  To illustrate some of the complexities of determining how egalitarian principles regulating state action and egalitarian principles regulating individual conduct might be related, consider John Rawls's view that the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society—core institutions including the state, private ownership and the market economy, and the family as they interact and affect people's fundamental life prospects. Rawls devises a special argument designed to generate principles for the regulation of the basic structure of society that we, contemplating this argument, should accept as principles that determine what must be true if the basic structure is to qualify as just. The special argument device, which Rawls calls the “original position,” is also deployed to select principles of individual conduct associated with the principles of justice, but these principles merely state that individuals should support just institutions. When the basic structure of society is just, individuals should support it and conform to its norms and rules, and if the basic structure is not just individuals should cooperate with others to bring about a just basic structure so long as they can do so at moderate cost and risk to themselves (Rawls 1999, chapters 2 and 3).