Knowledge And Decisions

So-called “income redistribution” schemes substitute status for behavior as the basis for receipt of income: Because of one’s status as an equal citizen of the country, one has a “right” to at least a “decent income,” and perhaps an “equitable share” in the nation’s output or even an “equal share” where this doctrine is carried to its logical conclusion. In short, personal income should not be based on behavioral assessments by users of one’s services but by ascribed status as determined by a given set of political authorities. Implicit in this latter process is a concentration of power, for “distributive justice” as a hoped-for ideal means distributor's justice as a social process.

In an uncontrolled economy it is possible for all individuals to become more prosperous, each acquiring more of his own preferred mixture of goods. But because “justice” is inherently interpersonal, it is not similarly possible for everyone to acquire more justice. More “social justice” necessarily means more of one conception of justice overriding all others. The economic inefficiencies involved in such a process are less important politically for their own sake than from their effect on freedom. An imposed social pattern that leaves many unrealized economic gains to be made from mutually beneficial transactions must devote much political power to preventing these transactions from taking place, and must pay the cost not only economically and in loss of freedom, but in a demoralization of the social fabric as duplicity and/or corruption become ways of life. The demoralizing experience of attempting to prevent mutually preferred transactions in only one commodity — alcoholic beverages under Prohibition — suggests something of the magnitude of the problem involved.

Justice of any sort — criminal justice as well as so-called “social justice” — implies the imposition of a given standard on people with different standards. Ironically, many of those politically most in favor of “social justice” are most critical of the loss of personal freedom under the authority of criminal justice, and most prone to restrict the discretion and power of police and trial judges in order to safeguard or enhance personal freedom. The imposition of criminal justice standards, however, usually involves far more agreement on values — the undesirableness of murder or robbery, for example — than is involved in standards of “social justice,” and should therefore require less loss of freedom in imposing one standard on all. Certainly it would be hard to argue the opposite, in view of the broad similarity of criminal justice across nations and ages, and their disparities as regards the distribution of income and power (“social justice”).

What is in fact being sought and achieved under the banner of “social justice” is a redistribution of decision-making authority. Decision makers acting as surrogates for others in exchange for money or votes are being either replaced or superseded by decision makers responsible largely or solely to the pervasive social vision of their clique. This redistribution is often advocated or justified on the basis of the supposed amorality of the first decision makers, who are depicted as solely interested in money or votes. But insofar as this depiction is correct, such decision makers are only transmitters of the preferences of the public, not originators of their own preferences, and so exercise no real “power,” however much their decisions affect social processes. It is the second — more moral or ideological — set of decision makers who originate and impose standards, i.e., who reduce freedom. Their passionate arguments for particular social results tend to obscure or distract attention from the question of the social processes by which these hoped-for results are to be pursued.