When equal can mean unjust

In a liberal society, fairness means that those who end up at the top of the heap are those who, by luck or design, have found out what other people want to buy and have provided it. Unlike the meritocrat, the liberal is quite happy to accept that sometimes, stupid and even lazy people can be successful. Equally, bright and hard-working people will struggle if they are not devoting their talents and effort to meeting other people’s wants.

Provided people come by resources ‘justly’ (e.g. they do not steal them), they are morally entitled to keep them, in which case an egalitarian policy will be highly ‘unethical’ and extremely ‘unjust’ if it tries to use the power of the State to take away what is rightfully theirs.

Is it fair that people who spot opportunities and take risks should be rewarded when their hunches prove correct? Somebody like Rupert Murdoch is rich and powerful because millions of people worldwide want to buy his television programs and newspapers. Is he entitled to his success, or should we try to stop him producing successful newspapers, or take away his profits? Is it fair that Mel Gibson should be so wealthy simply because he has a handsome face that millions of cinema-goers are willing to pay to see, or that sports stars earn millions of dollars by entertaining millions of fans? If you think all this is fair, then you are probably a liberal. If you don’t, you should stop to think why you are so opposed to ordinary people freely choosing to pay money to people who offer a few hours of harmless enjoyment. After all, none of us is compelled to buy Murdoch’s newspapers, or to go to see Gibson’s movies – but we are compelled to pay taxes.

The clash of ethical principles

Looked at in isolation from each other, all three of these principles of fairness might seem reasonable. The problem, however, is that all three contradict each other. We cannot simultaneously reward people according to their talents and efforts (meritocracy), allow them to keep the rewards accruing to them through market exchanges, irrespective of effort (liberalism), and make sure that they all end up with roughly the same (egalitarianism).

Research I conducted in Britain ten years ago found substantial popular support for all three ideals. Nine out of 10 people favoured the meritocratic ideal, but the other two ideals also each received the endorsement of about half the population. I suspect that this is also true in Australia, although just 2 percent of respondents in a 2001 Morgan opinion poll mentioned pursuit of greater equality as one of three key issues deserving of the government’s attention. This put it equal 18^th in the public’s list of priorities. The apparent consensus about giving people ‘a fair go’ may therefore actually disguise deep-seated disagreements over what this entails in practice.

Is redistribution socially necessary?

Egalitarians sometimes seek to justify their radical policies of redistribution by pragmatic rather than ethical arguments. They might accept that it is morally questionable to take money away from people who try to be self-sufficient in order to subsidize those who make little or no effort in this regard, but they still support the forcible redistribution of people’s incomes on the grounds that equality promotes social cohesion.

The problem with this argument is that, although the Australian intellectual establishment repeatedly assumes that equality promotes a cohesive society while inequality fragments it, there is precious little evidence to back it up.

Consider the indicators of social fragmentation like rising crime rates, rates of substance abuse, suicide rates or rates of depression and mental illness. It is certainly the case that many of these indicators have been increasing quite alarmingly over the last thirty or forty years – but there is no evidence that this has been associated with increased inequality of incomes. Indeed, while most of these indicators started worsening markedly in Australia from around the1960s, income inequalities were reducing as a result of higher taxes and a massive expansion in targeted government welfare spending right up until the 1980s.

The international evidence also lends little support to the belief that equality promotes social cohesion. Left intellectuals often point to America as an example of a dangerously fragmented society with high levels of social inequality, but American crime rates (other than homicides) are actually lower than in Australia. Furthermore, during the 1990s, when the Americans dramatically cut back on welfare spending, crime rates in most parts of the United States plummeted while Australia’s continued to rise, yet egalitarian orthodoxy would have predicted quite the reverse effect.

Moral dilemmas

All three definitions of fairness have their problems. The clash between these competing principles represents a real moral dilemma for any thinking person, for none is self-evidently ‘correct’. The problem in Australia, however, is that the egalitarians have tended to monopolize the discussion.

Any society needs to be seen as fair and just by its citizens, otherwise people will become disillusioned, alienated and disaffected. But simply insisting that Australia is committed to fairness and social justice is mere rhetoric unless we understand exactly what this means in practice, and why we prefer one notion of fairness over others. If we are going to debate these issues seriously, let us start by admitting that there are different criteria of ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’, and the earnest pursuit of one will result in the violation of others just as important.