1. BEJ Lecture Three: Justice and Resources Distribution

2. Social justice 社會公義 WHAT DO YOU THINK OF? WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

4. Overview (1)The concepts of justice and business decisions. (2)Fairness, equality, rights, what people deserve, and some rival principles of distribution. (3)The utilitarian approach to justice in general and economic distribution in particular. (4)The libertarian theory with its emphasis on liberty and free exchange. (5)John Rawls’s contractualist and egalitarian theory.

5. Windshiel d Building

6. Justice as fairness

7. 有關本港接待內地旅客的能力評估

8. Treatment of Employees

9. Are they just? PERMITTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF WINDSHIELD BUILDING PROMOTING A GREAT INFLUX OF TOURISTS FROM MAINLAND CHINA

10. Types of Justice ◦Procedural justice ◦Equality before the law ◦Due process ◦Distributive justice ◦Equal opportunity ◦Desert ◦Outcome based versions (patterned principles) ◦Historical theories ◦Rights theories ◦Compensatory justice ◦Retributive justice

11. (1) Social Justice: A network of moral issues  Economic justice concerns a network of moral issues in our society.  These issues are raised by society’s norms about distribution of wealth, income, status, and power.

12. (2) Mill (1)Treat similar cases alike except where there is some relevant difference. (2)Mill on justice as a moral right: Justice implies something that is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but something that an individual can claim from us as a moral right.

13. (3) Rival principles of distribution (1) Each an equal share. (2) Each according to individual need. (3) Each according to personal effort. (4) Each according to social contribution. (5) Each according to merit, cleverness, or other talents.

14. Justice JUSTICE IS THE FIRST VIRTUE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, AS TRUTH IS TO SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT. A THEORY HOWEVER ELEGANT AND ECONOMICAL MUST BE REJECTED OR REVISED IF IT IS UNTRUE; LIKEWISE LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS NO MATTER HOW EFFICIENT AND WELL- ARRANGED MUST BE REFORMED IF THEY ARE UNJUST. JOHN RAWLS

15. Mill on Justice Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities which are vastly more important, and therefore more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class … ; and which, therefore, ought to be, as well as naturally are, guarded by a sentiment not only different in degree, but also in kind; distinguished from the milder feeling which attaches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure or convenience, at once by the more definite nature of its commands, and by the sterner character of its sanctions.

16. J. S. Mill (1806-1873) Jeremy Bentham Utilitarianism Utilitarians Utilitarian

17. Freedom, equality or happiness? WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT?

18. (A1) The Utilitarian View  Utilitarianism does not tell us which economic system will produce the most happiness.  It takes the promotion of total happiness as the sole criterion of the acceptability of a norm.  If inequality will contribute to a greater total happiness, Mill may not object to it.  But if we consider the long-term value of total happiness, the idea of sustainability may be more relevant.

19. (A2) Utility and the Market System The market system is characterized by ◦ private ownership of resources & rights; ◦ voluntary exchange & liberty; ◦ the profit motive.

20. (A3) Difficulties Justice and rights pose a difficulty for utilitarianism, which would appear to favor any redistribution that increases total utility regardless of how it is accomplished. Thus, it is charged, utilitarianism places no value on equality and makes no allowance for justified unequal treatment.

21. Robert Nozick (1938-2002) Why Freedom may be more important than equality and other values? Nozick’s conception of justice goes to the purpose of the state which is to protect our rights.

22. The Ant and the Grasshopper

23. Libertarianism: Therefore, the state is unjust when it violates our rights. What, then, are our rights? Rights and Freedom

24. (B1) Libertarianism 自由放任主義  The principle of liberty: Libertarians refuse to restrict individual liberty even if doing so would increase overall happiness.  Nozick’s theory of justice: Nozick developed an influential statement of the libertarian position in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, based on the idea of negative and natural rights borrowed from the writings of the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704).

25. (B2) The idea of Lockean negative and natural rights  The idea amounts to (1) non-interference with the way others choose to live or act, and (2) the ownership of those rights prior to any social and political institution.  Nozick’s entitlement theory: Nozick maintains that people are entitled to their holdings (that is, goods, money, and property) as long as they have acquired them fairly.

26. (B3) The Principles of Nozick’s Entitlement Theory (1)A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding. (2)A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding. (3)No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of statements 1 and 2.

27. (B4) The Wilt Chamberlain example  The player of a team is guaranteed $5 from the price of each ticket.  He is a favorite player and eventually ends up with far more than the average income.  Nozick argues that Chamberlain is entitled to his new wealth, and that any other theory of economic justice would inevitably fail to defend his entitlement.

