As a byproduct of my work as Project Editor for a technical committee called X3J13, which produced the “standard” for a programming language called Common Lisp, ![[Liberty Bell]](/files/pd-liberty-bell-120x152-1233908942.jpg)
I learned many interesting things. One in particular is what I want to share today—a lesson about the elusive nature of fairness.
The subject matter of the standard I was working on is what most people would call highly technical or just plain nerdy, but you don't have to be a technical person or a nerd to appreciate this thing I learned, so please don't tune out. In spite of the occasionally nerdy-sounding organization name, I promise not to get gratuitously technical on you. This article is really about politics, philosophy, and life in general.
The standards created by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) are really just documents that carefully describe agreements made among members (which are usually businesses), assuring the consistent quality of products and services. The purpose is to allow interchange to occur smoothly between these members.
This would seem an obvious enough thing to want to do, except for the fact that normally businesses are heavily restricted by law from doing this very act. Antitrust legislation exists to prohibit such action, in order to keep players from being crowded out of a market by collusion among other vendors.
When I first started doing standards work, representatives of ANSI appeared to talk to us about the process. As I recall, they identified the primary function of standards-making bodies as “to avoid being sued.” After that, they explained, we were also allowed to make standards. It seemed to me almost funny, but I came to understand it was quite a serious matter, and a great deal of their process was designed to help achieve fairness.
They gave us each a big rule book that would help us navigate the process. Like Roberts Rules of Order, which we also used from time to time, I'm relatively sure most members did not read the complete rules. They trusted that rules were there to help them but they didn't always know precisely what those rules were. They imagined they would look them up when they needed them. However, importantly, they did not know that rules were there to aid them (or to work against them) even at times when they did not perceive a need.
Reading the rules seemed to arm certain participants with special powers they could invoke at strange times. As these rules were applied, everyone made a point to learn them, so the rules rarely caused a problem twice. But sometimes even a single application of them mattered a lot.
I came to think that the rules were not really fair because since it was predictable that some would not have read them, the people who had read them were at an advantage. You might think everyone should therefore just read them, but before they do, you might consider whether you yourself have read the complete set of laws that govern your own existence and behavior as a citizen of wherever you live. I'm going to bet most citizens, and even many of you reading this article, have not.
However, the alternative would be to not have rules. That didn't seem right. After all, when there are no rules, bullies rule. Rules exist for a purpose.
Now, you might think the answer would be to write shorter rules, so that people would be more inclined to read them. Perhaps. But then their precise meaning would be left to the interpretation of situation and to the person empowered to interpret them. That might not be fair either. So it's not what was done. The rules we had were very detailed, and so they often did not get read.
I suppose the lesson to be taken from this is a personal choice. Life is like that. You experience something and then draw on it in a personal way to guide future behavior. What I learned from this is the following:
Fairness is an abstract concept which we can conceive, but it has no uniquely determined, objectively correct form. In practice, it must be defined, since if there were no such process there would never be any end to bickering over what counts as fair. And yet, by becoming a matter of definition, rather than one of describing abstract truth, we create a process that will substitute for fairness, rather than one that will actually be fairness.
Those are the cards we're dealt in the world. It doesn't seem quite fair. But that's just the nature of fairness.
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RomanticPoetess
Sandra Stephens
old new lefty
marytkelly
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Comments
maybe i am, but i always thought the tax code was complicated because this is the primary tool that politicians use to buy votes. without the ability to reward supporters with public money, politicians would have to rely on probity, administrative excellence, and planning perspicuity for re-election.
you see the need for bribery of the politician, and reciprocal tax relief. it saves both parties having to be competent and public spirited.
The first part is Kent's "fairness". But, like he says in the main post, that's a matter of perspective. Is it "fair" to tax everybody exactly the same dollar amount? How about the same percentage of their income? No, we want progressive taxes, so people with higher incomes actually pay a higher percentage (not just more dollars). And why is that "fair"? Probably something about the diminishing utility of money, but the argument is subtle. But in any case, note that net worth is not taxed, just annual income. Note how this is different than property tax, which is taxed annually, just because you own it. Why is property tax fair, and income tax fair, but a national net worth tax is not fair?
So that just starts with Kent's point about fair. But that actual tax code also gets used for public policy. The government could just take a flat (or progressive) tax, and then refund various social programs separately. But instead, they often accomplish the same thing, more efficiently, by changing the tax code. So you can deduct mortgage interest from your taxes, or perhaps the cost of installing solar panels. These aren't "unfair"; they're just a parallel means of accomplishing government objectives, using the tax code instead of using some other government mechanism.
Then, on top of all that, you also have the corruption/pandering stuff. By the end, it's certainly complicated. And Kent is right; only the well-off can use it all. (Although much of what they use isn't even applicable to the poor.)
