Distributive Justice

The class lecture covered distributive justice and its four traditional philosophical perspectives: libertarian, utilitarian, contractarian, and communitarian.  These four philosophies were analyzed and viewed from a science and technological perspective and how it creates an inequality.  Distributive justice raise tensions about inequity, a normative term denoting an unjust or unfair distribution. 

Libertarian principles of distributive justice sees the primary value on the (equal) protection of property rights.  A majority of these political party participates are viewed as anti government.  They are for process over product.  They achieve success when indivuduals can practice their rights to property.  Acquisition, transfer and recitifcation is what makes their system.  An individual’s actions and conditions are at the center of their philosophical view. 

Utilitarian belief is that distributive justice is moral as along as it increases total happiness for the group, concentrating less on the individuals.  Unlike the libertarian view, they are for government support, research and development.  An example used was the pizza pie,  if the entire class got x amount of pies, the entire class is satified regardless of how the slices individuals ate.  An economic growth at the national level almost always help the poor. 

The contractarian theory states a fair system of distribution is one that rational individuals would freely agree to after deliberation.  John Rawl’s argued that individuals have different starting points.  Since they have different starting points, science and technology for the poor is still marginal.  John Rawls created a concept of a veil of ignorance where individuals dont know what their starting position was. 

Communitarian acknowledge inequality produces worse outcomes for everyone not just for the poor.  Poverty reduction is at the center, not wealth creation or economic growth.  Humanity cannot embrace this gap between rich and poor John Rawl’s contract theory permits.  There is a polarization of wealth and it isnt distributed equally.  Their main ideology is that action is moral when it strengthens community life.