28. (B5) Response to Rawls Justice as historical, not patterned If we move from a just state of the world to another state via voluntary transactions among individuals, then the new state of the world is just as well. –It’s the transactions, not the distribution itself, that are at the root of justice.

29. (B6) Distinctive Libertarian Ideals (1)Liberty: Libertarians support economic laissez faire and oppose any governmental economic activity that interferes with the marketplace, even if the point is to enhance the performance of the economy. (2)Free markets: Libertarians don’t contend that people morally deserve what they get in a free market, but only that they are entitled to it. Moreover, justice does not necessarily help those in need.

30. (B7) The Libertarian View  Property rights: For libertarians, property rights exist prior to any social systems and legislative acts, reflecting one’s initial appropriation of a product or exchange between consenting adults.

31. (B7) The natural and social lotteries –You may not deserve the attributes you have as a result of these lotteries, but you are entitled to them (or stuck with them) because no one else’s entitlements were violated by the processes that distributed the good and bad luck of these lotteries.

32. John Rawls (1921-2002) Contractualism What is justice, how do we arrive at it, and how do we structure our society in a just way?

33. Rawls offers a revolutionary approach that focuses on a procedural approach to answering questions of distributive justice, or how we decide between which inequalities are acceptable and which are unacceptable.

34. (C1) Main Features  John Rawls (1921–2002), one of the most influential contemporary social and political philosophers, suggests a social concept of justice in his ground-breaking work A Theory of Justice.  Two important features of Rawls’s theory: (1)The hypothetical-contract approach. (2)The principles of justice that Rawls derives through it.

35. (C2) The Original Position  Rawls proposes a thought experiment – individuals are allowed to choose the principles of justice that should govern them prior to any existing political or social arrangement.  The nature of the choice: Each individual will choose the set of principles that will be best for him/herself.

36. (C3) The Veil of Ignorance  To avoid disagreement with others while pursuing one’s self-interest, all circumstances and conditions that can influence one’s choice of principles of justice (economic background, talents, privileges, etc.) ought to be removed.  Once the basis for bias is eliminated, the groundwork for a choice of fair principles of justice is established.

37. (C4) Choosing the principles  Regardless of their particular interests, people in the original position will want more, rather than less, of the so-called primary social goods (income and wealth, rights, liberties, opportunities, status, and self-respect).  People in the original position will also choose conservatively, by trying to maximize the minimum that they will receive.

38. (C5) The Two Principles (1)Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties, compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. (2)Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: To be attached to positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and to give the greatest expected benefit to the least advantaged members of society.

39. (C6) Explanation of the principles (1)The first principle takes priority over the second – it guarantees as much liberty to individuals as possible, compatible with others having the same amount of liberty. (2)The first part of the second principle articulates the familiar ideal of equality of opportunity. (3)The second part of the principle – called the difference principle – stipulates that inequalities are justifiable only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society.

40. (C7) Fairness and the basic structure  Rawls rejects utilitarianism because it could permit an unfair distribution of benefits and burdens. Contrary to Nozick, Rawls believes that social justice concerns the basic structure of society, not transactions between individuals.  According to Rawls, justice requires that the social and economic consequences of arbitrarily distributed assets (natural characteristics and talents) be minimized.

41. (C8) The Natural and Social Lotteries “It seems to be one of the fixed points of our considered judgments that no one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society.” ◦Are these features common assets of society? ◦Are the advantages and disadvantages of the outcomes of these lotteries appropriate subjects for social rearrangement?

42. “The two principles seem to be a fair agreement on the basis of which those better endowed, or more fortunate in their social position, neither of which we can be said to deserve, could expect willing cooperation of others when some workable scheme is a necessary condition of the welfare of all.

43. Once we decide to look for a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance as counters in the quest for political and economic advantage, we are led to these principles. They express the result of leaving aside those aspects of the social world that seem arbitrary from a moral point of view.” Rawls

44. (C9) Maximin Rawls’s concern for the least advantaged is due to maximin, which is a rule of rational choice drawn from game theory according to which it is rational to maximize the minimum outcome when choosing between different alternatives.

45. Patterns NowAfter Redistribution A 2, 3, 5, 6 = 162, 2, 2, 2 = 8 B 2, 3, 5, 64, 4, 6, 8 = 22 C 2, 3, 5, 61, 2, 8, 15 = 26 D 2, 3, 5, 62, 3, 5, 10 = 20