You write, “…by becoming a matter of definition, rather than one of describing abstract truth, we create a process that will substitute for fairness, rather than one that will actually be fairness.”
I found this statement troubling because it seemingly implies that you/we know what fairness is but can’t achieve it. Is that right? How do you define fairness? Is there an abstract truth that is fairness?
It occurs to me that perhaps agreeing to a definition of fairness is fairness, even if some people ultimately might benefit more or less. Fairness implies freedom from bias, not freedom from better or worse outcomes, or from lucky or unlucky.
The problem is that we don’t all agree to the rules by which we are forced to live, and not everyone plays by those rules.
Once they have achieved a certain power plateau, they are capable of manipulating the rules makers to change the rules to allow them even more power until the field is so slanted in their favor that those of lesser power are unable to compete. Sound familiar?
I think there are two reasons for that. One is that the world is composed of multiple overlapping frameworks, so it's not as simple as saying this person agreed. He has to have agreed in all frames of reference, but has only agreed in at least one (perhaps several, but not all) of them. In general, life seeks a way. And in many cases, if it came down to a battle to the death, us versus them, many of us might turn the hatch ourselves and cause that death rather than die ourselves (though there are cases where people do just the opposite, so I won't claim an absolute). But my point is that we can imagine a situation in which it does seem fair, and that one situation relates to the fact of our own mortality, something to which inherently we can never have agreed to. Not being religious, neither you nor I have a Creator upon which to blame that unfairness, but I don't know which is a worse unfairness, to have a Creator that would voluntarily force such strife on people or to have no Creator and still to find no “ultimate recourse.” Either way, one sometimes wishes one could change the rules in that final game we all must play. And hence unfairness, never agreed to—too bad. :)
I guess our system of justice (and, um, tax laws, etc.) are an effort to make some universally applied approximation of fairness that most of us agree to (more or less), and it's a very imperfect state of affairs, but vastly to be appreciated over the original systems of government under tyrants and war-lords and such. (And some system of government *happens* when people live together.) (Can be gangs or - and this was something I found cheering to my cynical soul - when in Peru I was reading about the shack settlements that have grown up on the outskirts of Lima that have become essentially self-governing units where the people cooperate to look after themselves...a legacy, I presume, of the rural life they've left.) (Tho I don't imagine those neighborhoods are gang-free!)
Anyway, final thought - the existential problem, the eternal war which hopefully finds a "fair" middle ground, exists within human nature too. We strive for fairness...and for an advantage. We're both social (and dependent) and individualistic. Outcomes are never going to be perfect, but some measure is the degree of satisfaction of the most people, I suppose.
By that measure, I think (as an example) the Canadian health system, under which I have the great good fortune to live, was based on the concept of the greatest degree of fairness for the greatest number of people. And it was put into operation on that basis. (By me, it works well.) The American system apparently is based on the idea that the economic battlefield will eventually somehow produce the best results. Invisible hand and all that. Obviously I think fairness has to be thought about and efforts made to put it in place (with the understanding that adjustments will be ever with us...)
So (still rambling on) one of the things about the U.S. is the idea (apparently, or so it looks from the outside...not that we're a completely different society here on this side of the border) that this (also somewhat abstract & theoretical) concept of *freedom* is fairer for the population than some kind of government-imposed redistribution of services... Home of the free and land of the brave (however that goes).
Good point. This idea that we are “free” is a definite distortion of reality, so using that idea to support the idea that there is some kind of “fairness” in our system of providing anything, not just services, is totally ridiculous. People who oppose something like government sponsored healthcare are beyond needing healthcare because they have it, or they are corrupt, or they are just simply ignorant.
Yeah, we’re all free, but some of us are freer than others.
Thanks for another thought provoking article. I love how the premise of these pieces begins with a question - which you answer well - while leaving the discussion open ended. That encourages thinking and productive debate. Thank you.
I believe most working definitions of fairness are, unfortunately, subjective in nature and therefore vary in their degrees of similarity or difference from one another. The “standard” for fairness also varies from issue to issue.
When the idea of adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution was being debated, Alexander Hamilton argued that protecting specific rights might later be interpreted to imply that any rights not specifically mentioned were not protected. Jefferson, on the other hand, argued that, “Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."
I believe the debate over what constitutes fairness usually will generate similar discussions whenever it is begun. If protection is the basis for the argument, who and what is protected and why will inevitably be subjectively argued by those who have vested interests.
On this matter I lean toward the Jefferson approach. It is better to secure whatever fairness may be acquired for those most vulnerable than to allow for none.
Rated and appreciated.
