  If justice is a fair distribution of benefits and burdens across people, and if one's economic behavior affects the degree to which justice obtains, then if one is committed to justice, one must, to some degree, guide one's behavior by that commitment. So Cohen urges. He complains that Rawls countenances a split in the thinking and action of the just individual in an imagined fully just society that does not make sense. The Rawlsian just individual supports the difference principle as the regulative standard for institutions, for the basic structure of society, but does not regulate his own life choices in daily economic affairs and career choices by the difference principle. Cohen objects that this split personality cannot be an ideally just person, contrary to what Rawls claims (Rawls 1999). According to Cohen a fully just society regulated by egalitarian principles would include an egalitarian ethos that instructs individuals that each should do her bit towards sustaining equality by her everyday choices. Individuals internalize the egalitarian ethos and are guided by it in their economic choices, and hence will not be disposed to bargain hard for extra pay and benefits in exchange for making efficient contributions to the economy. They will rather be disposed to cooperate with others efficiently in their economic interactions without requiring the spur of economic incentives. In this way a thoroughly just Rawlsian society populated by just individuals achieves more egalitarian outcomes while maximizing the benefits that go to the worst off than a Rawlsian society regulated in the split personality fashion. (Cohen also challenges Rawls's argument for the difference principle. Cohen claims that Rawls starts with a consideration favoring equality that illicitly gets dropped as his discussion proceeds. Cohen then holds that Rawls, and we, should believe that justice requires equality, even if pragmatic nonjustice grounds favor the difference principle, which does not incorporate the idea that equality is non-instrumentally morally valuable. (See Cohen 2008, chapter 4). But in the argument being considered here, Cohen accepts the difference principle arguendo, and argues that Rawls does not fully acknowledge the implications of his own commitment to it.)