The same choice can express different theories when made for different reasons.
Prime minister / theories of justice
No Good Options
Every policy protects something and makes somebody carry a cost. Govern long enough to reveal which justification you keep returning to.
The Republic of Meridian
Nine decisions. No neutral government.
You have a working majority and an impressively heavy red folder. Begin with an ordinary budget, govern through institutional pressure, then decide how emergency powers and recovery should work.
- Act IOrdinary government
Budget, housing and education.
- Act IIGovernment under pressure
Strike, infrastructure and protest.
- Act IIIEmergency and recovery
Rationing, temporary powers and future citizens.
Every route protects values and accepts costs.
Your cabinet record stays in this browser session.
Decision 1 of 9
Act ILive consequence mapMeridian now
Public trust55
Basic liberty70
Welfare55
Inequality · lower is more equal45
Institutional legitimacy60
Your government's theory of justice
Your philosopher conversation
Your choices leaned toward John Rawls
Your government repeatedly protected fair terms, equal liberty or the position of those worst off. Rawls turns that instinct into a choice of principles made without knowing where you will land.
Useful counter-pressure: A hypothetical fair agreement may overlook how real holdings arose and how actual citizens contest the terms.
Meet John Rawls in the Philosopher Compendium
Your philosopher conversation
Your choices leaned toward Robert Nozick
Your government repeatedly treated legitimate holdings and limits on interference as justice-bearing. Nozick gives that historical, rights-based instinct its sharpest form.
Useful counter-pressure: Real holdings carry histories of exclusion, coercion and inherited advantage that make clean entitlement difficult to establish.
Meet Robert Nozick in the Philosopher Compendium
Your philosopher conversation
Your choices leaned toward Martha Nussbaum
Your policies repeatedly asked what people were genuinely able to do and be, not merely which resources appeared equal on paper. That is the central move of Nussbaum's capability approach.
Useful counter-pressure: A public capability list must justify who selects it and how citizens can revise it without paternalism.
Meet Martha Nussbaum in the Philosopher Compendium
Your philosopher conversation
Your choices leaned toward Jeremy Bentham
Your government repeatedly prioritised total welfare across the affected population. Bentham treats that as a public demand to count every pleasure and pain rather than defer to inherited status.
Useful counter-pressure: A larger total can still be purchased through an unfair burden on a minority.
Meet Jeremy Bentham in the Philosopher Compendiumdecision coverage
policies recorded
Coverage shows how much of the government record you completed. The four fits compare rival explanations of the same policies, so they can overlap.
Four justice lenses
Policy plus reason
The shape of the government
What you protected and what you spent
The price of government
Meridian after nine decisions
One decision away
The counterfactual with the largest effect
Evidence supporting the leading lens
Evidence complicating it
Review the complete Cabinet record
The argument behind the government
Institutions turn principles into force
Government turns principles into force. A tax takes property. A prison removes liberty. A cut withdraws protection. A security law makes suspicion part of ordinary life.
Trust, liberty, welfare, inequality and legitimacy show who paid for your theory of justice. A policy is not redeemed because its average score rose; somebody still carried the burden.
Meridian is fictional so that no real party can absorb the blame. The structure of the choice is the target.