Ooh, let’s talk about fairness!

We may need to change the way we think about fairness

Way too often we use it as an excuse for selfishness

It is, if we don’t recognize that every person has different abilities and challenges in their life

So it’d be less selfish if we recognize that, and expected everyone to contribute at a level they reasonably can

It’s largely a myth that any significant percentage of the population is fraudently collecting welfare

There are always people who aren’t contributing to our society to the extent that they can

But if you believe that, you’d be going after billionaire, investors, people who live off inherited wealth, and greedy landlords who extract far more value from the system than they contribute, and pay less than an equitable share of taxes in return

Otherwise you’re just trying to make excuses for judging poor people

I think we should define fairness as equitable exchanges, not equal exchanges

An equal exchange or expectation means that if we contribute more we should receive more

That seems reasonable, right?

But if we all start with different capabilities, education, support, opportunity, connections, etc. then in the real world we can’t all contribute the same things equally

And when we pretend that everyone can, it’s often to justify our own successes and outcomes

So if fairness is an equitable exchange, then we’d ask that societal members contribute what they can, and that we pool some of our resources to make sure that everyone gets what they need (safety nets like welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc) regardless of the level they are able to contribute