## Metadata - Author: [[David Schmidtz]] - Full Title: The Elements of Justice - Category: #books ## Highlights - Justice is a framework for decreasing the cost of living together; the framework's larger point is to free us to focus less on self-defense and more on mutual advantage, and on opportunities to make the world a better place: that is, to generate positive rather than negative externalities. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=163)) - Perhaps alienation is a permanent part of the human condition. Perhaps there is no cure, or at least, no large-scale, permanent cure. Nevertheless, we can solve the problem on a personal scale. On a personal scale, failing to reciprocate is among the most alienating things we can do. (Reflect for a moment on the fact that failing to accept favors can likewise be alienating.) When we fail to respond, we cut ourselves off not only from mundane benefits of mutual support but also from relations that make its feel visible and valuable. My dentist once did a bit of work for me and, for reasons I do not fully understand, declined to charge me for the service. It would have been wrong to respond by sending my dentist a check, but also wrong if I had not sent a thank you card or otherwise expressed my gratitude. The issue is not simply prudence. Rather, it concerns what people like my dentist and me need to do to sustain a vivid picture of ourselves as rightly esteemed agents in a world of rightly esteemed agents.At best, squandering an opportunity to reciprocate squanders a chance for mutual affirmation - to affirm that our partner was right to see us as worthy of her trust. Reciprocating shows our partners that we value them as ends in themselves. More implicitly, but still obviously, honoring those who treat us as ends shows that we value ourselves as ends.Accordingly, I do not believe that reciprocity and gratitude are called for only in response to people who are going beyond the call of duty. Because reciprocity and gratitude are forms of mutual affirmation, it makes perfect sense to feel grateful to people simply for doing their duty. If I notice when motorists do the right thing in heavy traffic, and give a wave of appreciation, I make the road a safer, more courteous place.If I thank cashiers for giving me good service - not beyond the call of duty but good enough - I make that store a better place to work and shop. ([Location 929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=929)) - unequal though people may be along a given dimension, they can devise terms of interaction that emphasize dimensions along which they have the most to offer each other. As reciprocators, people craft dimensions along which they can relate as equals. Such crafting is not a panacea for society's ills, but reciprocators can and do address their personal alienation problem, one relationship at a time. ([Location 945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=945)) - Reciprocity is antithetical to the "atomism" that liberalism's critics inaccurately say is characteristic of liberal society.27 Reciprocators know that a transaction that goes well is a mutual affirmation, and therefore that participating in such transactions is self-affirming. Alienation is fundamentally a personal problem. The antidote is active affirmation of ([Location 947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=947)) - our common humanity - the kind of affirmation we practice when we practice reciprocity. ([Location 948](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=948)) - If society would be better off without Jane, then we have some reason to say Jane has an unpaid debt. Jane has not been "carrying her weight." But if Jane already has contributed enough to make society better off by virtue ofJane being part of it, then there is no basis for saying Jane has an unpaid debt. ([Location 993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=993)) - When norms of reciprocity function as engines of social and technological progress, they enable people to live as autonomous reciprocators whose disabilities otherwise would have been incapacitating. For example, I am terribly nearsighted. However, because I can buy glasses at any shopping mall, no one even thinks to classify me as disabled. (As I write, `disabled' is the currently label, but it is misleading, referring as it does to problemsthat are only contingently disabling.) ([Location 1029](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1029)) - To summarize, if reciprocity is not the element of justice that yields special obligations to the disabled, it mayyet sustain an economy and a culture in which mildly to moderately disabled people can live more or less normal lives, and moderately to severely disabled people can get special care when they need it. ([Location 1037](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1037)) - Speculating in reciprocity involves doing favors without asking - not giving recipients a chance to decline - in order to obligate them.`t° ([Location 1050](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1050)) - Humanitarianism is, roughly, a view that we should care for those who suffer, not only or even mainly as a way of making its more equal but simply because suffering is bad. Humanitarianism concerns how people fare, whereas egalitarianism concerns how people fare relative to each other. ([Location 1175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1175)) - "Recent egalitarian writing has come to be dominated by the view that the fundamental aim of equality is to compensate people for undeserved bad luck." Anderson, though, thinks, "The proper negative aim of egalitarian justice is not to eliminate the impact of brute luck from human affairs, but to end oppression"'° so that we may "live together in a democratic community, as opposed to a hierarchical one."'7 ([Location 1184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1184)) - when redistribution's purpose is to make up for bad luck, including the misfortune of being less capable than others, the result in practice is disrespect. "People lay claim to the resources of egalitarian redistribution in virtue of their inferiority to others, not in virtue of their equality to others."'8 ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1189)) - Egalitarianism has a history of being, first and foremost, a concern about how we are treated, not about the size of our shares. Anticipating Elizabeth Anderson, Young says, "[I] nstead of focusing on distribution, a conception of justice should begin with the concepts of domination and oppression."'9 Young sees two problems with the "distributive paradigm." First, it leads us to focus on allocating material goods. Second, while the paradigm can be "metaphorically extended to nonmaterial social goods" such as power, opportunity, and self-respect, the paradigm represents such goods as though they were static quantities to be allocated rather than evolving properties of ongoing relationships." ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1196)) - If politicians have power for sale, then making sure no citizen (or special interest group of citizens) can afford to buy it would not solve the problem. We would need to make sure no one in the world can afford to buy our politicians and use them to oppress.Realistically, if power is being bought and sold, then turned against us, the solution is not to make sure no one is rich enough to buy power but instead to learn how to stop politicians from creating and selling it. Leveling economic shares would not address the real problem. If selling X for a dollar is bad, we go after people who sell X, not after people who have a dollar. ([Location 1204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1204)) - Society is not a race. In a race, people need to start on an equal footing. Why? Because a race's purpose is to measure relative performance.22 By contrast, a society's purpose is not to measure relative performance but to be a good place to live. To be a good place to live, a society needs to be a place where people do not face arbitrary bias or exclusion. In liberal society at its best, women, men, blacks, whites, and people of all religions have a real chance to live well, as free and responsible individuals. People need a good footing, not an equal footing. ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1209)) - The other thing to note is that when markets create wealth, they create the possibility of leisure. Markets create time and space within which people can afford to compose poetry (and can acquire paper on which to write it), if that is what pleases them, without having to worry about whether poetry is putting dinner on the table. Markets enable people to build reserves of capital to a point where they can afford to make time for themselves. But markets generally do not judge, and do not reward, what people do with the time they reserve for nonmarket activities. ([Location 1265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001APYVU4&location=1265))