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American philosopher John Rawls (1972) stipulated that resources should be distributed in such a manner as to maximize benefit for the least advantaged members of society. Any inequality can only be justified if they are beneficial to the weakest members of society. A perhaps more familiar conception of social justice articulated by David Miller. According to Miller, social justice consists of three components: rights, deserts and needs. The first consists of largely of negative first-generation rights, such as equality before the law and freedom of speech. The second consists of "the recognition of each person's action and qualities," which implies proportional compensation for one's contributions to society. Any judgment on what constitutes due recognition for a given action or quality, will inevitably be made relative to other members of society (e.g. it is not possible to determine whether or not my income constitutes a just reward without comparing myself to others). The third component of justice consists of "the prerequisites for fulfilling individual plans in life." This component underlines the close, complex relationship between social justice and positive freedom. The former cannot exist without the latter, nor can the latter exist without the former. Different ideologies emphasize different elements of social justice. Libertarians emphasize the deserts element, while democratic socialists emphasize the needs elements. This paper will adopt the modern liberal approach of attempting emphasize all three as equally as possible, while, similar to democratic socialists, assigning the needs elements a slight priority
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