Issues with Using the words Fairness and Unfairness

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Ideas on how to rethink "fairness":

Potential new phrases as replacement for the word "fairness":

- A strong COMMONS - Too much control by too few people

Terra:I think we should rethink using the word fairness, so as to think of the concept of A STRONG "commons" instead, and/or shift society away from "too much to private control of too few people". I don't want to scare people who are afraid of sustainability...because they seem, in my research, to fear people taking their money, property, whatever, in the name of "fairness". Their concept of fair is that if they "work harder" (in their definition), then they own more stuff. Perhaps use teh word facilitating? encouraging fairness in all of its forms? Critics are all over the concept of "periodic wealth redistribution". I think that we should embrace that, and make references to age old texts, like the Old Testament, which encourage humans to redistribute wealth every 50 years. I think I could get the Southern Baptists to go along with that. I have connections to national level disaster relief managers in Christian networks who seem attune to the need for redistribution. It's just a matter of "how" to do it...] [TF: this is to steer away from criticism that redistribution is about "oh, they just wnat to take your money away and give it to people who don't do any work".]

Joanna: Yes to a better word. But Green-Rainboe Party has been using the word "fairness" in the opposite sense. The Better Budget group spoke of an unfair MA budget because of who it benefitted.

BrianC: Have you all heard of the concept that if one arranges agreements so that either outcome position is equally worth accepting, then an agreement is fair? I've heard that even pre-verbal infants and non-human primates have strong allegiances to concepts of fairness, in that they/we will strongly object to divisions of goods they perceive as unfair, and will give up a lot to be fair with others when making choices. This allegiance to fairness is an opportunity for us in (re-)building society. Should we not throw it away until we've something better to negotiate agreement with? I support using fairness in our outreach; fairness is fundamental to us social beings - it's the basis of how we work together. To those who fear working with others because others may talk of fairness, one might ask, how else would we agree to work together? What other concept but fairness should, could guide our coming to agreement on how to work together? We need not only to embrace fairness, but define it, and explain to those who fear it that, for better or worse, there is no better way to forge a social union than to base it on fairness. Isn't fairness the root of civility and siblinghood?

Danny: I agree with 100% with Brian.

Elie: The meaning of 'fair' as with many words that have no objective reference will depend on context. But properly understood I can find no reason to eliminate it from our discourse. It is easier to explain with the less loaded word, 'interesting.' The locution, "X is interesting" is grammatically correct, predicating something about X. But from a logical point of view the sentence is meaningless in that it tell the reader nothing about X. If I tell someone that a movie I saw is 'interesting,' and she has not seen it, she knows nothing more than before I said it. Saying that something is 'interesting' is not similar to saying that something is 'soft.' If the person to whom I am speaking has seen the movie, she might learn something about what I find interesting and in time on further acquaintance would learn something about my attitudes and thus about what interests me.

But using the word 'fair,' is somewhat different. It is used frequently in such a way as to beg the question, rather than to inform. But it is also used in the sense of 'proportionate,' 'reasonable,' 'just,' 'correct' and even 'pleasurable' as an easily understandable predicate. And it is precisely in these ways that Brian is using it.

The fact that it is less a theoretical term than 'justice' need not cause us to abandon it. It can be used carelessly, as a counter in a conflict or a the expression of an attitude. So in the case pointed to by Joanna; the MA budget, unfair because of who benefitted by it, we have to exercise care. Unfairness becomes a complaint and is to easily used to strengthen the authority of the State to determine what is fair. If the State as an institution -- through the actions of its legislature and its bureaucracy is made the arbiter of what is fair -- then we get situations in which public school teachers can complain that the Budget is unfair because it allocated more money to social workers than to teachers. It is this usage to which Terra might be objecting. I am not sure.

But the idea of redistribution to maintain a balance might be taken as an instance of a sense of fairness. The acceptability of the notion of redistribution is but one cultural recognition of the notion that excess is socially damaging. After all the capitalist mode of production is ethically predicated on the notion that accumulations of wealth properly invested are beneficial to everyone, increasing the wealth of the worker who is enabled to produce more goods, not only the possessor of a greater wealth. It will be important in our Electoral Platforms to consider cultural factors at all times. Here the chief use of the principle of redistribution is limited to reversing the current transfer of wealth from the less to the more affluent by the State by: the institution of a state bank, ecologically sound taxation, budgeting, and strengthening the commons.

BrianC: I think I wrote a little too hastily before. I think I see a point in, when feasible, using the concept of commons and commonwealth, before resorting to concepts of fairness, which assume division. That assumption of division might interrupt a sense of togetherness, of being in something jointly, referenced by commons and commonwealth. So now I'm not sure what to think. ;-)