In Adams' own sentiments, he notes that: "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment. Despite the enormous problems we face and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, it's surprisingly hard to find a coherent vision of what a better, fairer society would look like. So many of the answers to our dilemmas about democracy and inequality can be found in the philosophy of John Rawls. In the UK, legislators do not spend as much time raising money for the next round of elections as they do in the USA, but they are amenable to the blandishments of those who provide them with second jobs or lobbyists who pay well for a friendly word in the right ear.

Overall, Chandler gives a nice overview of Rawls' philosophy in the first part of the book and provides a nice array of examples of how these ideas could be implemented, with real world examples to back these up, but falls short of explaining how to get around clashes between people's different world views, which I feel needs to be addressed.If we are really serious about creating a free and equal society, at least some of the ideas Chandler suggests are necessary. Rawls argued that we would choose a set of basic liberties necessary for flourishing, including freedom of expression and of conscience, and a free choice of occupation. For a pretty austere work of political philosophy, Rawls’s book has been astonishingly widely read; as of a few years ago, it had sold more than 300,000 copies, spawned more than 3,300 articles of commentary and critique and given rise to upwards of a hundred books.

This is a book brimming with hope and possibility - a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. He argues that in a modern society, ‘where citizens hold different views about personal morality and religion, there is no external standard that we can appeal to’. Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them. So why bother arguing Rawls should have favoured a UBI when there are any number of philosophers that actually do?And finally, some policy ideas, especially in the last two chapters, about shared prosperity and workplace democracy are really fascinating and quite radical.