Redistributive Justice

Thanks to Endark for what is shaping up to be a truly fabulous debate! I will now defend my case.OVERVIEWCon discusses self-ownership at several junctures in this debate. Self-ownership is a flawed concept for several reasons, which I shall now expound on.P1: An entity cannot own itself.P2: Self-ownership is the idea that humans own themselves.C1: A human cannot be a self-owner.P1 is very straightforwardly demonstrated. "Own" means to "possess." [1] "Possess" means "to have." [1] A thing cannot have itself, because "to have" implies that said thing has control something other than itself. For example, the phrases "I have rights," "I have a car," and "I have a pen" all imply one thing possessing another. Thus, to say, "a building has itself" is incoherent. The correct verb is not "has," but "is." P2 is self-evident by Con's own description of the concept. Thus, the conclusion is valid.Therefore, the only way to affirm that humans are self-owners is through Cartesian dualism, which asserts that there is a body and a soul. [2] The soul would thus own the body, making the person a self-owner, as one portion of himself owns the other. This causes a breakdown in the concept of self-ownership.P3: The body is external property.P4: External property operates under certain limits.C2: The body is restricted by certain limits.P3 is true insofar as the soul owns the body, the body is property external to the soul, its owner. P4 is true insofar as both Locke and Nozick, on whom Con relies extensively, assert that all external property is subject to the Lockean Proviso. [2, 3, 4] In this case, the idea that having too many bodies diminishes resources (like food), would certainly apply. Thus, human's self-ownership is not absolute. And, to even access this diminished version of self-ownership, Con must show that a soul exists, which he is unlikely to do.JUSTICECon agrees to the idea that Justice is "giving each their due," but he proceeds to question some of my analysis of that definition. Firstly, in the weeding example, I assumed that Situation A and B were occurring under identical circumstances and that the only difference was that one child was rewarded, the other was not. Con is supposing that each example is occurring under different circumstances, but that is not how hypotheticals like this function.Let me offer a different example that may clarify. Suppose there is a factory where two people, persons X and Y, work. There is no different in their skills or abilities, and they both work equally hard with equal output. Both joined at the same time, work under the same conditions, etc. In other words, these two people could be clones in all aspects save one. Person X is paid 20 dollars a day, whereas Person Y is paid just 15. This is unfair. Why? Because for equal work, workers out to receive equal compensation. If Person X's output is identical to Person Y's, and there is no other relevant distinction betwixt them, how can Person X be due more than Person Y? There is just no logical justification for it. Thus, fairness is involved in justice. We can also extend the dictionary definition of justice that I offered; this affirms the link between justice and fairness.As for the example of the race, where the winner can justifiably be treated differently than the loser, Con misinterprets this to say that my argument must imply that because two people did the same thing (finished the race) both should have the same outcomes. In fact, this is not precisely true. Let's say that we have Contestants P and Q. Contestant P trains harder than Q; they both start off from the same starting position under equal conditions, and P wins. If P and Q were roughly equal in talent, then rewarding them based of the effort they invest to cultivate that talent is not wrong or unjust, merely it impracticable. In a perfect world, P receive benefits that Q would not, since the differences between them are not arbitrary. Thus, there is no contradiction.Con drops that prejudice and favoritism are unjust. Extend this point. PRO's CASEExtend my equality card from Singer, as it was also not addressed.Contention 1Con, for the most part, simply cross-applies arguments from his case to my case. Since I already addressed his case, I can simply cross-apply those rebuttals to defend my contentions.Con discusses here the notion of self-ownership, claiming that because one owns oneself, one, by extension, owns its natural assets. Cross-apply my overview here.Next, Con asserts that natural talents and assets are not undeserved. To talk about "desert" and what someone deserves is to talk about what they have earned or are entitled to. Since a newborn as not earned anything, it is nonsense to talk about desert in that fashion. A newborn is certainly also not entitled to his talents either because his self-ownership is in doubt. Therefore, natural assets are undeserved. Con concedes or fails to rebut all of the following: 1. "'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.""2. "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." Thus, if we agree that some equality/lack of favoritism is necessary for justice (a point I extended earlier), and if the way to provide that equality is to engage in redistribution, then we can affirm the resolution now.Contention 2Con then provides the example of the authors. Let us say that Authors G and H are the authors in question. They both write high-quality work. I am the publisher, and I can only afford to publish one, yet I cannot decide between their works. So, I pull a name out of a hat, and Author G is the one that is published. This is random chance; Author G deserves success no more than Author H, yet G has achieved more greatly. Thus, achievement is not a good criteria for determining desert.Con says that "Just because A is born with a worse singing voice than B does not mean A is inferior in all aspects." I think we can both agree that people are not equal in ability, and it is going to always happen that some people have more ability and talent than others. A might be better at B in many categories, thus improving A's chances of success over B. B is then placed at an unfair disadvantage (holistically), even if he might have one or two talents A does not share. Also consider the problem of competing talents. If B's talent is singing, and A's talent is also singing, if A can sing better than B, A is also likely to succeeded more greatly than B. Con would like to pretend as if all talents even out so that everyone is on a fair playing field--but that is just not the case.Con also adds, "the inequalities nature renders among all people are there for use." Remember that con conceded that favoritism and prejudice were unjust; yet he would have us legitimize the prejudice of nature where some, by virtue of their talents, are favorites in the race to succeed. Is this not antithetical to justice?Contention 3Falling TreeWhether or not it was contractual, it is still a redistribution of resources. Insofar as Con agrees that it would be unjust to abridge the terms of a contract entailing redistribution, he agrees that justice requires redistribution of resources.Con then says: "Under this logic, we would all be financially responsible for one another when undeserved disasters occur." Certainly, this is true to an extent. If people are suffering severely and undeservedly, then their suffering is not just. Is there truly no moral compunction to help them? Surely, sending aid of some sort is a just response. How can one sit in comfort, while others starve--does your right to a TV outweigh a hungry person's right to eat?Tale of Two CitiesCon agrees that this example is both unequal and unfair. In other words, it violates the two criteria on which Justice rests. It is fair to take resources from Hamptons then, not as a punishment because he was born to wealth, but as a means of equalizing the playing field. Hamptons is entitled to an equal chance at success as Juba, not to automatic wealth. Thus, we are not actually being unfair to Hamptons, because we are ensuring that this equality of opportunity is realized.Consider that even Nozick felt that "bequests [are] sometimes passed on for generations to persons unknown to the original earner,..producing continuing inequalities of wealth and position...The resulting inequalities seem unfair." [5] He even argued that redistribution in the form of taxation should be used to combat this kind of inequality. [5] The Librarian and the SingerJust because the example was written to maximize emotion impact does not make it invalid. It was done to emphasize the core message that many good people fail undeservedly, while many bad people succeed due to the combined arbitrariness of nature and luck.Life may not be fair, but that does not mean that we should not do what we can to mitigate some of the worst inequalities. If anything, the startling gaps in welfare between someone in the U.S. and someone in Somalia are gaps that should not exist and which my opponent agrees are unfair. SOURCES1 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...2 - http://www.jacobroundtree.com...3 - http://en.wikipedia.org...4 - "Against Self-Ownership: There Are No Fact-Insensitive Ownership Rights over One's Body" by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Philosophy and Public Affairs [http://www.jstor.org...]5 - http://en.wikipedia.org...Thanks again! Over to Endark...