ABSTRACT
Ideal theory means different things to different philosophers. John Rawls makes use of an institutional version of ideal theory. Ideal theory, then, contains an internal inconsistency. To illustrate the inconsistency within ideal theories of the state, consider the public-goods argument. G. A. Cohen notices that Rawls tries to wriggle out of this bind by assuming that people act unjustly in the market and civil society, thereby creating a role for the state, but justly in politics, thereby ensuring the justness of the state itself. Rawls argues that laissez-faire capitalism is incompatible with justice partly because it fails to include these sorts of equalizing measures. Libertarians and egalitarian liberals also disagree about the state's role in supplying a social minimum. A libertarian regime fails to live up to the ideal of equal opportunity because it fails to include redistributive and regulatory measures designed to even out the effects of people's socioeconomic backgrounds and their unchosen natural talents.
