Defining Predistribution

For the Balkinization Symposium on the Global Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence.Ava Liu There is a problem with the concept of “predistribution”, which is that the idea is ill-defined. At the broadest level, predistribution is defined as what is not tax-and-transfer redistribution. Predistribution is associated with what "can shape the distribution of income and opportunity in a society that are distinct from simply taxing and providing benefits" or that “instead of equalizing unfair market outcomes through tax-and-spend or tax-and-transfer (redistribution), we instead engineer markets to create fairer outcomes from the beginning”. These definitions are helpful, but they are residual. Predistribution is located as what remains outside of tax-and-transfer redistribution. We know that predistribution advocates are concerned about making markets more fair and equal. We know it is about structuring the market—"the means by which primary market distributions of income and wealth…