 The difference principle thus expresses a positive ideal, an ideal of social unity. In a society that satisfies the difference principle, citizens know that their economy works to everyone’s benefit, and that those who were lucky enough to be born with greater natural potential are not getting richer at the expense of those who were less fortunate. One might contrast Rawls’s positive ideal to Nozick’s ideal of libertarian freedom, or to meritocratic ideas about economic justice that are dominant within many democracies. “In justice as fairness,” Rawls says, “men agree to share one another’s fate” (TJ, 102).