Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Social Justice

Superb video by philosopher Matt Zwolinski on social justice. Social justice is often spoken of in the context of where goods and services are distributed in an economy. But its assumed that a central distributor is at work. As argued by philosophers Robert Nozick and Friedrich von Hayek, this makes no sense in a market economy where billions of people decide every day where their money should go at any particular point in time. If Michael Jorgan gets millions for every game of basketball he plays then this is because there are millions of people that want to put up the price for a ticket to watch him play or watch him on T.V.

Justice presupposes the just state of the agent responsible, but if there is no agent determining wealth distribution then it cannot be labelled just or unjust. Therefore it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about social justice in the way that Socialists and Leftists do. And there is no way to label a free market economy 'unjust'.


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