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Social Injustice
According to Adam Smith, “Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” Our founding fathers wisely constituted a government designed to provide this modest foundation and little more. Wisely, because government – made up of fallible human beings – is not capable of providing more; and it will fail to provide what it can if it attempts to provide what it cannot.
We know, for example, what justice is: giving to each their due. A free market – that is people buying, selling, and exchanging their own goods and services without coercion and without interference – rewards people for what they produce and thus does a “tolerable” job of providing justice. If government restricts itself to acting against fraud and coercion, and otherwise stays out of the way, justice will be the happy – if only approximate – result.
By contrast, even the deepest thinkers cannot define “social justice” concretely enough to provide a workable procedure for attaining it. Proponents of social justice seek — at a minimum — to compensate the more unfortunate among us for the unfair burdens of chance. But only an omniscient and omnipotent being can hope to weigh each man’s troubles and determine just compensation. And only such a being can divine the penalties that are to be assessed on those more favored. In the end, attempts to implement “social justice” invariably result in injustice, because some are invariably given what is due others. And so we abandon what is possible in trying to achieve the impossible.
Image Credit: “Smith medallion portrait” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.
Published in Culture, Economics
You got pretty quickly from ‘nothing is easy’ to suggesting, everything is actually very hard. Likely, it’s harder than you’re letting on–yes, of course, conservatives should try to help the people most in need, which does require going to them. But I do not know how that is to be done. Do you?
& all this of course does say that there is no way to destroy the welfare state.
If you expect a lot of people, a surprising amount of them actually pull it off. Kids included.
And maybe doing whatever it is in your last sentence (pardon but I’m not sure I understood) may not be okay. Doing what we’re doing now is worse.
This is a distinction to which I find I have to keep coming back: If you’re teaching kids in terrible neighborhood, please accept my apologies. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job–I actually agree you have to ask a lot of kids.
But I hear a lot of people talking about such terrible places & the kids who live there when they’re not in fact doing anything to help these kids. They’re not in any position to ask kids to fantasize about how surprisingly many pull off a transformation in their lives that they have neither seen nor could easily believe! That is what I believe is not ok.
I did consider teaching when I lived in Chicago, but a friend of mine whose approach was a watered-down version of what mine would have been was at logger-heads with his principal continually. It wasn’t as bad then as it is now, but what I’d like to do is almost the opposite of what I’d be required to do.
That said, I’ve interacted with quite a few people from urban backgrounds in plenty of jobs (especially the Army), lived in predominantly black neighborhoods, and I’ve gotten through to quite a few. Every slum in America is loaded with people who almost see things like we do, only there’s massive resistance to anything that alludes to the label “conservative” or hints of whites telling them how to lead their lives. (cont.)
Part of why I’m a bit better at communicating some of this stuff is just talent, but I’ve also made a concerted effort to simply learn what’s actually going on. That’s included a lot of conversations in which I’ve just shut up, but I’ve also read an incredible book or two that enables me to not come across as just another white guy talking out of his ass. I’ve also got a demeanor that’s understanding but firm. I refuse to walk on eggshells to prove I’m not racist.
But I’ll readily admit I haven’t “done” a whole lot for those kids, nor have I personally spread conservatism in those neighborhoods to the degree I’d like. The main reason for this is that I need a job to pay the bills, and anything that would actually make a difference requires far more time and resources than I have. I don’t live close enough, either.
That said, I’d love the chance to put my theories to work and go into a neighborhood and do some “community organizing” of my own. I don’t have all the ideas I’d need, but I do have a lot. My specific strategies would take up a lot of time, but at first I’d simply help whoever’s actually already doing some good, building relationships and credibility. After that, it’s pretty complex.
I’d say, join the club, nobody’s done much for them, but that’s way too many people for it to be a club.
Yeah. Conservatism means that every magazine & Ricochet cannot get adequate funding & keep asking for support. It’s not a surprise that funding for this kind of project is not there either. Maybe there is something wrong with us, Martel…
People in bad places could use any help offered them as people. We’ve got to believe they deserve it & I could hardly think of a better start. If it gets complicated, that’s later…