Distributive justice
Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:
What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, opportunities or some combination of these things?
Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations?
What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, according to social status, according to need, based on property rights and non-aggression?
Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of who has the right to enforce a particular favored distribution, while property rights theorists say that there is no "favored distribution". Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from lawful interactions or transactions (that is, transactions which are not illicit).
In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance that denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and life plans, and then asks what theory of justice we would choose to govern our society when the veil is lifted, if we wanted to do the best that we could for ourselves. We do not know who in particular we are, and therefore can not bias the decision in our own favor. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish bias. Rawls said that each of us would reject the utilitarian theory of justice that we should maximize welfare (see above) because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's two principles of justice:
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods – the good of liberty rights and social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income, and power – and applies different distributions to them – equality between citizens for liberty rights and equality unless inequality improves the position of the worst off for social and economic goods.
In one sense, theories of distributive justice may assert that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories vary on the meaning of what is "deserved". The main distinction is between theories that say the basis of just deserts ought to be held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice – and theories that say the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others.
Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need". Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University involving capuchin monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense and that "inequity aversion may not be uniquely human".
In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick said that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal pattern, but of each individual entitlement having the right kind of history. It is just that a person has some good (especially, some property right) if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:
Just acquisition, especially by working on unowned things; and
Just transfer, that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not theft (i.e. by force or fraud).
If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, they are entitled to it: that they possess it is just, and what anyone else does or does not have or need is irrelevant.
On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick said that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft. In particular, redistributive taxation is theft.
Some property rights theorists (such as Nozick) also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and say that property rights based justice also has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system. They explain that voluntary (non-coerced) transactions always have a property called Pareto efficiency. The result is that the world is better off in an absolute sense and no one is worse off. They say that respecting property rights maximizes the number of Pareto efficient transactions in the world and minimized the number of non-Pareto efficient transactions in the world (i.e. transactions where someone is made worse off). The result is that the world will have generated the greatest total benefit from the limited, scarce resources available in the world. Further, this will have been accomplished without taking anything away from anyone unlawfully.
According to meritocratic theories, goods, especially wealth and social status, should be distributed to match individual merit, which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to needs-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter, and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals' basic needs for them. According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.
