This article was originally published in Theory and Society 15 (5), 1986, pp. 635-655. The editors of Basic Income Studies are grateful to Springer Verlag for permission to reprint this article as lead piece in this retrospective. A first draft of this text was written in May 1983 by Van Parijs...

The world is full of situations of asymmetric bilingualism: the members of one linguistic group learn the language of another without the latter reciprocating. In such a situation, the cost of learning is borne by one group, whereas the benefit is enjoyed by both. This paper first argues that,...

What is the most sensible formulation of the egalitarian ideal once this fact is fully taken into account? The paper examines a number of answers that have been offered to this question, in particular Ronald Dworkin's counterfactual insurance schemes, and argues against them. It then presents an...