ABSTRACT
Rawls showed how, starting from commonly accepted premises, one can be led by a progression of moves to the surprising conclusion that the only adequate form of equal opportunity is equality of outcome, measured in terms of income. Rawls was vague about how the initial allocation of property rights is to be made in the system, though in this he did no more than echo advocates of the system themselves. An alternative conception that closes some of the loopholes in the system of natural liberty was described by Rawls as a system of liberal equality. According to Rawls, assuming that there is a distribution of natural assets should have the same prospects of success regardless of the initial place in the social system. Democratic equality is the only one which does not weight men's share in the benefits and burdens of social cooperation according to their social fortune or their luck in the natural lottery.
