What is social justice?

Let me start off by saying that this is a preliminary post. My concept of social justice is not fully formed. I have yet to see a definition or operationalization of social justice with which I fully agree. However, in thinking about the issue further (thanks to Jacob, my first non-friend commenter) I reflected on what the modifier "social" means. I believe the process of determining social justice first involves classifying people by group. When we say that, for instance, the drug war is unjust because it disproportionately affects African-Americans, we are making a social justice argument. Though libertarians are repelled by the idea of divining rights based on group affiliation, this does not preclude them from using social justice arguments in critiquing policy, as evidenced above.

What libertarians should have a problem with is when people make social justice arguments by only focusing on the intended effects for a given population, rather than on society as a whole (or different groups or individuals). As Bastiat masterfully stated and Hazlitt drilled into my skull, a policy must be evaluated on both its intended and unintended consequences (that which is seen and that which is unseen). While we can say that affirmative action or diversity requirements may help some specific groups on the grounds of justice, we must also examine the policy's unintended effects. A libertarian conception of social justice has a more holistic perspective--one that incorporates the experiences of individuals, all affected groups, and society as a whole. When you only focus on a policy's effects on the target population, social justice is perverted, and groups have the most clout can gain unfair government-induced advantage.

There are many classifications that can include a person in a group. These include certain ethnic groups such as the ADL, La Raza, and the NAACP, age groups like the AARP, or sexual orientation groups such as the myriad LGBT organizations. These group identities are not chosen and are given by accident of birth. Other group identities are chosen to some degree, such as religious affiliation, union membership, and occupation. Like the former organizations, advocates for these groups will often make social justice arguments. Finally, group identity may also be assigned based on life circumstances, including income, employment, and disability, each of which have attendant government programs. The individuals covered under these group labels are part of what I will term the ingroup.

Groups with well-organized and easily defined ingroups (where people will identify the strongest) can exert higher influence. We can see this most clearly when government programs--each subject to overall budget priorities in the federal government--must compete against one another for centrally administered funds. The well-defined, organized, larger, least controversial, and best connected organizations will get the most funding. What is spent in one program, cannot be spent in another. The benefits of that program will only apply to a given population, and its costs will be spread unevenly throughout the other groups. By measuring how the policy affects all other affected groups, one can more broadly understand the overall justice of the policy being debated.

Here are some groups that are often excluded from social justice analysis:

• People from the future. No, seriously. Future people are a group of people who have no true advocates in the policy arena. The incentives for today's social justice advocates and practitioners is to get as many resources as possible. I would never stop until I believed that my client had every resources available to help them. This approach, however, does not include the cost of these services to, for example, the future poor. The future poor are made much worse off by social welfare spending and government spending in general. Their money will likely be worth much less than ours, their debt load will be much higher, and they will not have the money to pay for as many services as we do today. This is true of the "future" version of any group. Today's group takes money away from what could be spent in the future, as we finance more and more of social spending with deficit spending. This is not in the interests of the future group, its members, or society taken as a whole.
• Disfavored groups. Just as often as policies are made to encourage a given identity they are made to discourage another group from expressing itself. People who engage in socially unacceptable behaviors are defended by libertarians, and often only by libertarians. When the majority attempts to ban the activities of a certain group (or groups) of people, it is an important social justice issue. Those who use state power to discriminate against minority groups are acting in violation of social justice. Absent harm, there is no just cause for discriminating against any group, regardless of how they are classified (see above). An example would be people who use or sell drugs and people who engage in prostitution.
• The opposite people. When a policy is designed to help a certain favored minority group it creates another group--everyone that doesn't fit into that group. For instance, policies that are designed to benefit married people discriminate against the single people. Policies to assist homeowners discriminate against those who rent. Libertarians will often make arguments against a given policy based on injustices to the outgroup, or specific groups therein. Outgroups often contain clusters of smaller outgroups that carry additional classifications as part of their identity.

Whether we can't see them, don't like them, or they are poorly organized, minority groups that are left out of the common conception of social justice are included in the libertarian one. The overall point being that (again) just because a policy would benefit one group, does not mean it is socially just. One must look at the ingroup, outgroup, individual, and society before determining the relative social justice of a policy.

Discriminatory policies, ones that have a larger ingroup than outgroup and harm others, abide by the inverse rule of dispersed benefits and concentrated costs. A discriminatory policy will only be continued if it negatively affects a small, poorly organized group of people (or cluster of groups) where the affiliation with that identity is weak. Simultaneously, its positive effect on the ingroup is so small, that few will notice its presene. The feeling that we are not directly getting over on a minority group ensures that these policies will be incredibly difficult to change. Humans are often poor with affective perspective taking, and will have trouble understanding the behaviors, experiences, and motivations of others. By substituting the amount this policy impacts their life in the ingroup instead of appreciating how much it can affect another person's life in the outgroup, social injustice sustains itself.

Social justice, as stated previously, must also include analysis based on individual considerations of justice, but this is generally termed civil rights and is thought of as a separate entity. Finally, social justice must conclude by evaluating all group and individual data in totality, how it will affect the society as a whole in the scheme of history.

Libertarianism is unique in its holistic approach to social justice, and its insights would do a great deal in refining modern conceptions of the term. Social justice necessarily involves grouping people. That process requires the prevention of harm towards any individual or group, with certain moral limitations. So, in a backward way of getting at a definition, social justice is determined by the degree to which the interests of individuals, all groups, and society are served. Advocacy or implementation of these policies the the process of achieving social justice.

That's about as close as I can get.

PS: I agree that the word "social" is used too often. It's getting like "public" which has almost no meaning at all anymore.