Collective Duties of Beneficence and Partial Compliance
Individual members of collectivities are required to do their shares in fulfilling a collective duty. Typically shares are distributed to individuals according to some appropriate principle.
Sometimes a fair and just distribution is going to be an equal division; sometimes it will be distributed according to capacity, need, responsibility, etc. No matter what the principle is, the share is typically determined under ideal circumstances on the assumption that each complies with her obligation. But our circumstances are not ideal, and individuals regularly fail to comply with their shares of collective obligations. We see the consequences around us: extreme poverty, refugees with no secure path to residency, an environmental crisis that continues to worsen. In the face of these consequences, those who have complied with their shares might ask if they are obligated to pick up the slack of non-compliers. That is, is more required of some individuals in order to fulfill the duty of beneficence?Unsurprisingly, there is no consensus. Some argue that individuals are only required to do their fair share and should not be compelled to pick up the slack (Miller 2013; Murphy 2003). Others argue that individual shares increase under partial compliance. On this view, the collective requirement and the individual shares are recalculated in light of the remaining need (Cullity 2004). The fact that someone has already done her fair share does not undermine the fact that she still has good reason to aid if she can do so at reasonable cost. In a similar vein, others, agreeing that the remaining need still grounds a duty to aid, argue that compliers have a duty to pick up the slack of non-compliers (Karnein 2014; Kuosmanen 2013; Stemplowska 2016).
Both sides of this debate have merit, and I will briefly sketch a view that captures the appealing aspects of both.
We can both reject the idea of redistributing greater shares of collective duties of beneficence to complying agents, and also hold that the basic needs of others always provide us with a reason to aid, thus making our individual duties to aid more demanding under conditions of partial compliance. On this view, it is important to keep our various duties distinct; we have individual duties to aid and we have individual shares of collective duties to aid. Our individual duties to aid are onerous in conditions where there is a great deal of need and undemanding in conditions where there is no need (if that is even possible). Under conditions of partial compliance, many persons fail to fulfill their share of the duty and thus greater need remains. Under these conditions, to redistribute the share of a noncomplying agent to a complying agent is to fail to treat them as equals (assuming the shares were distributed according to a fair procedure); it is to place greater demands on some because they are conscientious. That said, even if these conscientious agents do not inherit a greater share of the collective duty, as I am suggesting they should not, more will be required of them as individual moral agents in light of the more demanding individual duty of beneficence that bears on them in light of the widespread non-compliance of their fellow duty-bearers.31.7