An old friend, the head of the elementary department at an independent boys’ school, used to run a philosophy club for boys aged six and seven. One day the teacher said to them: “Imagine we are a pirate band and we have just found a huge cache of treasure. I am the captain, so I get half the treasure. You have to decide how you are going to allocate the rest.”
The boys discussed whether to share their half proportionately to their grades in class or how good they were at football, but eventually they decided to split it equally – the egalitarian option. After this lesson in distributive justice, all seemed well. But then one little boy asked: “Please Mrs Taylor, why do you get half the treasure?”
