Economic Theories of Social Justice: Risk, Value and Externality
Author(s)
De Jasay, Anthony
Abstract
Part One of this essay is a bird’s eye review of some attempts to make social justice intellectually respectable by reconciling it with justice in general. Part Two will deal with the attempt to reconcile us to the advancing welfare state, seen as the bittersweet result of administering social justice. I cannot explain the reason why, but I find it truly striking that all these attempts massively resort to economic theory of one sort or another. With the exception of orthodox Marxism, they all aim at performing an almost acrobatic feat: justifying the placing of the burden on the better-off of redressing an alleged injustice suffered by the worse-off, without making any sort of case that the better-off are guilty of it.
