Equality Of Natural Resources And Global Justice

Cosmopolitans agreed that everyone should be treated with equal moral concern,but scholars have different interpretations of equality.Thus cosmopolitans are divided into different groups,in which the school of emphasizing the equality of resources get more attention.Hillel Steiner,a representative of equality of resources,advocated that natural resources should be distributed equally in global scope.There are two reasons:first,natural resources are common wealth which everyone should have an equal share of;Second,the current allocation of existing natural resource is unjust,which means that rich countries dominate the distribution of natural resources while poor countries are disadvantaged.A few points on Steiner's theory of equality of resources are focused on the fact that everyone has the equal right of owning freedom,which indicates that everyone should have an equal share of natural resources.Because the equal share of natural resources is one of basic rights for individuals,it requires that the violators should compensate to the violated ones,namely,the over-owners should compensate to the insufficient-owners.For convenience,Steiner invented the system of Global Fund,and he holds the view that every kind of natural resource has its value in a relative way and its price could be set by bidding in a free market.People need to pay correspondingly for the natural resources they want to occupy,in which way everyone else can get an equal share of the payment with the system of Global Fund in global scope,and protect their basic needs as well.Even though Steiner's distribution plan seems rather perfect,but nationalisms and cosmopolitans criticized that there are still many difficulties when we try to put it into practice:Firstly,it violates the generally alleged self-ownership,and he only argues for levying tax on natural gifts of human beings from the perspective of religion,which is not persuasive enough;secondly,it is very hard to isolate the original value of natural resources;last,the occupation tax plan that is advocated by Steiner is too complicated to be conducted in reality.Hence,Steiner's theory on equality of resources still awaits further revision.