What is Social Justice?

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

I thought I would pose a wide open question, to a rather complex topic. What is social justice?

Some things to think about are: what determines if an action, plan, or restriction is socially just (e.g. entitlement, market, theory, dialogue, dictator, ethical theory, common good)? How would social justice be enforced (e.g. taxation, voting, laws, courts, police)? How do you protect lower class, or minority populations that lack political, economic, or social capital? What types of government would be best suited for fostering a society that valued social justice?

It is a form of relationship... The question is not what determines it; but who... Justice is a quality, usually a quantity, Yet what ever the circumstances are, justice is not determined in advance, but by the people in light of their needs in relation to the circumstances...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

It is a form of relationship... The question is not what determines it; but who... Justice is a quality, usually a quantity, Yet what ever the circumstances are, justice is not determined in advance, but by the people in light of their needs in relation to the circumstances...

Tyranny of the majority eh Fido?

1 Reply

@BrightNoon,

BrightNoon wrote:

Tyranny of the majority eh Fido?

Sir; if you and I have a dispute over justice, how does that become a public issue... Yet, if there is a wide spread instance of injustice affecting large numbers, how can the government stand in the way of justice... Try to consider what Abalard said: That Ius (Justice) is the Genus, and Lex (Law) is a species of it.... The meaning is simple: that if law is not also justice it is not law... And that is the situation where the minority in this land in its tyranny of democracy denied, that injustice is protected and so encouraged...

If the great numbers are denied justice by a fraction under the protection of law, what is that??? Is tyranny of a minority some how better that tyranny of a majority??? Think for a moment, because I am not saying anything other than full democracy, with consensus... But within that, all relationships should be free to work themself out... That is freedom, but it is unlikely that anyone in such a free society would dare to practice injustice if people were free to deal with them as individuals... We do have to rember that people can make their own deals and settle their own disputes... But Government should stand for justice, as ours does in word, but not in deed.....

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@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

I don't see how this would bring about anything other than a pyramid-within-a-pyramid structure: Individuals within a local community will occupy a small pyramid, while each locality will vary in its gauge. Instead of flattening one big pyramid by ensuring equal opportunities for individuals, each community government would have to do so for each community and somebody (who?) somewhere needs to make sure each community is equal.

You are right that there will still be localize hierarchies, but no one will have the massive power that President, governors, Senators, and Congressmen have. The idea is to limit how much potential power one group can concentrate.

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@BrightNoon,

BrightNoon wrote:

You should run for Handicapper General!

Enabler General, you mean?

(There was a horrible joke where this post used to be. I couldn't live with myself...)

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@Theaetetus,

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

The problem is what I have been saying all along: How can you tell what is fair and what is not?

What is fair is that which is open and accessible to all. What is not fair is that is open and accessible only to a priveliged class.

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

With that said, how far does it go? Parenting provides unequal opportunities, genetics provide unequal opportunities, geographical location provides unequal opportunities, and most problematic, opportunities are valued subjectively. You are posed with an impossible task.

The task is not the levelling of the playing field, it is the determination to do it. (This may contradict what I said before. This is a new thought and I'm running with it now.) Yes, it may be impossible to finish the task of implementing social justice, but any future stage in its development will be preferable to any prior one, at least if social justice is your paradigm. Parenting is a great example, going back to what I said about adult education. Genetics limits what you possible can do, but it needn't limit what you can try. Geographical location can be and is constantly surmounted by geographical relocation.

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

We cannot guarantee equal choices without eliminating choices that are naturally available for some and not for others. If people are excluded from opportunities that they naturally would have had, then they are robbed of their personhood.

No, I would not agree to excluding opportunities and I don't think that follows from anything I've said, though if you can think of an example that would be great. No opportunities (for ends) need be added or subtracted, only opportunities (for means) to exploit those opportunities (for ends) need be added, but not subtracted. There may be opportunities that only some people could possibly succeed in exploiting (you need legs to do the long jump), but the reasons why others can't exploit them cannot possibly be down to incidental factors (having no legs is not an incidental factor).

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

My gross income for a year is $32000. This gets taxed down to around 23-24K. Yet, as of right now, I cannot name one benefit I have derived from the government. I pay for my own health insurance. I pay full market value of my rent. I have never had assistance from the police (rather I have the constant threat of harassment and imprisonment because I enjoy marijuana when I am at home and trying to relax).

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

With that said, it is easy to implement programs designed at trying to "level the playing field", but that says nothing about whether they are fair or not.

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

Because all economic measure is subjective. No objective government agency will ever level the playing field.

Ah, I misunderstood. You mean the implementers of the programs will fail rather than the leveling of the playing field itself being conditionally unjust.

I'm not sure what you mean by your explanation. When you speak of economic measure, are you saying that the economic unfeasibility of such programs will always push them to 'the back burner' or do you mean that government agents cannot determine the economic fairness of a certain initiative? If the former, the principle DEMANDS implementation (uhh... cuz I demand it does). If the latter, like I said, I don't think this is true. I think it will be black and white 99.9% of the time. I've invited people to find a case where the whole damn thing breaks down but no-one has yet.

