Economics professor David Rose recently published an essay arguing that the very notion of “social justice” is both misguided and dangerous. Misguided because it sees inequality as prima facie evidence of injustice due to a misunderstanding of how a free market economy really operates. But also dangerous because social justice advocates attempts to solve moral problems that don’t really exist and thereby reduce society’s ability to solve moral problems that really do such as poverty.
Rose’s piece is a brief but clear exposition of how the social justice industry goes logically astray. But in the process it also provides some insight into how people go logically astray in thinking about justice of the Divine sort when they encounter situations of tzaddik v’ra lo and rasha v’tov lo — seemingly incommensurate levels of reward and punishment.
The problem with social justice theory which advocates governmental redistribution of wealth to produce a more just outcome across society writes Rose is that it
implicitly focuses on the equal division of output without accounting for input. Suppose that Bob works 10 hours a day every day creating 100 units of output. Mark does nothing and thereby creates no units of output. Mark then insists that he should get no less than 50 units of output per day. Even a child knows this would be patently unfair. And even a child knows that Bob won’t indulge Mark for long.
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