Posted by
Jack Fisher on Friday, July 24, 2009 2:00:33 PM
During the 2008 election, Barack Obama often used fairness as a key theme in his speeches. He spoke about fairness in the distribution of wealth, fairness in society concerning minorities, and fairness in politics. It is a tactic used by many liberals and left-leaning speakers. Their logic is that government and society should stress fairness in favor of a more egalitarian society.
Conversly, John McCain and many conservative-leaning appealed more to a sense of what was right. Morality is and has always been a key to conservative principles. When jugding a situation, it is more important to remember what is right than what is fair. Conservatives more accept the idea that the world isn't fair and using public resources to try and make it fair is not only a waste, but it is counter-productive.
So which is the more proper view? Does working for what is fair create a better society than working for what is right? In an ideal world, the two wouldn't be mutually exclusive. But in the real world, they are two very different concepts. And history is ripe with examples.
Take the communist societies of the past 20th century. Countries such as the Soviet Union, Communist China, and North Korea based much of their ideology on a sense of fairness. They believed in destributing wealth and resources equitably. The idea sounded good on paper, but when put into practice it did not work. Instead, it led to brutal authoritarian regimes where rights and freedoms were severely restricted, all in the name of fairness.
Take a less brutal example. Look at the welfare state that dominates most Western countries. Programs like social security, nationalized health care, and progressive taxation are all done in the name of fairness. They are meant to provide resources for those who do not have as much as others. The same logic applies as it does in communism. Resources are redistributed in the name of fairness. Just how much it succeeds is hard to guage, but the successes of the welfare state are often outweighed by their failures. At times it's difficult measure, but the same problems the communist nations faced still applies.
Welfare reforms like Lyndon Johnson's Great Society or the universial health plans of Europe all have to come from somewhere. They can't be implemented free of charge. So money and resources are drawn away from others to create what is hoped to be something that is fair. But it rarely is. In socialized health care, treatment has to be rationed and quality is lower. There is also a lack of innovation and invention. The same problem is apparent in the public school system, which also tries to grant fairness to all school age children. But the great disparity persists because that's what happens when resources are forcibly distributed by authorities. The quality suffers and progress stagnantes.
The problems with fairness all relate to it being so subjective. What's fair to one person isn't fair to another. A poor black woman's idea of fairness is going to differe greatly from a rich white man. But both would probably agree on what is right in terms of morality. They will most likely agree that killing, stealing, torture, rape, and lying are all wrong. In many cultures across history, this persists. Murder was just as wrong in Ancient Egypt as it is in the United States. Lying and stealing is just as egregious in Ming Dynasty China as it is modern day Germany.
This is because a sense of right is far less subjective. People can disagree on some issues, but by and large they do agree on the baser points. A sense of right has been repeatedly shown by science to be something that is very much engrained in our biology.
Human beings, as social creatures, have strong moral tendancies that make killing, stealing, and lying adversive and when authority is focused on combating these forces people in a society are free to prosper. Throughout history in periods where countries decline, empires fall, and society degrades have all suffered from an inability to enforce what is right. It does not seem to make a difference if they used their resources to enforce what is fair. And societies that place a stronger focus on what is right tend to do better. The American Republic in the early days is one of the best examples because it took authority and limited it to enforcing what was right as dictated by rule of law, not allowing the power to be abused in order to follow the agendas of a king, oligarch, or majority. The wealth may not have been distributed fairly, but it made for a stable and just society.
Liberals will accept such ideas as a good thing, but will argue it is not right for some to have so much and others to have so little. This again confuses what is right with what is fair. One must consider whether or not it is right to forcibly take something from someone and give it to someone else in the name of fairness. It's saying that someone that works to gain their wealth is not allowed to keep it all. Is that a fair statement? What about when it's too much? Where's the threshold? Again, it goes back to subjective interpretations about fairness. What is too much for some is too little for others. The moral argument of fairness breaks down because it requires a level of unfairness in order to propagate. It's utterly self-defeating.
It has been shown time and again that enforcing what is right is more advantageous to enforcing what is fair. Fairness will always come with conditions and be subject culture, geography, and basic personal differences. But a sense of right and wrong is more universal and just, allowing greater freedom to more people. This is the very nature of the free society, enforcing what is right so that the individuals themselves stand on their own two feet and determine their own destiny. Not every destiny will come out fair. But part of freedom is having a chance to set one's self apart from others. It would not be fair to restrict everyone to the same fate.