Is inequality inherently unjust? If so, what can be done to reconcile justice with a world defined by scarcity of resources and the continual creation of unequal relationships? This twiki entry has the goal of providing various perspectives on the question of inequality and its link to justice.

First entry:

This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich.

For the Future: John Rawls on Inequality

-- RonMazor - 03 Feb 2010

First I will argue for why inequality is inherently unjust, investigating hypothetical worlds and then investigating our own world. Then I will suggest the two paths lawyers in the real world can take to minimize the injustice of inequality.

First Part: Arguments for Why Inequality Is Unjust

I would argue that inequality is almost always inherently unjust. Imagine a hypothetical world in which a group of individuals begin on a perfectly equal footing, and in which some individuals, by their own skill, are able to gain a better position relative to the others. One might argue that in this situation, the resulting inequality would not be unjust. I would answer that the inequality is still unjust. It is inherently unjust in that some individuals were endowed - by nothing more than sheer chance - with greater facilities than other individuals. Now let me pose a more audacious hypothetical in which a group of individuals begin not only on a perfectly equal footing in regards to resource distribution, but also on an equal footing in regard to skill distribution. That is, in this new hypothetical, all individuals possess the same resources and the same skills and abilities. Nevertheless, some individuals choose to put in more work, to exercise their abilities to a higher degree, and through this voluntary exertion, they are able to achieve a better position relative to the others in their group. But imagine that, in this world, in order to achieve a better position relative to another individual, one must take something away from another individual. This hypothetical world would then be unjust. Taking something from someone in order to improve oneself, if the taker does not need that something in any way, is unjust.

There is only one possible hypothetical in which inequality is just. Imagine a strange world in which everybody has an equal ability, starts on an equal footing, and in which one can get more things without taking them from others. Then I would argue that if an individual happens to get more things than anyone else, but this individual does not get these things by taking anything from anyone else, but merely by harvesting something from a common pool, then the resulting inequality would not be unjust. If, however, after having hoarded these extra resources, the individual leverages his greater resource share to create further inequality, then this would be unjust.

So except for one extremely unusual hypothetical world which bears no resemblance to reality, inequality is inherently unjust.

Second Part: Our Own World

Now look at our own world. Our own world is nothing like the above hypotheticals. If equality was unjust there, how much more unjust is the inequality found in our own world! The rich are not rich because they work hard but because by chance they happened to be born into a pathway that would channel them into the elite. Likewise, the poor were born in conditions that largely serve to perpetuate poverty. Moreover, even if you think the rich are rich because of merit, there must be a limit to how large a share of the world's resources merit justifies one in having. Surely, even assuming great disparities in merit, there is no way to justify a situation in which 1% of the world's population owns such a vastly disproportionate share of its resources.

Third Part: Implications

But inequality cannot be eliminated. It is entirely unfeasible. There are two things for a lawyer to focus on then:

1) Preventing individuals from leveraging their superior position to inflict harm on those in inferior positions. This can be done through the judiciary.

2) Imposing legal barriers that prevent an individual from gaining too much power and resources. This would need to be done primarily through the legislature. For example, I think it would be a good idea to impose a 100% tax on all personal incomes greater than $2 million. Nobody needs more than $2 million a year, and one would need no more incentive beyond $2 million a year to do any job currently done in society. For example, cutting executive salaries to $2 million per year would not result in a dearth of quality executives.

-- ChristopherCrismanCox - 03 Feb 2010

• Chris, I enjoyed reading your thoughts. Two quick points. 1. My distillation of your hypotheticals: The only world in which there would be no injustice due to inequality is in world of infinite resources. If a resource is finite, then any hoarding of the resource will result in less of that resource being available to others. If this is an accurate description of your point, it could be made clearer in your writing. 2. "Taking something from someone in order to improve oneself, if the taker does not need that something in any way, is unjust. " This sentence seems logically inconsistent. The taker is taking something to improve himself. Therefore, he needs it in some way. Do you mean that the person is taking it out of greed alone rather than to "improve" oneself.

-- JohnAlbanese - 04 Feb 2010

Yes, but why is inequality inherently unjust? The hypotheticals are nice, but they just don't correspond to the real world. The fact is, people are born in different positions to succeed (both skill set and resource wise). Thus, I don't think this form of inequality is unjust. It just is. I'm going to amend this thought because I don't think its complete. But, suffice to say, I don't think we can use just/unjust to evaluate something that has no alternatives. Hypos are nice, but they aren't hypos grounded in any reality and they never will be. This, the real world, is all there is. It can't be "unjust" because if it is, there is no "just" alternative.

Now, what we as a society choose to do from this inherently unequal position is I think where an assessment of justice comes in. Being rich is not inherently unjust (from any initial position). Having social policies which funnel more wealth to the rich (those who need it least) from the poor (those who need it most) is unjust. Or more accurately, this is more unjust than many other alternative arrangements.

edit 1:

"I think it would be a good idea to impose a 100% tax on all personal incomes greater than $2 million."

I think this would be a terrible idea. Forget the fact that it deincentivizes anyone to make more than 2 million dollars a year (of course, if we fix inflation then perhaps this seems more reasonable, however, I'd contend that there are people who create value in excess of 2 million dollars). But now, you'll have high earners moving to other countries and finding more ways to skirt the tax code. Instead of getting whatever tax revenue we were going to get in the first place, now we get bupkis.

Of course, this happens right now so maybe it isn't such a bad idea...

This conversation is not addressing the issue, any more than a discussion about why it is or is not important to achieve justice in individual cases if injustice as a whole can never be eliminated. Both are as silly as a discussion about the ethics of tax policy that takes up no question more difficult than whether confiscatory taxation is a good idea. You can't demonstrate commitment to having a discussion by trivializing it.