The Nature Of Fairness

Fairness is very important to us. It is the basic principle behind all codes of law, and how we ideally interact with each other. But I cannot see that it has been broken down into exactly what it is. I have broken fairness down into four principles.

1) THE LEAST PRINCIPLE

An ideal example of the Least Principle is the express line in supermarket checkouts. In most supermarkets a shopper who is buying a certain number of items or fewer, typically ten, have their own line or lines at supermarket checkouts.

The reason is fairness. If a shopper is buying only a few groceries then it will not take long for them to be rung up at the checkout. It is unfair for someone buying only a few groceries to have to wait for others to be rung up who are buying a lot of groceries. 

That is why most supermarkets have at least one express line. It facilitates the least waiting relative to the number of items a shopper is buying.

If two students have to stay after school, so that the teacher can go over something different with each of them, the one that will require the least time should go first. This will facilitate the least waiting, relative to the amount of time required. That is why it is called the Least Principle.

2) THE GREATER GOOD

This counterbalances the Least Principle. Fairness is not written in stone, it is a matter of perspective. Human nature must be taken into consideration.

If we strictly followed the Least Principle it would mean that if there was two people, one with no money and one with a lot of money, it would be only fair for the one with a lot of money to share it with the one with no money.

But if everyone had to share whatever wealth they had then what would be the point of working? People require incentive to work and that incentive is the money that they earn. Why should anyone work hard if they will only have to share their earnings? This means that some people will inevitably have more wealth than others.

In the long term, the principal of the Greater Good will mean more wealth, on the average, for all, because it provides incentive, while the Least Principle is more short-term where incentive is not a factor.

As a counterbalance to the Least Principle, which is the fundamental principle of fairness, we could call this the "Most Principle".

3) BALANCING OUT

This is a long-term modifier of the short-term Least Principle. If there are two shoppers in the supermarket, both buying the same number of items, is it fair that one has to wait longer in the checkout line because the line that they are in is moving more slowly than the one the other is in? 

Of course it isn't. The fair thing to do would be for the supermarket to have just one line, and then the next person in line go to the next available cashier. This is what some markets do have, the trouble is that it takes up floor space and will thus add to the cost of groceries.

But standing in line is a repetitive thing. We stand in lines all our lives. The Balancing Out principle is that, just by chance, sometimes we will err and choose the line that takes the longest but it will balance out, over time, because sometimes we will make the right choice of the fastest line.

4) THE PARADISE PRINCIPLE

Sometimes fairness is just beyond our ability to implement.

Two children are crossing a street. A car is trying to evade the police and comes around the corner at high speed. One of the children is killed but the other is uninjured. It that fair to the family of the child that was killed? Of course it isn't.

Two families send their sons off to war, one is killed but the other isn't. Is that fair to the family of the one that was killed? Of course it isn't.

There are two siblings, one gets a hereditary disease but the other doesn't. Is that fair to the one that got the disease? Of course it isn't.

It looked as if it might rain. Two people are walking, one brought an umbrella but the other didn't. The one with the umbrella doesn't get wet but the other does. Is this fair to the person that got wet? Actually it is fair because the other person had the common sense to bring an umbrella but the one that got wet didn't.

We cannot completely implement freedom, making it so that everything is always fair. In fact, that could be the definition of a paradise. Where everything is always fair. It would be a higher-level paradise if everything was always perfect, but it would be at least a first-level paradise if everything was always fair.

That is why I call this the "Paradise Principle".