Fairness, Morality, and Pursuing an Ideal System of Distributive Justice

Author: White, Ryan P.

Year: 2021

Degree: Other

Advisor: Quartz, Steven R.

Committee Member: None, None

Option: Philosophy

Abstract

[Introduction] In the pursuit of an ideal society, an important factor to consider is what system of distributive justice to establish. Given a group of people and some measure of well-being – for example, wealth, income, or respect – systems of distributive justice attempt to answer the question “Who should get what?”. In this essay, I will argue that the ideal system of distributive justice must be primarily based on libertarianism, with some added amount of socialism; the former represents the most morally justified system, while the latter represents a more fair system. Fairness and morality seem to be at odds, and while both are necessary to some extent in our society, our system of distributive justice must ultimately be morally justified by the people who will live under it. First, I will introduce four classical theories of distributive justice: meritocracy, egalitarianism, socialism, and libertarianism. Then, we will look at each theory individually, considering how one would best go about constructing such a system, and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each. This will allow us to rule out meritocracy and egalitarianism as viable systems, as they are either too vague or reducible to other systems. Next, being left with socialism and libertarianism, we will claim that these two plausible theories are on two sides of a sort of fairness-morality spectrum, and proceed to argue that the two can be consistently mixed. Finally, to decide the ideal libertarianism-socialism mixture, we will consider the emergence of forms of government from the perspective of a citizen, and find that libertarianism is to be preferred, but some socialism is necessary to protect certain fundamental rights.