Summary Of Namit Arora's 'What Do We Deserve'

Starting from Different Starting Points
Namit Arora, “What Do We Deserve”. He portrays the discussion on societal success and achievements. Society’s perspective on success is not measured by hard work it is measured through wealth attained. People of our society do not deserve exactly what they obtain just because they are diligent and hardworking throughout their life. Arora supports his belief by interpreting Michael Sandel’s book “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” which discussed the three major approaches to distributive economic justice which include libertarian, meritocratic, and egalitarian. The three different models presented disagree with the belief that all people should be treated
This states that everybody has an equal opportunity, but in reality do we? Personally agreeing with his concept, people deserve what they work for in life but not quite sure if that is rational. Everyone starts life with some sort of blessing and who’s to say one deserves more than another. In today’s world, we morally accept the fact that everybody is created equal. As Arora explains, “they believe that we are the authors of our own destiny and whoever wins the race is morally deserving of the awards they obtain from the market – and its flip side, that we morally deserve our failure too, and its consequences” (Arora 88). What Arora is explaining is that from birth we all start out equally, but as time progresses and we become independent, we have to fight for our achievements and live with our failures in order to become successful. Although this statement is true however, everyone starts the same but from different starting points. As Arora also states, “So while the racetrack may look nice and shiny, the runners don’t begin at the same starting point.” So we may all be on the same track of life and looking for that finish line, even though we may have started from different places. For example, there is a reason why janitors who work for very low wages are not doctors or lawyers. They did not have the same opportunity or time to go to school and earn the degree required to
Physically all humans are created equally from head to toe but mentally and internally some humans are granted with the natural lottery. “Since we cannot undo the inequalities of the natural lottery, John Rawls writes, we must find a way to address the differences in the rewards that result from them” (Arora 88). Agreeing with this quote, people with natural gifts receive easier rewards then people who actually have to work for their rewards. With that being said, the people with natural gifts take their rewards for granted unlike the people who appreciate their rewards through hard work. For example, celebrities just get stuff handed to them easier than a teacher who works hard too and gets paid little. When I played softball, I wasn’t as good as the others and they would always hit a home run so they didn’t really value it however for me having to practice hitting everyday just to make it on first