Redistributive Justice

JUSTICE My opponent presents the Aristotelian definition of justice. I can accept this definition – that justice is giving each his or her due. However, there is no mandate in justice that these dues be equal, neither does 'fairness' equate to 'eqaul'. In my case, I shall demonstrate how the redistribution of resources is an injustice, that the concepts of equality and justice are not synonymous, and that equality itself may even be an injustice. Quite simply, the debate does not merely revolve around the morally abstract notion of equality but that the redistribution of resources is necessary for justice. It is this point primarily I plan to attack. Contention 1: People Have An Unalienable Right To Property. The right to property can be called the foundation of Western civilization. John Locke’s theory of government went into the formation of the United States and continues to exist today as a shining beacon for the free world. In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke wrote that: “every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his” (5:27) [1]. Even today, many people would acknowledge that the primary function of government is to protect the rights of its citizens. Everyone knows the famous rights Locke wrote about: life, liberty, and property. Government was structured to protect those rights. In The Metaphysics of Morals, philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that the basis of government had to be freedom. “There is only one innate right…freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law” (6:237) [2]. The protection of property is critical for implementing the right to freedom. Kant defines property as everything “with which I am so connected that another’s use of it without my consent would wrong me” (6:245). This does not just apply to objects physically in use – according to Kant, if person A takes an apple from person B’s hand, it is just as wrong as taking an apple from B’s tree. Likewise, it would be just as wrong for arbitrator C to come in, take B’s apple, and hand it to A, unless B had sold the apple or had wronged A in a manner where the transferring of the ownership of the apple proved a just punishment. In order to have the right to freedom, people must necessarily possess the right to use their property for their freely chosen choices. If they are controlled in how they may utilise their possessions, they can hardly be called free. No matter how we look at redistribution, it requires the re-allotment of resources, whether already distributed or having the potential to be so. Without consent, this redistribution entails a violation of the right to property. Contention Two: Absolute Equality Is Injustice. The furthest logical extension of a redistribution of resources is an equality of outcome. This is something very few people outside of the communist label will dispute. Once everyone has an equal share of resources, one may look back and say, this is justice. But few would call the world envisioned in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” just. “[All people] were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else" [3]. In this world, equality reigned as an absolute king. Everyone had the equal opportunity to do everything because everyone was equal. Those who were smarter had alarms embedded in their ears that went off periodically to distract their thought process; those who were faster or stronger wore weights; etc, etc. People with any natural advantage, whether it pertained to their own bodies or not, had it forcefully stripped away in violation of their rights to liberty and property. This was a world of equality, but it was not a world of justice. In fact, the level of equality seen was an injustice. We may therefore say that equality and justice do not always go hand-in-hand. Subpoint A: Equal Opportunity Is Not A Right. People have a right to property, but that property should not be taken and redistributed in order to provide others with equality of opportunity. Robert Nozick notes in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, that life is not a race. Instead, life is a series of individual exchanges. The people partaking therein do not care about desert or handicaps but simply personal benefit. “No centralized process judges people’s use of the opportunities they had; that is not what the process of social cooperation and exchange are for” (236). Nature inherently makes people unequal. Attempting to forcibly remove these inequalities is itself an injustice. People may receive equal treatment, but the uncomfortable fact of the world is that people are not equal. A person may receive what they use their natural faculties to obtain. Nozick supports this as well. “Whether or not people’s natural assets are arbitrary from a moral point of view, they are entitled to them, and to what flows from them” (226). It cannot be called unjust for a man to use his natural wit to raise a fortune while another man, born with less faculty, works for a modest salary and more than it can be called unjust for a woman born naturally fast to defeat a man born crippled. Their strengths and weaknesses lie in different fields, and attempting to use justice and redistribution to equalize that which was not meant to be equal can only result in harm. Subpoint B: The Necessary End Of Redistrubtion Is Equality. As long as the playing field is slanted, claims can be made that it shows favoritism and is unfair. To that end, any amount of redistributing resources short of equality does not solve the issue nor affirm the resolution. A partial redistribution is insufficent to accomplish the end of a just, flat playing field. Contention 3: The Redistribution of Resources Violates The Individual’s Right to Property. Now that we have established that people have a right to property and that justice need not entail equality, we can move on to the resolution at hand: that justice requires the redistribution of resources. To take one’s property from them without their consent is theft. Theft is an injustice for exactly that reason – it violates the right to property. If A has $100,000 and B has $40,000, taking $30,000 from A and giving it to B would be an example of imposing absolute equality, as both would then have $70,000. However, while B might be happier, A would have suffered a great injustice. A’s right to property has been violated; his liberty to use his possessions as he sees fit has been stolen. B has also suffered an injustice, even if B is unaware of it. B is not entitled to A’s money, nor does B have a right to A’s money. B has gained A’s money through no virtue of his own but through circumstances beyond his control. That A has more money than B makes them unequal in this sense, but it does not make an injustice. Making them have an equal amount, however, is an injustice. This example can easily be expanded. Many look at the wealth inequality gap in the United States and discuss how it might be equalized. But just because there is a large gap does not mean there is an injustice. The question lies with the present patterns of distribution. No matter how large or unequal the gap, if it accorded with the laws of acquisition, exchange, and trade, it is just. ‘Money’ here stood in for resources, but the analogy holds with any resource. To redistribute the resource is an injustice to both those who are redistributed from and those who are redistributed to. Since the end result is not just, and the process itself is not just, the entire concept cannot be called justice, and injustice cannot be committed in the name of justice. Contention 4: The Redistribution of Resources Is A Reactionary 'Solution'. The gifts bestowed on humankind, whether by God, nature, fortune, society, or the individual's own merit, are there for use. It cannot be called an injustice that an American is born into a Christian family in the United States while a Saudi woman is born in Saudi Arabia. The regime of one or the other (or both) may be called unjust, as may various circumstances that may or may not face each, but the fact of their births itself is not unjust. If we redistributed the resources one had to equalize them, what would be the result? A redistribution of resources in order to equalize the playing field, to steal from the rich in order to benefit the poor, is an ongoing process. It is not a method of empowering the disenfranchised; it is a method of enslaving them. It sees a problem and employs a continuous violation of the right to property in order to try and rectify it. In order to maintain a level playing field, the redistribution cannot cease, for the moment it does, the unequal distribution will return. Justice can be worked toward without the redistribution of resources, which is, in itself, unjustTherefore, all we have done is create a self-perpetuating cycle. A better, more just solution would be to enable the less fortunate to assist themselves with violating the rights of others. I should stipulate that I am not obligated to provide and detail an alternative solution. Once again, I thank bsh1 for this challenging debate, and I look forward to the next round! [1] Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. The full text can be found here: . http://www.constitution.org... [2] Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. [3] Vonnegut, Kurt. "Harrison Bergeron. " The full text can be found here: . http://www.tnellen.com... [4] Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia.