The previous chapter offered an account of the relative intrinsic value of the basic minimum. This is the first stage of my solution to the problem of weight. We must now proceed to the second stage: how, if at all, does the comparative goodness of the basic minimum influence the comparative moral importance of the basic minimum? My proposal is simple: the comparative moral importance of the basic minimum just is the comparative intrinsic value of the basic minimum. In other words, the morality of basic minimum-promotion is teleological: we should promote the basic minimum only when it is best to do so. Put together with the axiology I defend in Chapter 4, this approach offers an account that approaches an overriding view without the excesses on display in Tsunami and Severe Disability.

Against this view is set a supposition made by many political theorists that the basic minimum is the object of a moral right, which itself implies a stronger reason to promote the basic minimum than would my approach. Most of this chapter responds to this popular, though I believe mistaken, view. Though a rights-based approach is not the only alternative to a teleological view, the problems for rights-based approaches should be widely worrisome.

This chapter is organized as follows. In §5.1 I present, and offer some brief considerations in favor of, a teleological approach to the basic minimum. However, in defending teleological approaches to any domain, most of the action is in the rejection of competitors, the most important of which I introduce in §5.2: that the basic minimum should be the object of a right.