
Only those who benefit from an unfair system stand by its maintenance. I'd venture to guess that even those people believe that the system is fair, and they're not necessarily wrong either. What is fair and how can fairness be objectively determined? The short answer is that it can't. Fairness, like everything else, is subjective.
The two most well known definitions of fairness are equality and equity. Equality means treating everyone the exact same, no matter what. Equity means that individual needs are taken into account as a part of what is determined as fair.
Let's say there are 10 people in a group that have to split $100. Equality means giving everyone $10. Equity might distinguish that half of the group is in a low income bracket while the other half is in a high income bracket. Equitable distribution might be $15 each for those in the low income bracket and $5 for those in the high income bracket.
There are a lot of ways to define equity.
Merit is a definition of fairness that rewards effort and contribution. Effort might be defined as those who work harder should get more. Contribution might be defined as those who contributed or risked more should get more.
Back to the 10 people who have to split $100. Let's say before the group got the money, they all helped serve food at a food kitchen. Let's say two of those people were pretty lazy and were mostly on their phone or on frequent smoke breaks. Effort based fairness would say that the two who didn't work as hard shouldn't get as much. The group could decided to give the 8 people who worked $12 each and those who didn't work as hard $2 each.
To describe contribution based fairness let's assume the group of 10 people all entered a 500 person raffle for a chance at splitting the $100 and each raffle ticket cost $1. If two people spent $10 on the raffle tickets, six people spent $5, and two people spent $1, contribution based fairness would reward those who took more risk. Those who risked the most get the most reward. The two people who bought $10 of raffle tickets may get $15 each, the six who spent $5 on raffle tickets each get $10, and the people who spent $1 on raffle tickets get $5 each. This is most seen in the mentality of investors who put a large sum of money on the line in hopes for a large, but not guaranteed, return.
Next we get into the concept of fairness according to the idea of the greatest good. Who constitutes the greatest good though? The greatest good for rich white men? The greatest good for poor people of color? The greatest good according to sex? The greatest good for the species? The greatest good for the present or for the future? The greatest good as helping the historically disenfranchised or repressed? The greatest economic good?
Back to the 10 people splitting $100. Do the wealthiest get more of the $100 due to trickle down economics? Do those who have experienced prejudice get more and if so, how would the group determine what prejudice merits more money? Do the young get more to help them have a promising future or the old get more so that they can live comfortably in old age? Do the sick get more than the healthy? Do the people who have had less opportunity in life get more in order to balance the ledger? Good luck figuring that distribution out.
But there is more! On what scale is this fair? Is something fair based on individual need? Should fairness include family resources or needs? If you are a starving artist but your dad is a multimillionaire would that impact a persons view on what is fair? Or what about what is fair for those that live in a city vs fair for those who live in rural areas of the state where there are less resources available? What about fairness by state? Is what is fair for Californians also fair for Alaskans? What about the country vs the world? Is it fair that 15 countries control the majority of the world's GDP? Where does one geographically draw the limits who the greatest good applies to?
Is it fair to cheat or intentionally sabotage one's opposition if the opposition could technically do the same? One could argue its fairness of opportunity or social Darwinism. Maybe it would be fair if one of the 10 group members stole the $100 and ran away because any of them could've done the same.
Might as well just light the $100 on fire and/or throw it into the air in frustration.
Fairness really is a tricky subject with no good answer. John Rawls is a famous philosopher for his ideas on how to create a fair society, although the thought experiment isn't really possible to carry out in real life. He suggested an idea called the "original position" which means that a given group of people should all collectively determine a set of rules to live by, starting from scratch. The second idea was that of the "veil of ignorance" which is a thought experiment where no one involved in the original position remembers anything about their personal life until the original position is decided. The veil of ignorance extends to literally everything including age, social class, race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. The idea is that if no one knew absolutely anything about what they could end up as, then people would be a lot more likely to advocate for what is equal because otherwise they might screw themselves over. While this isn't really possible, the philosophy emphasizes the importance of putting oneself in another person's shoes and applying the golden rule. If I were that person, how would I like to be treated? What would they find unequal that I don't see from my perspective and why? Etc.
John Rawls gave a few suggestions for what a society might conclude in the original position. The first is the principle of justice, that all people should have equal rights. The second is equality of opportunity, that all people should be able to have equal opportunity to advance based on merit. His last idea is called the difference principle. The difference principle says that every rule should be made to benefit the poorest people. This would ensure that those at the bottom are always kept in mind and the lowest members standard of living is considered paramount to increasing the comforts of the wealthy. With the veil of ignorance, this would seem the most equitable just in case you were randomly assigned the lowest social class.
Rawls gave some interesting ideas that deserve analysis. His thought experiment, if used consciously, could illuminate a person to inequality and inequity that are experienced by others. Then its down to you to determine what is fair based on what you value, just like all judgments on fairness.
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