Editing Original position (section)

== Nature of the concept ==
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Rawls specifies that the parties in the original position are concerned only with citizens' share of what he calls ''primary social goods'', which include basic rights as well as economic and social advantages. Rawls also argues that the representatives in the original position would adopt the ''maximin rule'' as their principle for evaluating the choices before them. Borrowed from [[game theory]], [[Minimax|maximin]] stands for maximizing the minimum, i.e., making the choice that produces the highest payoff for the least advantaged position. Thus, maximin in the original position represents a [[Formula|formulation]] of ''social equality''.

The reason that the least well off member gets benefited is that it is argued that under the veil of ignorance people will act as if they were risk-averse. The original position is a unique and irrevocable choice about all the most important social goods, and they do not know the probability they will become any particular member of society. As insurance against the worst possible outcome, they will pick rules that maximize the benefits given to the minimum outcome (maximin).

However, some scholars note that if the original position is formulated under risk neutrality rather than extreme risk aversion, the resulting principle shifts away from Rawls’s maximin approach and converges on a wealth-maximizing rule. In this respect, John Harsanyi’s analysis suggests that rational individuals, not knowing their future station but treating outcomes according to expected utility, would opt for maximizing average or total well-being.<ref name="Cardinal2" /><ref name="PiParisi">Pi, Daniel, and Parisi, Francesco (2023). "Wealth Maximization Redux: A Defense of Posner’s Economic Approach to Law", ''History of Economic Ideas'' 31: 101-136.</ref> (See [[wealth maximization]] for further discussion of this approach.)

In social contract theory, citizens in a state of nature contract with each other to establish a state of civil society. For example, in the Lockean state of nature, the parties agree to establish a civil society in which the government has limited powers and the duty to protect the persons and property of citizens. In the original position, the representative parties select principles of [[justice]] that are to govern the basic structure of society. Rawls argues that the representative parties in the original position would select two principles of justice:

# Each citizen is guaranteed a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties, which is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all others;
# Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions:
#* to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle);
#* attached to positions and offices open to all.

The reason that the least well off member gets benefited is that it is argued that under the veil of ignorance people will act as if they were risk-averse. The original position is a unique and irrevocable choice about all the most important social goods, and they do not know the probability they will become any particular member of society. As insurance against the worst possible outcome, they will pick rules that maximize the benefits given to the minimum outcome (maximin).

Rawls returns to the concept of an original position in his ''[[The Law of Peoples]]'' (1999), where he speaks of "using the idea of the original position a second time" to show how representatives of "peoples" (a concept similar to states in Rawls's reasoning") would determine how liberal and otherwise "decent" peoples would relate to each other.<ref>Rawls, J. (1999), ''The Law of Peoples with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited"'', p. 17, Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press</ref>

[[Thomas Nagel]] has elaborated on the concept of original position, arguing that social ethics should be built taking into account the tension between original and actual positions.{{citation needed|date=May 2025}}

The original position has been modeled mathematically along [[Genetic drift#Wright–Fisher model|Wright-Fisher's diffusion]], classical in [[population genetics]].<ref>Mostapha Benhenda [[doi:10.1007/s00355-010-0469-2|A model of deliberation based on Rawls’s political liberalism]] Soc Choice Welf (2011) 36: 121–78</ref> The original position has also been used as an argument for [[Eugenics|negative eugenics]], though Rawls's argument was limited to its use as a preventative measure.<ref>{{cite book |last=Shaw |first=David |title=Genetic Morality |publisher=Peter Lang |year=2006 |isbn=3-03911-149-3 |location=Bern, Switzerland |page=147 |quote="What Rawls says is that “Over time a society is to take steps to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects.” The key words here are “preserve” and “prevent”. Rawls clearly envisages only the use of negative eugenics as a preventative measure to ensure a good basic level of genetic health for future generations. To jump from this to “make the later generations as genetically talented as possible," as Pence does, is a masterpiece of misinterpretation. This, then, is the sixth argument against positive eugenics: the Veil of Ignorance argument. Those behind the Veil in Rawls's Original Position would agree to permit negative, but not positive eugenics. This is a more complex variant of the Consent argument, as the Veil of Ignorance merely forces us to adopt a position of hypothetical consent to particular principles of justice."}}</ref>