[Music]
a lot of people think that we should do
more for the poor as a matter of social
justice sometimes they mean that we
should do more as individuals giving
more of our own money or our own time to
help those in need but often what they
mean is that we should do more
politically that our government should
enact policies that try to help the poor
by providing them with various tax
funded benefits or other means many
classical liberals and libertarians on
the other hand reject the idea of social
justice some reject it because they
think it's practically unrealizable
because they think it violates
individual rights but in this video I'm
going to focus on a different
libertarian pratik of social justice one
that holds that the idea is not merely a
moral or impractical but conceptually
confused on this view which has been
defended by libertarian luminaries like
Robert Nozick and Friedrich Hayek asking
whether the distribution of wealth in a
society is in accordance with social
justice is like asking whether the color
blue is heavy or whether a stone is
moral it simply doesn't make sense
before we can get to the argument let's
get a little clearer on exactly what the
term social justice means typically the
term is used to refer to a moral
assessment of the way in which wealth
jobs opportunities and other goods are
distributed among the different persons
or social classes within a society
people who believe in social justice
think there is some moral standard that
ought to govern such distributions and
that societies that fail to meet that
standard are subject to criticism and
should be reformed so for example
someone who held that wealth ought to be
distributed in a perfectly egalitarian
way so that no one had any more or less
than anyone else would be affirming one
kind of theory of social justice but
there are other kinds as well some we
could hold it is not wealth but
opportunities that ought to be
distributed equally or someone should
hold that wealth and opportunities need
not be distributed equally but only in a
way that guarantees that no one falls
below a certain minimum threshold level
social justice on this view is something
that stands above and apart from the
justice of individual exchanges in
behavior in other words social justice
could be violated if someone becomes
poor because of their own bad choices or
bad luck even though no particular
person has done anything at all unjust
so why might someone think social
justice matter
suppose I treated my three children very
very differently I might give one an
allowance of $50 a week in the biggest
bedroom in the house the other two might
receive only $20 each can be cramped
together in the same small room unless
I've got some very good reason for doing
this it's hard to imagine what such a
reason could be most of us would
probably say that what I'm doing is
quite unfair even unjust the question is
could we say the same thing about
society as a whole is it unjust as some
people have gold-plated faucets while
others cannot even afford a modest
apartment that some work long hours and
dangerous difficult conditions while
others can afford not to work at all are
the great inequalities of income and
wealth we find in societies like the
u.s. a violation of social justice and
if so should government do something
about it like tax the rich more in order
to give the proceeds to the poor those
who can hire think that the answer to
both these questions is no to see why
think about one important difference
between a family and a large-scale
society what makes the family situation
unjust is that stuff is being divided up
by a central distributor in a morally
arbitrary way now the way things are
distributed in society as a whole might
look equally arbitrary it's hard to
imagine why Derek Jeter deserves so much
more than a manual labor in a strawberry
field just because he's good at playing
baseball but in society unlike in the
family there is no central distributor
Jeter's income my employment
opportunities the labor conditions of
the strawberry worker all of these are
determined by the innumerable decisions
of countless individuals there's no
single person or group
persons responsible for distributing
wealth in a free society and so we can't
accuse any such person of distributing
justly or unjustly all of us are the
distributor's we each contribute in a
very small way to the overall
distribution of wealth with every
decision we make whether to buy from
this grocer or that whether to major in
business or psychology whether to move
to California or Nebraska none of those
decisions are themselves unjust so if
decisions like that or what give rise to
the overall distribution of wealth and
society then how can that distribution
be unjust
what advocates of social justice seem
not to appreciate is the important way
in which society is a spontaneous order
the product of human action but not of
human design justice and injustice are
concepts that apply to human agency this
is why we think that a mugging is unjust
what a devastating hurricane is none if
there's no agent responsible for the
distribution of wealth in society then
how can that distribution be just or
unjust for libertarians and classical
liberals like Hayek the only meaningful
concept of social justice will be one
that focuses on the legal and economic
rules of a society most libertarians
don't believe that that kind of focus is
compatible with the way in which those
on the political left interpret the idea
of social justice but I think they might
be wrong and in my next video I'll
explain why