I have a feeling I'm missing your point, but I suspect Rawls would have said that what determines social status is complicated. I doubt he'd describe it as "fate" since it seems pretty clearly to be a combination of things: accidents of birth (the social status of one's family), partly, one assumes, one's abilities, , and all this against the background of the social arrangements of the particular society. In any case, the people behind the veil of ignorance don't know their social status, but not because this is or isn't a matter of "fate." It's because if they did, it would presumably make a difference to the social arrangement they favored, and that misses the point of the veil.

No. That is, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing, and it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. It would depend on what this borderless world was like. There's a certain sort of idyllic situation we might imagine when we think of a borderless world where people are free (at least nominally) to live and work wherever they please. But not being someone who thinks government is inherently bad, I'm struck by the fact that governments make things possible that might be difficult or impossible without systems of taxation, law and so on. Would the borderless world be run by a single central government? If so, is it reasonable to think that any such government could rule effectively given the diversity of the world? Or would the borderless world be one with minimal government or no government? And if so, is the likely result an anarchy that would make most people worse off? My own guess, for what's it's worth, is that whatever the evils of borders may be, the overall picture would be even more problematic...

Here are some options: (i) pick a country where there's not much in the way of rule of law and go off and live there. Or (ii) do as the founders of Sealand did, and try to set up shop on an oil rig or some such offshore. (But you might want to pick your territory a little more cleverly than they did.) Or (iii) raise up an army of like-minded people, overthrow some government, and set up a stateless, er, "state." (iv) Moving to another planet doesn't seem to be much of an option, but in principle, I suppose... A more practical compromise might be to (v) fake your death and disappear into the wilderness. If it sounds as though I'm (a) being facetious, and (b) am not entirely sympathetic, I'd have to say that on (a), I don't really see much in the way of other options. [And for the record: I'm against overthrowing legitimate governments; I can't condone (iii). I'm also not big on (v), since it calls for fraud.] On (b), I'm afraid it's true. I think there are lots of interesting questions...

It's a really big question, and I'm not going to pretend to offer an adequate answer. It's hard to argue with the idea that it would be a good thing if everyone had decent health care. That said, not everyone thinks that it's legitimate for the State to try to bring it about. (I don't share this view, but that's an aside, not an argument.) But suppose, for argument's sake, that we agree: it's fitting for the State to step in and help ensure that everyone is covered. We can still ask what the most effective way to get close to that goal actually is, and here we run into questions of fact. Perhaps some variation on, say, the Canadian system is the best way to go. Perhaps some largely market-based scheme, with subsidies and/or credits for the less well-off will produce the best result. Or perhaps some innovative market/State solution is what's called for. These are questions that philosophical thinking can't settle by itself. Insofar as they're part of the "arguments for and against," they'll call for...

Others who spend more time thinking about such issues may well have more to say, but your question struck a chord with me because even though I'm not a Zimbabwean, I find the situation in Zimbabwe particularly distressing. The reason is partly personal: there are people I care about who have family and friends in Zimbabwe. And that fact lets us make a link with questions of patriotism and nationalism. We have obligations to people we don't know. At the very least, we are obliged not to do certain things that would harm them. And we may very well have more positive obligations to provide aid, for example, or defense. My point isn't to try to sort all that out. But virtually all of us take ourselves to have special obligations toward people with whom we have special relationships. Other things equal, I take my obligations to my friends, my family and my colleagues to be stronger and more extensive than my obligations to strangers. Indeed, these sorts of relationships are an imporant part of what makes...