Quote (Kamahl16 @ Sep 10 2014 10:00am)
You seem like you're familiar with his argument, so I'm -- how does he propose to calculate the advantage or disadvantage to society, caused by inequality, with mathematical certainty?
There's some bullshit rambling coming up, so you're free to ignore what I post below if you so choose.
I'm curious how we make some ethical principle that's based entirely on an action's relationship to society, because while humans do general exist in a society they aren't necessarily mutually inclusive, I mean not all humans live in society while we could make a claim that all humans, for example, have bodies, or experience pleasure and pain (barring some medical accident or something), so how would Rawls' argument hold up if you have a group of, say, four humans stuck on an island. Would it remain the same, with "society" being defined now as the group of four people or would ethics and whatnot just be damned and whatever happens happens?
I guess I'm wondering if there's value to be had in establishing some form of fairness, regardless of how it "benefits society" (I'm sure he goes to length to explain what he means by this).
I don't think advantage and disadvantage should be looked at as something to institutionalize and craft a set of rules for.
Its better for individuals to become familiar with the patterns and then use that knowledge to make the best of what they have.
The moment you try to make more complicated rules about interaction you change the incentives of interaction and create a new set of problems that are difficult to understand let alone control. The strong will find ways around the new rules and the weak will be at greater disadvantage because they don't fully understand the new incentives.
People who overcome poor environments understand the pattern of interactions in that way.