1 OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE AND THE EGALITARIAN ETHOS Paula Casal ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra Acknowledgments: For very helpful comments I thank Simon Caney, Robert van der Veen, Serena Olsaretti, and especially Ian Carter, Francesco Guala and Andrew Williams. My greatest debt is to Jerry Cohen not only for comments on related drafts but for enabling me to write papers at all. Had it not been for his extremely generous, enlightening and encouraging supervision and support, I would not have tried my luck abroad, having been unable to find employment within the endogamic Spanish academy. Few philosophers have been so path-breaking and benignly influential; perhaps none has been so entertaining or so loved. Abstract: G.A. Cohen proposes to eradicate inequality without loss of efficiency or freedom by relying on an egalitarian ethos requiring us to undertake socially useful occupation we would rather not take, and work hard at them, without requesting differential incentive payments. Since the ethos is not legally enforced, Cohen denies it threatens our occupational freedom. Drawing on the work of Joseph Raz, the paper argues that Cohen proposal threatens our occupational autonomy even if it leaves our legal freedom intact. It also proposes a revised ethos which respects occupational autonomy. Dedicatory: With immense gratitude to Jerry Cohen, who gave me my occupational choice. 1. INTRODUCTION. G. A. Cohen’s campaign against inequality-generating incentive payments (Cohen 2000,