Mr. Fight the Power wrote:

In no other way are people today molded and domesticated (for lack of a better word) than through mandated and standardized education. All education does is make sure children can step into the role of their parents as they move on.

[/quote]
In your experience, maybe. Actually, I think it's getting worse in my country. My education had some value, even though it wasn't a good school. Now heads of departments are having to justify subjects on the grounds of applicability to some tenuously, or even completely un-, linked career path so that, like you say, the kids'll be rolled out like automatons, ready to make their contribution to the state. But again, this has more to do with factors unrelated to the principles of national curriculum, teaching standards, centralised examination, etc, etc.

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@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

You are right that there will still be localize hierarchies, but no one will have the massive power that President, governors, Senators, and Congressmen have. The idea is to limit how much potential power one group can concentrate.

Sure, I think you're speaking of fairness in a different way. Nobody would have explicit power, but then all those little inequalities we're born with, not to mention the fates, will ensure that the unfairness self-organises. Great, you don't call the alpha-male a president, so long as you don't worry that there can't be an alpha-female. Which, really, is more unfair? Having a position of great power that can, in principle, be attained by anyone or having no such position and have the power be attained by the privileged and the fortunate?

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@Theaetetus,

Merit comes into play in localized communities. It is far easier to do away with a local figure of power than the President for incompetence or bad decision making. Personally, I see social justice with a dimension of merit incorporated into it. There is nothing wrong with privilege and fortune when achieved in a just way. Entitled privilege and merited privilege or two totally different concepts.

1 Reply

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

Merit comes into play in localized communities. It is far easier to do away with a local figure of power than the President for incompetence or bad decision making. Personally, I see social justice with a dimension of merit incorporated into it. There is nothing wrong with privilege and fortune when achieved in a just way. Entitled privilege and merited privilege or two totally different concepts.

I agree with your championing of merit. I disagree agree however that the right kind of merit comes into play in more natural social groups. Natural rulers are not those that have the power to rule but the power to wrestle the position of rule from others: strength. Nietzsche in the Geneology of Morals argued for a natural order wherein the strong, blonde nobility rules over the masses not through merit in governance but through strength and strength alone. Look where that got us. Democracy, I'd say, gives a stronger chance of letting the person of merit take that position since they are elected by a majority. Well, in principle anyway.

Ha ha! I'm not the world's biggest champion of democracy either, and I've long held that smaller, self-ruling social groups were better. I am arguing less against you than myself.

I'm liking my new position though. Smaller groups in a sense neutralise fairness as a concept rather than making the society fair. I am responsible entirely for my own actions within the unpredictable environment I find myself in. I am more free. But I think fairness has little to do with it. Fairness has to be dealt; you can't take it since taking it will always be at someone's expense. Without an external, universal principle of fairness, those for whom 'fairness' (from the taker's standpoint) comes at an expense are then victims rather than enablers.

One of the benefits of a large society is that exceptions to the rule aggregate to become a minority: too many exceptions for the rule to hold. We've seen this over and over. Equality rides on sheer numbers.

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Sir; if you and I have a dispute over justice, how does that become a public issue... Yet, if there is a wide spread instance of injustice affecting large numbers, how can the government stand in the way of justice... Try to consider what Abalard said: That Ius (Justice) is the Genus, and Lex (Law) is a species of it.... The meaning is simple: that if law is not also justice it is not law... And that is the situation where the minority in this land in its tyranny of democracy denied, that injustice is protected and so encouraged...

We have different ideas of justice. To me justice means equality before the law: equal application of the law to all. To you, it appears to mean equality (of opportunity, socio-economic, etc), which requires inequality before the law (some have to pay more tax than others, some receive benefits others do not, some receive legal advantages re employment, education, etc.). How is that, in principle, different from a legal system which openly favors a nobility? I guess its alright because the number of people being oppressed is smaller than the number of oppressors...

Quote:

If the great numbers are denied justice by a fraction under the protection of law, what is that??? Is tyranny of a minority some how better that tyranny of a majority???

If a group of individuals is more successful than another group and everyone has exactly the same legal rights as everyone else, that is freedom. In a free society, no one is uniquely entitled to or prohibited from anything by law, and there are very few prohibitions and entitlements. What a pessimist, you assume there is nothing but tyranny...the alternative is LIMITED government, as was intended by the founders.

Quote:

Think for a moment, because I am not saying anything other than full democracy, with consensus... But within that, all relationships should be free to work themself out...

So then is it just for 51% of the population to enslave the other 49%? Pure democracy is not only the stupidest form of government (leaving government directly to the lowest common denominator generally leaves everyone in worse shape), it is almost certain to lead to some form of authoritarianism. The debate is not between democracy and communism/fascism/socialism/etc; the debate is and alwasy has been between individualism and statism/collectivism. As soon as society, whatever the government of that society, is given the right to every problem, no one is free.

Quote:

That is freedom, but it is unlikely that anyone in such a free society would dare to practice injustice if people were free to deal with them as individuals... We do have to rember that people can make their own deals and settle their own disputes... But Government should stand for justice, as ours does in word, but not in deed.....

