Fair insurance: defended, amended, and extended

Abstract

What level and kind of protection against relative misfortune should our community provide, and how should it distribute the costs of provision amongst its members? According to the answer this paper explores, within bounds we shall later discuss, the willingness of fairly situated individuals to pay for protection against the risk of misfortune plays an essential, though limited, role in answering these questions. We call this approach fair insurance. Our aim is to identify the appeal of this position compared to its rivals and to outline an amended variant of the most familiar version of the view. We then explain how that variant survives several influential objections that some have thought decisive. We conclude by showing that the fair insurance approach can contribute to recent debates about how best to develop a contractualist account of distributive decision-making in the face of risk.