Distributive Justice is a central topic of how societies are structured. The idea of fairness is important in pretty much every single culture (but with different ideas of what is fair, obviously). Your ideas of fairness likely just line up with what the article supports, but the people who feel angry about it feel exactly how leftists complaining about the 1% feel. A violation of fairness inducing anger is exactly what you would expect, it just seems odd to you because it's not your idea of fairness being violated.
Exactly. Different people have different ideas of fairness. Some people think life is inherently unfair and that luck determines who reaps the rewards and who does not. Other people believe that hard work is paramount and that those who are in poverty have some just reason for being there (just world).
There is no reconciling these positions. Society is a struggle between them, with one side or the other gaining the upper hand at different times.
“Reconciling these positions” is exactly what’s tackled by philosophers concerned with justice and fairness.
It seems you’re suggesting that certain current societal victories (like say Civil Rights) aren’t actually achievements of justice and fairness but merely “one side” and their arbitrary views having the “upper hand” today.
Many philosophers are going to say that’s completely wrong and that we can determine what justice actually is.
Whatever you're describing, it's not philosophy. Philosophy is about questions, not answers. Debates about justice are thousands of years old and there are no answers in sight. The account of Thrasymachus is every bit as relevant today as it ever was.
> Whatever you're describing, it's not philosophy. Philosophy is about questions, not answers.
What are you talking about? I'm sorry but you don't understand basic Philosophy. Plenty of philosophers give answers. You're saying John Rawls dedicated his life to thinking about justice and came up with no 'answers'? Ridiculous.
This has been the case for the entire history of philosophy. Any time a philosophical question received a definitive answer, it became a separate field unto itself. So it was with mathematics, science, and law. Philosophers continue to debate these fields (I’m studying philosophy of mathematics right now) but it has little bearing on actual practice. I happen to be partial to the Wittgensteinian view that philosophy is primarily therapeutic, but I won’t rule out the possibility of philosophers creating new disciplines in the future.
John Rawls had some very nice ideas about justice but by no means did he settle the debate. For one thing, he was a utopian, opposed to property rights. That is unrealistic, unless you’re talking about some hypothetical post-human society.
To create any workable theory of justice, I think you should start with the basic assumption that you’re dealing with human beings who naturally incline towards competition and status-seeking. Envisioning a society without some of the traits of human nature is the epitome of Utopianism. You might be able to engineer these traits out of human beings but then you’re dealing with a post-human world.
Although you're abosolutely correct, there were philosophers who thought that we must go beyond philosophy, seeing philosophy as limited - the big three here are Marx, Nietzche and Freud (considered as a philosopher, anyway) - best put by Marx: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." - unfortunately, from at least of what I've seen, this kind of thinking has run out of steam in contemporary (especially "analytic") philosophy, and it's a shame.
while it's true that opinions diverge, how disparaging people are towards cash redistribution compared to other forms of distributive justice is interesting.
While there are people who hold extreme positions on redistribution, most people in general actually seem supportive of ameliorating the plight of the poor, and I would say broadly do believe that doing good for many at some expense of the few is justified. Many people even will go to great lengths and do charitable work among other things.
However, cash redistribution which is arguably a very effective way to accomplish the same thing still faces huge opposition. Suddenly otherwise charitable people will start talking about 'welfare' in disparaging tone and so on.
Paradoxically you were more likely to find support among people like Milton Friedman ("the thing poor people need the most is money") who was not exactly known for his left-wing views.
there is something different going on with cash redistribution that is separate from general notions of fairness. My guess is that there is still way too much cultural emphasis placed on the notion of work. People would rather have poor people receive a salary for meaningless menial work rather than just flat out receiving cash assistance.
"Incentives are king." That seems to be the paradigm, doesn't it? Government is seen largely as the management of incentives to achieve the desired result. Now, start throwing around money with no strings attached - what incentives are there in that for the recipients.
Of course UBI and helicopter money ruffle feathers. They directly contradict the basic assumptions our political systems are thought to work on.
UBI is efficient because the bureaucratic structure and approach to managing peoples incentives for them is so poorly thought out and inefficient that more of money gets allocated properly if you give it to the recipient directly and basically just hope their incentives align with yours indirectly rather than micromanaging their lives indirectly with conditional benefits to force some appearance of gains in your measured metrics.