Dennis, gee, I thought that by leaving it open-ended I was wimping out. Thanks for giving me this alternative way to perceive my failure to draw it to clear closure as a strength. Heh. Your quote about the protection of specific rights is very apropos to another post I'm working on... I'll see if I can work it in. But yes, that's a risk, and is the point of the ninth and tenth amendments, of course. And, ultimately, the fact that the nation was begun at all, even at the cost of 100 years of institutionalized slavery, was a surely-bitter victory for the Jefferson approach. It would have been nice if they could have secured better, but I'm likewise sure they did what they felt they could.
In law school, we had a class on "legal interviewing and counseling" - and one of the things that we learned is to never let a client, or opponent, or anyone, say that they just want what's "fair", without describing, in detail, what they think fair means, what the factors are that influence 'fairness'...
Fairness seems harder to define than 'justice.'
My usual way to test a political theory is to take a kind of Monte Carlo approach and pick a random other entity or two to substitute in for agents in the theory to see if rules that purport to work well with person X will work as well with person Y or Z with different characteristics.
In fact, I have a post up tonight about Roe v. Wade that does precisely this analysis—trying to acknowledge that one might be in any position and to reach a midpoint in the abortion discussion, which I claim is, in fact, Roe v. Wade. I hope you'll drop by and see what you think about whether I succeeded in that level of objectivity (or I like the term ignorance). I agree it's not an easy exercise.
Do you count just US citizens? Just first-world humans? All six billion of us, including the billion that live on less than a dollar a day?
In 1770, a white landowner could not imagine that he "might have been" a black slave, so even using the Rawls construction, you don't wind up deciding that slavery is immoral.
And lest you think we're any better today, very few of us are vegetarians. Is it possible that you "might have been" a cow?
What about a mosquito? Or ant?
What about a rock? Does it make any sense to say that you "might have been" a rock?
In the end, people just use Rawls to justify the answer they wanted anyway, by defining the groups they care about as the "in" list, and others as "out" of the thought experiment.
So, it's not really a guide to ethical decision-making.
You don't feel a close connection between yourself, as an adult, and a tiny embryo of a few cells. But how is that different from a 1770's slaveowner not thinking that blacks are "people"?
The Veil of Ignorance is indeed a clever way to sometimes see things from a different perspective. But so much depends on who you include in the set of similar people that you care about, before you even start thinking.
'Retributive' Justice is often unfair, because it is too focused. We look at a single incident, a single wrong, and try to address it. It doesn't look at the other factors that went into it, the whys and whats and hows...
you might be amused sometime to look at the difference between "law" and "equity" - an old-as-courts distinction which survives, to a very small extent, to this day.
But I always tried to focus on communication and negotiation rather than formal procedure. I thought it was great that there were people who put in the time and effort to track issues and comments. I didn't think I could do it any better, and it freed me up to try to get my point of view across, while understanding the other issues.
Not that I really succeeded that well. Sometimes it came down to either who was more driven, or overcoming apathy and inertia on an issue -- and especially, competition from all the other issues. I'm thinking particularly of the type system.
At times, I did feel my ideas weren't given a fair hearing. But I never felt there was anything about the system that was unfair. I don't think you can make rules that make someone think fairly about a particular topic! All you can do is ensure that the ideas have a chance to be put in front of them. Beyond that, it's up to your power of persuasion.
What surprises me in all these comments, is that nobody once mentions kids, and THEIR idea of fairness. Which is basically, if I don't get what I want, it's unfair. How they learn to get beyond that is really very subtle, slow -- and never complete. It does involve getting in the heads of someone else, considering it from their view, as in the "veil of ignorance".
But kids are very convinced that things SHOULD be fair, and CAN be fair -- even when it's the universe they're up against. The idea that the clock doesn't care about fair takes quite a while to get across.
I find one of the big challenges of parenting is teaching about fairness. Both how to BE fair, and the limitations of what fair really means.
Now if only we could convince them that the ones we're aborting might grow up to be abortion doctors, they'd change their mind. :) ... Although, in fairness, I think the ones who want to shoot abortion doctors are a fringe segment, and many pro-Life people do not have such outlandish theories of justice. What's troubling is that the political leaders who encourage the pro-Life movement don't always seem very concerned about stopping such actions. (In this regard, it parallels the problem with Muslim terrorism. Many of us want to believe that Islam is a peaceful religion, but what is most frightening is the silence that occurs after a terrorist act that gets linked to Islam, when Islamic leaders are not out in force condemning it—that silence speaks volumes, as does the oft-heard silence of the Christian community when an abortion doctor is murdered.)
Bob, your remark was fascinating in light of something I read recently (I think in the book Blackwater, a remark by one of its founders) where the speaker was defining the present system of government as broken if it wasn't giving them what they thought was right. This is indeed a childish attitude, but sadly also a very dangerous one because many of these people are children with guns, teetering on the brink of their favorite quote from Tom Jefferson about refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots...