual has full control. The desert attached to a performance is negated to the extent that it was dependent upon luck. Therefore it can be argued that contribution is only a basis for desert insofar as it reflects the agent’s efforts and choices (Miller 1976, p.106; Miller 1999, pp.29, 66). Ability in and of itself, as distinguished from the efforts and choices of the individual in developing it, is therefore not seen as a basis for desert.
Effort and voluntariness
The argument for effort as a basis of desert derives from longstanding philosophical intuitions regarding the importance of voluntariness and intent in underpinning good (Miller 1976, p.109; Miller 1999, p.67). A key proponent of this view was Kant, who proposed the ‘good will’ as the only true source of moral worth.
However intuitively compelling, the effort-desert approach is likely to meet with difficulties in practice:
...the logical consequence of adopting the principle that desert depends on voluntary action is not that effort alone should be taken as a desert basis at the expense of all difference in ability and skills, but rather that effort and voluntarily acquired abilities should be separated from innate abilities and abilities which are implanted by other people, desert to be based upon the former group alone. The resulting principle may be almost impossible to apply. (Miller 1976, p.109)
An alternative way of understanding the role of effort in determining desert might therefore be as a kind of ‘modifier’ which affects how we view other relevant factors, keeping performance itself as the primary consideration, but modifying the judgment of how deserving that performance is through information about the relative contribution of ability and effort; someone with limited natural ability who, through expenditure of greater effort, achieves a similar performance to someone with natural talent, might be judged to be more deserving (Miller 1999, p.66). However, ceteris paribus, superior performance will tend to indicate greater desert.
Merit
It has been suggested that this combination of ability and effort to produce a certain achievement or performance is what is usually understood as ‘merit’ (Lewin-Epstein, 2003, p. 5). However, Miller prefers to draw a distinction between merit and desert, indicating that an individual’s collection of ‘admirable qualities’ might be termed meritorious, but that ‘desert’ ought to be used specifically in relation to a performance, ‘in which someone is responsible for the results he or she brings about’ (Miller 1999, p.125).
Whichever view is taken, favouring desert as a principle of justice seems to point towards meritocracy as a socio-political ideal. Miller defines a meritocratic society as one in which ‘each person's chance to acquire positions of advantage and the rewards that go with them will depend entirely on his or her talent and effort’ (1999, p.177). This system could legitimise inequalities which reflect differences in contribution desert, as a reflection of the abilities that people have and the effort that they expend in directing them towards deserving performances (Miller 1999, p.178) .
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