Redistributive Justice

Thanks to Endark for this long-awaited debate. I now will talk a little about "justice" itself, and then present my case.JUSTICEWhat is "justice?" According to Aristotle, justice is giving each their due; this is, perhaps, the most straightforward understanding of justice we can look to in trying to understand the concept. When seen in action, the idea of "giving each their due" is both an intuitively accurate description of justice, as well as a description that hits upon important theme underpinning more philosophical or formal, dictionary definitions thereof. For example, in Situation A a child has spent the whole day weeding the garden and is rewarded by her parents with the evening off. In Situation B a child has spent the whole day weeding the garden but receives no reward from her parents. Situation A is just and Situation B is unjust.The significant difference between Situation A and Situation B is the lack of fairness. In the former, 1 act was exchanged for another. In the latter, one act was demanded for nothing in return--it is, in a sense, slavery. In everyday life we take this type of fairness for granted; for instance, when we go to work, we require that we receive wages in exchange for our work, and we would regard anything less as not only illegal, but as unfair and unjust. We are DUE our wages, just as the child was DUE her reward, and so it would be wrong to deprive us of these things. This leads me to underscore the following: fairness and justice are inextricably linked. When we discuss what is fair, we are also to some extent discussing what is just, and what is fundamentally unfair is unjust. So, what if we were to put these two key terms (Justice and Fairness) into dictionary definitions? See here [1]: Justice - "the quality of being just, impartial, or fair"Fairness - "treating people in a way that does not favor some over others" I would just add one simple qualifier regarding fairness. It is okay to treat the winner of a race differently than the loser insofar as we give one a prize and the other earns nothing; yet, it would be unfair to treat the children who weed the garden differently because they have done the exact same thing, and so should get the reward. Therefore, I would amend the dictionary definition to reflect this subtlety, and rephrase it thus: "treating people in a way that does not favor some over others based on arbitrary or nonexistent traits or differences." This can probably be put more succinctly as freedom from "prejudice or favoritism." [1]This implies that we must treat people equally and we must value them equally. This does not imply absolute equality, but it does underscore that the principle of equality is still important to justice. [2] We cannot, as it were, pick favorites or given unearned advantages to individuals. Thus, I submit that justice rests on the plinths of fairness and equality, and that if redistributing resources in some cases in necessary to meet these two criteria, then justice will require it.PRO's CASEMy core claim today is similar to the following: “The claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact. Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat humans." [3] I will be arguing that it is unjust and unfair to permit the existence of arbitrary advantages that empower some relative to others as this constitutes a form of partiality. Justice requires that we attempt to rectify this imbalance via redistribution.Contention One: Inequalities are undeserved, arbitrary, and demand redress. "We may observe that the difference principle gives some weight to the considerations singled out by the principle of redress. This is the principle that undeserved inequalities call for redress; and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow compensated for. Thus the principle holds that in order to treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favorable social positions. The idea is to redress the bias of contingencies in the direction of equality...the absence of individual dessert creates a presumption in favor of regarding the distribution of talents as a common asset. The lack of desert or a pre-institutional concept of virtue means that institutions are unconstrained by antecedent moral claims in their pursuit of the primary virtue of social justice. In this sense, the analogy of manna from even is apt. The array of assets dealt by fortune is neither just nor unjust. ‘These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.’ There is no reason to let assets and the benefits that flow from them lie where they fall. This would be simply to incorporate and affirm the arbitrariness of nature." [4]Contention Two: Rewarding according to desert is difficult and often unfair."The distributive shares that result do not correlate with moral worth, since the initial endowment of natural assets and the contingencies of their growth and nurture in early life are arbitrary from a moral point of view. The precept which seems intuitively to come closest to rewarding moral dessert is that of distribution according to effort. Once again, however, it seems clear that the effort a person is willing to make is influenced by his natural abilities and skills and the alternatives open to him. The better endowed are more likely, other things equal, to" achieve more greatly. They have resources and natural talents that others lack, and can use them to garner an unfair advantage over others. People are, in fact, not born equally talented, and so it is wrong to exclude those who are less skilled simply because of the happenstance of birth. "The idea of rewarding dessert is impracticable. And certainly to the extent that the precept of need is emphasized, moral worth is ignored. Nor does the basic structure tend to balance the precepts of justice so as to achieve the requisite correspondence behind the scenes. It is regulated by the two principles of justice which define other aims entirely." [4]Contention Three: Examples.Now that some theoretical arguments have been made, I would like us to consider some examples roots in those arguments.Ex.1 - Falling TreesMy house was hit several years ago by a tree which collapsed during a hurricane. It was on public land and healthy, so we could not remove it, nor did we (or anyone else) see a need to remove it. Yet, the damaged cause by its fall cost us hundred of dollars. Our insurance company deemed it to be an "act of God;" in other words, an occurrence that was random and not anyone's fault. This arbitrary event left us disadvantaged in the sense that we were now deprived of a livable home. Is it not just of us to demand compensation for this misfortune, if the disaster truly was undeserved?Ex. 2 - Tale of Two CitiesTwo children are born: one in Juba, South Sudan, the other in the Hamptons, USA. Juba is a hard worker--persevering through famine and civil war to provide meager sustenance for his impoverished family. Hamptons is an entitled jerk who enjoys fast cars, sleazy women, and all the luxuries money can buy, without putting in a single ounce of effort to earn that money. By virtue of where he was born, and who he was born to, Hamptons is far better off than Juba. That is unfair and unequal; that simply because Juba is born to a poorer family in a still poorer country , he is relegated a worse life, despite the fact that he worked much harder in comparison. You cannot help where you are born or who you parents are--it is unjust that such random luck should become a determining factor in how successful you are in life. As with the child weeding the garden, we have one option that gives someone too much and we have another option that gives someone too little. A balancing act is required via redistribution.Ex. 3 - Sheer, Dumb LuckTwo girls are born: one is a fabulous singer, the other has no special talents. The first flunks out of high school, becomes a druggie, and has a personality that can rival the Grinch before his heart grew 10 sizes. The second passes high school after much hard work and receives a degree in library sciences. The first then goes on to win American Idol, become a millionaire, have men dying to be with her, and is a public icon, while still retaining all of the odious elements of her personality that she had before. The second stays a librarian, is always struggling to make rent, and dies indebted and alone in a dusty archive somewhere in Nome, Alaska. Sheer dumb luck made one girl rich and the other poor--one was just born with good vocal chords. She didn't earn them, they just existed. And, because she didn't earn them, they weren't her due, nor were the profits of her luckiness her due. The second girl worked hard to earn her way through life, and so it seems unfair that she should not succeed, while the first girl did.All three of these examples focus on arbitrariness, undeserved disadvantages or harms, and the ideas of fairness and equal treatment. They provide concrete exemplars of the theory behind justice and redistribution.SOURCES1 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...2 - http://www.scribd.com...3 - http://cnatkaniec.wordpress.com...4 - https://is.cuni.cz...