Once a society has goods, opportunities, and burdens to allocate, it must ask how they should be shared out and by what standard an allocation counts as fair. Answers differ over the currency being distributed — welfare, resources, or capabilities — and over the pattern that is just: strict equality, sufficiency for all, reward for desert, or whatever arrangement maximizes overall benefit.
The map presents three standard answers: Rawls's difference principle permits inequalities that benefit the least advantaged, entitlement theory judges holdings by their history of acquisition and transfer, and utilitarian distribution maximizes aggregate well-being.