Life Isn't Fair
It seems to me a general theme of liberal policy is focused on fairness, or balancing perceived inequalities. The arguments tend to be rather infantile: Everyone should get health care, it’s not fair to poor to deny them. Letting businesses lobby is unfair because they have lots of money. It’s unfair for businesses to discriminate, the government should force them not to.
Some people have more money than others. Sometimes it really isn’t fair: born into a wealthy home versus a poor home is beyond your control. This is of course why they say life isn’t fair. This isn’t something that can or should be legislated away. It’s impossible to make life perfectly fair and equal for everyone.
The problem with people’s obsession with fairness is they fail to properly determine exactly what should be fair; and the answer it turns out is stunningly simple. There is in fact one thing which not only should be fair, but must be fair: laws.
Laws must apply to everyone equally, or they cannot possibly be fair or just. Yet we have huge programs which blatantly defy this truth, created in the name of fairness: Medicare/medicaid and social security are unfair for many reasons. They are demonstrably unsustainable, they force everyone into them regardless of their preference, and even if they were sustainable some people will die before they can collect. The ADA and anti discrimination laws target specific groups, forcing one to treat the other a certain way or cater to them; by their very existence they don’t affect everyone equally. It is a sad irony that these kinds of laws actually foster and create discrimination of a different sort.
You cannot legislate the world into being fair; and attempting to do so begets numerous unintended consequences. Focus less on the folly of trying to force an unfair world otherwise, and more on fundamental rights when examining proposed legislation. While the latter may sometimes seem at odds with the former, it will counter-intuitively yet assuredly result in a more free, prosperous, and ultimately fair world.
Posted by wobbles on Wednesday, August 11, 2010