Again, that is not freedom. You are advocating societal engineering and a government which does whatever is necessary in order to achieve social equality, or 'equality of opportunity,' which amounts to the same thing. Besides objecting to this in principle, I find it amazing that anyone would put so much trust in any govenrment. All statists, such as yourself, assume that the govenrment has good intentions and is competant. And no, even in pure democracy, there are people doing the work, pushing the papers, signing the laws, who are human and subject to corruption. The goal of libertarians and other people who desire freedom, is to rid themselves of that authority altogether, not bend it towards their own goals (social equality) or hope that it becomes benevolent. The only freedom you are advocating is the freedom to do what is right, as determined by the government, which punishes you if you don't excersize that fantastic 'freedom.'

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@Theaetetus,

BrightNoon wrote:

justice means equality before the law

Wouldn't this require that the laws were just? Otherwise justice would be nothing more than what the lawmakers dictated.

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@Theaetetus,

Yes. The content of the law is another issue, obviously an important one with many subtleties. First, justice needs to be blind. As for that content, to generalize enormously, I would say that the objective of the law should be reciprocity: i.e. 'an eye for an eye.' If x harms y, x is punished and if appropriate, remunerates y (e.g. theft), with punishments fitting crimes on a relative scale. Obviously tht vague..law is a big subject lol. Re economic affairs, I can be more specific; the law's primary objective should be to uphold the right to own private property and enforce contractual obligations. Those are the essentials needed for free economic activity. We could do away with almost everything else. For example, all the SEC and CFTC regulation is absurd; it almost always fails to prevent crimes while burdening those who would have followed the law anyhow. The statutes for fraud are all we need to 'regulate' the markets. As with so many things, the desire for preventative justice rules out both justice and efficiency. (by prev. justice I mean punishing someone for doing something which government percieves could do harm, rather then for actually doing harm: DUI for example).

1 Reply

@Theaetetus,

Theaetetus wrote:

Wouldn't this require that the laws were just? Otherwise justice would be nothing more than what the lawmakers dictated.

You notice we don't really have courts of equity any more... Law is just a form...When they are new, all forms work because they are created to work...As they age, and what makes them age is the willingness of people to turn them toward personal benefit, which robs them of meaning... No meaning equals no relationship which means no form, because they are all air without the trust and the relationship...But you can't stop human nature... People see an advantage and take it...

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@BrightNoon,

BrightNoon wrote:

Yes. The content of the law is another issue, obviously an important one with many subtleties. First, justice needs to be blind. As for that content, to generalize enormously, I would say that the objective of the law should be reciprocity: i.e. 'an eye for an eye.' If x harms y, x is punished and if appropriate, remunerates y (e.g. theft), with punishments fitting crimes on a relative scale. Obviously tht vague..law is a big subject lol. Re economic affairs, I can be more specific; the law's primary objective should be to uphold the right to own private property and enforce contractual obligations. Those are the essentials needed for free economic activity. We could do away with almost everything else. For example, all the SEC and CFTC regulation is absurd; it almost always fails to prevent crimes while burdening those who would have followed the law anyhow. The statutes for fraud are all we need to 'regulate' the markets. As with so many things, the desire for preventative justice rules out both justice and efficiency. (by prev. justice I mean punishing someone for doing something which government percieves could do harm, rather then for actually doing harm: DUI for example).

Blind usually means stupid too...In reality, judges and lawyers all see too well... They are all prejudiced, and all see through the form, and not one of them seems to see when it is not working as intended....What some jurist said of English law is always true, the justice is not the concern of the judge, but to follow established discisions or the law as written... I could perhaps find the quotation...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Of course, individuals affect the application of the law, but assuming that as given (we cannot change human nature), isn't law more likely to be dispensed equally if it is equal by statute, than if it is actually written to favor one group over another? It seems to me that 'social justice' requires inequality before the law and therefore gives the government the authority to determine who follows which version of the law.

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@Theaetetus,

Let me give you an unfamilier example...In the code of Napoleon the law required that in labor disputes that the judge give the employer the benefit of the doubt... Well, that may be good if you are trying to build up the native economy and discourage disputes... But economies should serve all people in a society, and that would demand equity... On the one hand, a greater good is served, perhaps, defense, if the nativie industry is strong... On the other hand, if great numbers feel themselves victimized by injustice there is no reason for them to contribute even to their own defense, since foreign tyrants may be more easily disposed of than native ones... Justice is the best defense of a society, and democracy is a defensive form of social organization, and terrible for offense...Where is the democracy without equality, and where is the justice without some equality... There is a scene from the Illiad where some guy disputes with Agamemnon his taking the best, which led to the great slaughter... Odysius backs him up and trounces the guy; but the guy is right; and what was often seen in ancient societies is the willingness of the great to trade wealth and goods for honor... It was a different sort of economy... Now the richest and most powerful hide behind the same equal rights they do all they can to destroy.. When they get into trouble they all want due process... Did they not set themselves apart??? Did they not take the perks of power??? But they hide behind our pitiful excuse for rights...To me, if you want wealth and power, consider your life an open book and live with honor...

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