Our politics seem to be surfeited with fairness issues these days.
Is it fair for state legislatures to be stripping unions of their bargaining rights? Is it fair for public employees to have fringe benefits that other workers do not enjoy? Is it fair to cut programs for the unemployed and the poor while reducing taxes for the wealthy? Is it fair to require everyone to buy health insurance? On the other hand, is it fair to ask the rest of us to pay the health care expenses for those who choose not to buy insurance?
Generations of cynics have claimed that the idea of fairness is nothing more than a cover for our naked self-interests. However, the emerging, multi-disciplinary science of fairness contradicts the cynics. A sense of fairness is in fact an important element of human nature, although there are always “outliers” — the Bernie Madoffs among us.
But this is only a starting point. The reason why there are so many conflicts about fairness is that it is not a formula, or a cookbook recipe. Our sense of fairness is shaped by various cultural influences, as well as the immediate context and, of course, the lure of our own self-interests. Consider how long we tolerated slavery in this country and how many generations it took for women to obtain the right to vote. These days, gay rights is a hot button fairness issue.
At heart, fairness refers to an aspect of our relationships with one another. It means acknowledging and taking into account our many different, often conflicting interests and trying to strike a balance between them. Compromise is an indispensable solvent where fairness issues are concerned. But a compromise may be very hard to achieve when there are two sharply opposed fairness claims. One example is the long-running debate over affirmative action in college admissions. Both sides have based their case on merit, and both sides have a legitimate point.
What could be called the “deep psychology” of fairness also plays a major part in our “social contract” – the implicit understanding that binds together any stable and reasonably harmonious society. In fact, our social contract involves three different categories of fairness – equality, equity (or merit) and reciprocity.
The principle of equality is embedded in our basic human rights, from “equal protection of the laws” to “one man, one vote.” But there is an important substantive side as well. We are all more or less equal in terms of our basic survival needs, and any society that systematically short-changes these needs – when there are islands of great wealth surrounded by oceans of extreme poverty — is putting its social contract at risk. Think of Egypt, Libya and some of the other Middle Eastern oligarchies where revolts have been erupting recently.
Beyond providing for the basic needs of our people – which many surveys and research studies have shown has broad public support – the principle of equity is also vitally important. Aristotle defined it as “proportionate equality” – rewards that are weighted according to what people “deserve” through the use of their talents, their efforts, and their achievements. Capitalism, for example, is often touted as an economic system that, by its very nature, rewards merit, though there are many distortions of the ideal model in practice.
However, equality and equity are insufficient without including reciprocity. Reciprocity puts a counterweight on the scale. It obligates us to pay for the benefits we receive from society. As the great Roman legal scholar Cicero put it, “There is no duty more indispensable than returning a kindness.” Without reciprocity, a society would devolve into a sinkhole of altruism, and exploitation. The taxes we pay and the public service obligations we may undertake are two of the ways we have devised for closing the loop, along with the prices we pay for the goods and services we purchase in the marketplace.
Absolute fairness is an unattainable ideal, but it remains a goal worth striving for. As the distinguished biologist Garrett Hardin pointed out, “The first goal of [social] justice is to create a modus vivendi so that life can go on, not only in the next few minutes, but also indefinitely into the future.” Our innate sense of fairness is only a compass, but it points us in the right direction.