Redistributive Justice

I'll continue my rebuttals. My opponent begins with a syllogism:"P1: An entity cannot own itself. P2: Self-ownership is the idea that humans own themselves. C1: A human cannot be a self-owner. " What my argument said was that the body was the property of its owner; that is, the person. I may say I own my arm, for if I am a free man, no one else owns it. I may say the same for each component of my body - my leg, my voice, etc. No one else controls it unless I am a slave; nor is my arm my being. I own it, I use it, but it is not me. The same may be extended over the body, and we can go all the way to consciousness, at which point, this debate becomes metaphysical in nature (additionally, P1 is not proven, as my opponent would need to prove, but has not in this debate. Attempts to do so now are unfair. Therefore this point stands). The building analogy is likewise faulty; not being sentient, a building is incapable of ownership. Justice My opponent tries to alter his arguments. If we look back at his opening example in R2, my opponent never says anywhere that the circumstances are identical in each situation. This means he has shifted the goalposts on his line of argumentation and refuted my argument as an attack on a position he never indicated existed. Even the example with the factory has a few flaws. Firstly, the situation described is nearly unheard of in reality. Regardless of whether or not people are treated equally, people do not have equal skills, do not work equally hard, and do not produce equal output. Since this situation is logically implausible, it again disconnects my opponent's link between fairness and justice. Second of all, the situation is still not inherently unjust. Both workers agreed to the conditions they have found themselves in; if X signs a contract to be paid $20 and Y signs a contract to be paid $15, then both have agreed to their situations. Furthermore, what is the standard of equal output? A garbageman or construction worker may produce more physical labour than a doctor; yet we do not pay them equally because this would be absurd. Quite simply, fairness and equality are not one and the same. My opponent disingenuously says that I dropped points. My entire R3 rebuttal was to points my opponent raised in R2 because that would have been the only fair way to carry on this debate; otherwise I would have extra rebuttals to respond to. My opponent did not raise Peter Singer in R2 except to produce a quote appealing to his authority (something my opponent says I do to Locke). It is also plain dishonest. Here is what I said regarding Singer:"Additionally, the notion that they are undeserved is, at this point unproven, and it is up to my opponent to prove otherwise. He has not yet done so. Because of this, the second half of his contention also falls apart. Since nothing demonstrates the qualities are undeserved, there is no ground for redress. "As we would now be in the final round, my opponent cannot introduce new arguments to support the notion of why the abilities bestowed by nature are both undeserved and unjust. My arguments have demonstrated why they are not - the right to property. The closet we get to this is this rebuttal: "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. "A newborn is, however, entitled to rights, and being in a state of absolute dependence does not equate to forfeiting those rights. Rebuttal to Contention 1: "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. " I have already addressed self-ownership above. When I think of something, is it not my thought? When I pick up an apple. is it not my hand that does so? Quite simply, all the parts of my body belong to me. As Ingram notes in The Idea of Self-Ownership, "My 'self' encompasses all of my humanity from my physical presence to my thought processes; it is literally everything that is me. Every aspect of me that could be termed my 'self' must relate to a corresponding property right I posses over that aspect of myself" [1]. Moving on, my opponent looks at two points he believes I conceded or dropped. Regarding the first, I had already said this:"As I demonstrated earlier, enforcing a redistribution of resources would itself be an injustice because it violates the right to property. While my opponent and I may agree that the method by which institutions 'deal with these facts' in unjust, my opponent would seek to employ an unjust 'solution. ' It would seem paradoxical to suggest that justice can be achieved through injustice. " This is in fact a rebuttal, and so heralds the second time my opponent has falsely claimed I dropped a point. There is a concession in there - that we can agree that the current method institutions use to deal with inequality is unjust - but this concession is not a point in either of ours favours. The second point is the entire resolution. The notion that I've dropped it is silly, unless none of my arguments relate to the resolution. Rebuttal to Contention 2 "Let us say that Authors G and H. .. 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. "Once again, my opponent makes the presumption that the two people are of equal talent. This is a ridiculous proposition. G may be a better authour and H may be a better actor, yet if H chooses to pursue writing over acting, it is not unjust to reward G every time, since G provides better work. Under the resolution, no matter what field H pursues, regardless of whether or not it plays to H's talents, if H winds up worse off than G, than G has to have resources taken away and given to H. So because H made mistakes in life, G, who is not even aware of H's existence, is responsible for H. This is unjust. My opponent himself even made this distinction in his opening:"treating people in a way that does not favor some over others based on arbitrary or nonexistent traits or differences" My opponent's case has presumed there are no differences between people. We see that with these idealistic notions of equal work - the children in the garden, the singer and the librarian, the two authors, etc. Additionally, in my opponent's world, when someone does do less work, that is the person who was born into better circumstance and is better-off. My opponent ignores what happens when the scenario is flipped. "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. "However, there is no obligation for B to pursue each and every field before him. If B opts for a field where his talent surpasses A's, where is the injustice? If A is better at singing than B, and both enter American Idol, how can it be unjust for A to win and B to lose? The person who sings better deserves the victory; to rob them of it is the injustice here. It would be like if A got a paycheck for winning only to find out all the money went to B because B was poorer. In this case, why do we not reward the person who lost the race in my opponent's earlier example? In response to prejudice, let's see a dictionary. Prejudice - "preconceived judgment or opinion; an adverse opinion or learning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge" [2]. By the definition of prejudice, nature, being non-sentient, is not capable of prejudice. This rebuttal is baseless. Rebuttal to Contention 3 The Tree There would not be a redistribution in the sense we have discussed because, under a contract, you have already purchased protection. You are simply receiving that which you already paid for. This is only 'redistribution' in the sense that me tipping a waiter is 'redistribution,' and that is not what we are looking at. Furthermore, no, I am not morally obligated to help them. The United States, and indeed, Western society, is founded on negative rights; that is, the right to freedom from interference. I may choose to help the hungry, but I am not obligated to, and if I choose not to, then my choice may be called cruel or selfish, but it may not be called unjust. The Two Cities Rephrasing the action doesn't change what is happening; Hampton is being unjustly punished because he was born better off. But if, as my opponent says, the assets dealt by fortune are neither just nor unjust, he cannot then by justly punished because fortune dealt him better assets. The Librarian and the SingerMy opponent again ignores the scenario of good people succeeding and bad people failing. Not once instance in his case allows for this; it presents the story one would see in children's fiction as a reality. My Contention 4 Nowhere did we establish this was a shared BoP. My opponent is advocating a change in the status quo. I am not obligated to provide an alternate solution (though an example of one would be opening/encouraging charity-run/non-profit preschools and schools in lower-income areas. This solution does not entail taking from others, and it helps further people's chances of success). Because, again, the next round is the final round, we have to proceed as though my opponent dropped this entire contention. Thank you for a great debate, bsh1, and I look forward to the finale! [1] . http://orca.cf.ac.uk... (page 17) [2] . http://www.merriam-webster.com...