Just distribution and Rawls

Social justice also concerns the just distribution of goods and services, between nations and between groups within a society. Where there are serious economic or social inequalities, some important resources may need to be redistributed to create something like a level playing field.

• Within a country, people should enjoy not only equal treatment by law but also some basic equality of life conditions and opportunities, so that each can pursue their goals.
• In India, the Constitution abolished untouchability to ensure that people of 'lower' castes have access to temples, jobs and basic necessities like water, and several states carried out land reforms to redistribute land more fairly.
• Debates about redistribution, such as over reservations, can arouse fierce passion and even violence, because people feel their families' futures are at stake. Students of political theory should examine such issues calmly, in terms of principles of justice.

John Rawls' theory of justice. If asked what society they want, people usually choose one where they are privileged; parents naturally think of their own children. Such views cannot be the basis of a fair theory. So how can we reach rules that are fair?

• Rawls asks us to imagine deciding how society should be organised without knowing what position we would occupy in it: whether we would be born rich or poor, into an 'upper' or 'lower' caste, privileged or disadvantaged. He calls this thinking under a 'veil of ignorance'.
• Each person still decides in their own interest. But since no one knows who they will be, each would think about the future society from the point of view of the worst-off, and want rules that ensure reasonable opportunities for the weaker sections: access to education, health and shelter for all.
• They would also want rules that do not weaken the better-off, since they might be born among them. So they would choose policies that benefit society as a whole.
• The strength of the idea is that it asks for no heroism or self-sacrifice: people just stay their usual rational selves. Fairness comes from rational action, not from benevolence or generosity. Rawls argued that rational thinking, not prior moral rules, can lead us to judge impartially how to distribute society's benefits and burdens.

Example (new): a group of friends who must divide a pizza, where the person who cuts it gets the last slice, will cut the slices fairly: not knowing which slice will be theirs pushes them towards fairness.