Men can be allowed to act on their own knowledge and for their own purposes only if the reward they obtain is dependent in part on circumstances which they can neither control nor foresee. And if they are to be allowed to be guided in their actions by their own moral beliefs, it cannot also be morally required that the aggregate effects of their respective actions on the different people should correspond to some ideal of distributive justice. In this sense freedom is inseparable from rewards which often have no connection with merit and are therefore felt to be unjust.
Friedrich August von Hayek
The preceding is touted as an outstanding statement on free markets and social justice... by a person called David Henderson:
http://econlog.econlib.org/...
Men can be allowed to act on their own knowledge and for their own purposes only if the reward they obtain is dependent in part on circumstances which they can neither control nor foresee.
Is this a moral justification for gambling? I don't understand the intent of this tortured statement.
And if they are to be allowed to be guided in their actions by their own moral beliefs, it cannot also be morally required that the aggregate effects of their respective actions on the different people should correspond to some ideal of distributive justice.
Can "distributive justice" be loosely interpreted as "social justice"?
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
.... the first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society.
I'm quite happy to accept that relatively simple principle of distributive justice, but I absolutely cannot see "social justice" as "strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society."
From my poor perspective, the Karl Marx statement: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" more closely approximates "social justice," but I am compelled to delineate degrees of need, to morally qualify need in relationship to social justice. If you need something but won't get off your lazy butt to get it, you ain't qualified for someone to just hand it to you.
On the other hand, if you are physically unable to get off your butt, if you are emotionally unable to move, that's a different matter.
In this sense freedom is inseparable from rewards which often have no connection with merit and are therefore felt to be unjust.
Hayek loves gambling, it appears, as well as plain old dumb luck.
I shudder at business conducted as a gambling operation, dependent upon dumb luck. Unless one is woefully stupid, one can weigh possibilities, probabilities, why the hell do we study math except to analyze, qualify and smooth out samples? There is always an element of chance and changes in circumstances, among other variables but the very intelligent and calculating can roughly predict the odds and make out relatively well.
One must only examine the humongous spurt of great wealth in the realm of Wall Street, where a covert number of mathematicians have turned from tutoring the ignorant to playing mathematical games with stocks and bonds -- and doing pretty damned well at it. The pure and simple merit of being a slick operator.
Sooo. pshtah! to this stupid notion of "free markets" and the "blindly moving hand" of fate and Adam Smith. There are a lot of clever and very physical hands meddling with the markets -- and it would serve us all very well if we kept an eye on those hands to make sure they weren't pulling off too many sleight of hand tricks. You ever hear of something called "regulation"?