progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
"… social justice is regarded as an aspect of distributive justice and indeed the two
concepts are used interchangeably. Distributive justice is an idea with a very long
pedigree … To elaborate, at least three assumptions have to be made before we can
begin theorizing about social justice. First, we have to assume a bounded society with a
determinate membership … a second, namely that the principles we advance must apply
to an identifiable set of institutions whose impact on the life chances of different
individuals can also be traced …The third premise follows naturally from the second,
namely, that there is some agency capable of changing the institutional structure in more
or less the way our favored theory demands."
The broadband example just discussed follows this three prong rule. The bounded society
is the US and there is a means to determine if the people getting the redistributed wealth
can benefit, one would guess they would, yet the benefit is to them alone and not to all of
society. If I raise horses in Montana and I want to sell the horses to people in New Jersey,
then the current Administration would argue mutual benefit. That could be a stretch.
Miller then continues 128 :
"This raises the question whether social justice and individual liberty are necessarily at
odd with each other … a widely held view is that public policy should trade off the
conflicting demands of liberty and justice… They do so in two ways. First a central
element in any theory of justice will account of the basic rights of citizens …. Second, one
of the cost contested and intractable issues to arise in debates about freedom is whether
and when lack of resources constitutes a constraint on freedom…"
There is a clear conflict although Miller does not see it. In fact Miller details few if any
realistic applications. Further social justice is not part of the Constitution but it has been
put into law in various ways. One could view welfare as an application yet
unemployment insurance is not, for the latter is an insurance which the recipient has
contributed to and thus is owed as a contractual matter. Namely there is a quid pro quo
involved.
Miller continues 129:
"An economic market may be viewed as a procedure whereby individuals who are
entitled to various resources… deal with other individuals through the mechanism of
contract and exchange… Consider the effects of introducing legislation preventing
employers from discriminating on grounds of race or sex … Before this legislation .
employers choose which jobs to advertise and which conditions to attach to them … The
assumption behind the legislation is presumably that in this way a fairer allocation of
jobs and income will be produced … It is of course possible to argue that the market
128 Miller, Social Justice, pp 12-13.
129 Miller, Social Justice, pp. 108-109.
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