Justice

An idea (giving each their due), an ideal (a perfect standard we aim at), and a process (a fair procedure we follow).

There's no real standard — the strong make laws that suit them and call them 'just', so justice is the will of the stronger.

We can call the powerful UNjust, so justice must be a real standard above any ruler's wishes.

A harmony — each part doing its proper job in a soul and a society — discovered, not invented by the powerful.

Saying the strong only 'pretend' to be just already uses a real idea of justice — so justice must be more than power.

People arguing about justice often mean different faces, so they talk past each other; naming the face is the first step.

Thrasymachus: invented by power. Plato: discovered, like a real standard the powerful can fail to meet.

If justice is only power, every fairness question collapses — so we settle it's a real standard before asking how to be just.

How a society fairly shares out goods, wealth and opportunities — how the good things of life are divided.

Designing society's rules without knowing your own place in it, so you'd choose rules that protect everyone, especially the worst-off.

The person who cuts the cake takes the last slice, so they cut it evenly — the veil applied to a whole society.

Facing your whole life with no do-over and not knowing your place, you'd guard the floor in case the bottom turns out to be you.

In a market no one distributes incomes, so outcomes can be unlucky but not unjust — 'social justice' has no clear content.

Market outcomes emerge from millions of choices like weather from many winds — unlucky, but with no author to be 'unjust'.

On whether justice needs an agent: Hayek says only a person's acts can be unjust; Rawls says we choose the rules, so their outcomes are ours.

Design society for the worst-off (Rawls) vs let outcomes emerge because no one distributes (Hayek).

Retribution (they deserve it), deterrence (put others off), and rehabilitation (change the offender).

Retribution looks backward (at the crime); deterrence and rehabilitation look forward (at society and at the person).

Punish because the person is guilty and deserves it — never merely to be useful, or you treat them as a tool.

It uses the punished person as a mere tool for society's benefit, which wrongs their dignity as a rational agent.

Pain is bad in itself, so punishment is justified only by the future good it brings — deterrence and reform.

Pure usefulness could justify punishing an innocent person if it scared enough people — a monstrous result, so usefulness alone fails.

Pure desert can demand punishment even when it helps no one — suffering for its own sake, which looks like cruelty.

Punish only the guilty (Kant's limit, so no framing) but shape it to do some good — avoiding both cruelty and sacrificing the innocent.

Free choices produce unequal results, and forcing equality overrides free choices — so justice has to balance the two.

More freedom often means less equality, and enforced equality often means less freedom; justice tries to fit them together.

From an equal start, a million fans freely pay one great player, who gets rich — so keeping equality means banning free choices or seizing money.

To hold an equal pattern in place you must constantly interfere with free choices — he likens taxing earnings to forced labour.

Nozick bites against equality of OUTCOME; aim at equality of OPPORTUNITY and standing and much of the clash dissolves.

Fair schools, fair laws and a basic floor make people's choices real — someone with no options isn't truly free.

Not freedom OR equality, but enough equality — fair chances and equal standing — to make everyone's freedom real.

Mostly no — it needs constant interference and few really want it; the sensible aim is equal chances and standing.