What are the (de)merits of each of these notions of justice and fairness?

[ygolo]

What are the (de)merits of each of these notions of justice and fairness?
(1) to each person an equal share,
(2) to each person according to individual need,
(3) to each person according to individual effort,
(4) to each person according to societal contribution, and
(5) to each person according to merit.

What other notions of justice and fairness do you have?

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

What are the (de)merits of each of these notions of justice and fairness?
(1) to each person an equal share,
(2) to each person according to individual need,
(3) to each person according to individual effort,
(4) to each person according to societal contribution, and
(5) to each person according to merit.

What other notions of justice and fairness do you have?

I think you should combine 1 and 3.

1 is a basic level so everyone can survive even if they have medical conditions or just kind of a crap upbringing. It's the stuff that everyone "deserves" which I think needs to be expanded.

Then 3 you can use to get the extras, like a nice apartment with a good view, or anything that might make lofe better but isn't strictly necessary under a reasonable metric that isn't dreamed up by psychopaths.

3 is the only fair way to allocate that stuff. With 4, what is meant by merit? Who cares about test scores if nothing is done with it? On what basis are we deciding that someone deserves more? With 5, again the problem is definition. What do we mean by societal contribution? Maybe the only job you can land is doing something extremely stupid (like say inflating the wavy tube men for car dealerships). I don't think it's fair to automatically exclude someone from the second tier based on that.

I'm thinking ethically here really and not about whether or not this functions. I suppose the number 3 part works out well enough because producing effort tends to result in some kind of economic output.

 

[ygolo]

@Julius_Van_Der_Beak wouldn't your position be closer to a combination of (2) and (3) rather than (1) and (3), or did I misinterpret your position?

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

@Julius_Van_Der_Beak wouldn't your position be closer to a combination of (2) and (3) rather than (1) and (3), or did I misinterpret

Maybe some could interpet it that way. I didn' t intepret equal that literally, so I guess I have a hard time distinguishing 2 and 1.

 

[Coriolis]

3 is the only fair way to allocate that stuff. With 4, what is meant by merit? Who cares about test scores if nothing is done with it? On what basis are we deciding that someone deserves more? With 5, again the problem is definition. What do we mean by societal contribution? Maybe the only job you can land is doing something extremely stupid (like say inflating the wavy tube men for car dealerships). I don't think it's fair to automatically exclude someone from the second tier based on that.

OK - so my lifelong friend with significant physical and mental disabilities gets nothing, because she is unable to attend to even her own daily care? Moreover, how do we measure effort? Do we reward people working harder, not smarter?

I see (2) as the only fair way. We all are different with different needs. A large person needs more food, for instance, than a small person. Someone with poor eyesight needs glasses, while someone with perfect vision does not. Families know this. They give each child what is appropriate to their age and stage of development, at least if they are responsible, caring, and financially secure.

It is worth making the distinction here between needs and wants. If everyone's needs are met, then we can pursue our wants on a more level playing field, directing effort toward what we personally value. If some people must channel all their effort into just staying alive and healthy, they have nothing left to pursue real happiness. That is inherently unfair. Marx was on the right track, or whoever said, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

 

[Maou]

What are the (de)merits of each of these notions of justice and fairness?
(1) to each person an equal share,
(2) to each person according to individual need,
(3) to each person according to individual effort,
(4) to each person according to societal contribution, and
(5) to each person according to merit.

What other notions of justice and fairness do you have?

1) Each person's needs vary.
2) It is easy to lie, and deceive.
3) Easy to fool, and take advantage of.
4) Easy to deceive and lie about this too.
5) I am seeing a trend here.

All of these have nothing to do with fairness and justice. Its a surface level understanding of what you think fairness is, but not what fairness actually is. Neither are truly attainable due to the very nature of humanity, and how things evolve over time.

 

[ygolo]

OK - so my lifelong friend with significant physical and mental disabilities gets nothing, because she is unable to attend to even her own daily care? Moreover, how do we measure effort? Do we reward people working harder, not smarter?

I see (2) as the only fair way. We all are different with different needs. A large person needs more food, for instance, than a small person. Someone with poor eyesight needs glasses, while someone with perfect vision does not. Families know this. They give each child what is appropriate to their age and stage of development, at least if they are responsible, caring, and financially secure.

It is worth making the distinction here between needs and wants. If everyone's needs are met, then we can pursue our wants on a more level playing field, directing effort toward what we personally value. If some people must channel all their effort into just staying alive and healthy, they have nothing left to pursue real happiness. That is inherently unfair. Marx was on the right track, or whoever said, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

I've been thinking about how to measure and quantify need. My intuition is that the economy produces a lot more in quantity than is needed even for our current population and supposed max of around 10 billion in 2100, based on population trends.

However, there's significant miscalculation with both production and consumption of unnecessary, but addictive things.

I'd like to know some good economic measures for these things.

 

[ygolo]

1) Each person's needs vary.
2) It is easy to lie, and deceive.
3) Easy to fool, and take advantage of.
4) Easy to deceive and lie about this too.
5) I am seeing a trend here.

All of these have nothing to do with fairness and justice. Its a surface level understanding of what you think fairness is, but not what fairness actually is. Neither are truly attainable due to the very nature of humanity, and how things evolve over time.

There'll be deception in any system, even the equal share system.

The proposals are common ways people have for thinking about fairness and justice in allocation of benefits and burdens of a system.

Or if you don't like the words fairness and justice, I would just ask how ought benefits and burdens of a system be distributed?

 

[Coriolis]

I've been thinking about how to measure and quantify need. My intuition is that the economy produces a lot more in quantity than is needed even for our current population and supposed max of around 10 billion in 2100, based on population trends.

However, there's significant miscalculation with both production and consumption of unnecessary, but addictive things.

I'd like to know some good economic measures for these things.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a good place to start. On the bottom is our physical needs: food, water, sleep, air, shelter, clothing, the ability to reproduce. Next level is safety needs: personal safety, employment, health, property. They seem related to me, in that, for example, we need adequate food, water, and sleep to be healthy, and we need shelter for personal safety. The third level is love and belonging: friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection.

For economic purposes, I would say what each of us needs includes the first two levels, and extends into the third as far as sense of connection. An economic system can't (or shouldn't at least) provide family, friends, and intimacy as a distributed good, but it can provide a basic sense of belonging, that one is part of a community or society and has rights and responsibilities within it. That is one hallmark of civilization.

Yes, quantifying all of this is a challenge, and unavoidably will include subjective considerations. One yardstick is to ask what is necessary for a person to be able to engage successfully with daily tasks of living: taking care of themselves and where they live, getting to a job and performing their job duties, engaging with civil society, responding to crises like illness, car trouble, family death, etc. We can examine each item from Maslow (e.g. food, shelter, etc.) and approximate what quality and quantity are necessary based on this yardstick, remembering to include the psychological factor.