"What
does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?"
Thomas Sowell
Wow, that sounds like gubment! But I digress...
Economic justice. It just sounds good. It really sounds good!
What is it?
My Oxford dictionary defines "justice" as: treat or represent someone or something with due fairness.
Again, the question may be asked, what is "due?"
Interestingly, the Center for Economic Justice and Equality defines economic justice as:
"Economic justice, which touches the individual person as well as the social order, encompasses the moral principles which guide us in the design of our economic institutions. These institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent material foundation for his or her economic sustenance. The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person to engage creatively in the unlimited work beyond economics, that of the mind and the spirit."
They call economic justice "The Third Way," beyond, as it were, capitalism and socialism.
This organization sees Economic Harmony as a balance between Participative Justice (input from capital and labor) and Distributive Justice (profits for owners, wages for employees).
What they have defined is FREE ENTERPRISE! I don't know if that is intentional or not, but FREE ENTERPRISE is thus defined!
We already have determined that FREE ENTERPRISE is moral! It has to be! It is the only system that does what this definition states!
And it would do that except...
Except for what? What Dr. Sowell suggests! He suggests that the new Doublespeak changes words and concepts from what they are to what sound good! Economic justice has been changed, especially in the last couple of years, into belonging to a group very, very worthy of gimmes! An ethereal group very, very worthy of somebody else's production!
Why? Because keeping what you produce is "rich" and the "rich" have stolen it all anyway. It is bad to steal! So why not just turn it over to those who "deserve" it?
I have said for years that the debate now is not between conservative and liberal, or even left and right. Continuing with Dr. Sowell's suggestion, the debate is now between the producers and non-producers, and the achievers and the non-achievers. The debate is now over REDISTRIBUTION of one group's "stuff" to another group that more deserves it! The proverbial, and non existent, free lunch.
Going back to the Oxford definition, giving huge percentages of production to the non producers, simply because the gubment decides they "deserve" it is NOT JUSTICE. Neither group is treated with, as Oxford defines, due fairness. Read the definition again!
And, according to the Center above, such transference (should we say redistribution?) of production is not a moral principle, or otherwise produces an independent material foundation for economic sustenance. And such transference (should we say redistribution?) is not Economic Harmony as defined above, for such harmony balances input and distribution!
What then is Economic Harmony?
FREE ENTERPRISE! FREE ENTERPRISE IS NOT A THIRD WAY. IT IS THE WAY.
The key word is FREE...
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