Distributive justice

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Average total wealth (in US dollars) per adult by country

Distributive justice ( Latin iustitia distributiva ) describes the justice of distribution rules and their results. Accordingly, there is a fairness of rules and a fairness of results.

The result justice is a concept of justice that such states of society than justice defined in which all members of society, the benefit of the Company ( "Result") belongs in principle to the same extent, but in a negligence reduced accordingly the member be benefits from society becomes. As opposed to fair results , rule fairness is seen.

According to the values ​​of the world map shown and the list of countries according to wealth per capita , the current fairness of results with regard to the distribution of wealth results in a range of nationals, which in 2019 come to less than USD 1000 in assets (including Haiti, Sudan, Central African Republic, Burundi, Sierra Leone), up to values ​​over USD 250,000 (including Switzerland, Hong Kong, United States, Australia, Iceland). If one looks at the difference between average and medium wealth , it becomes apparent that there are also considerable inequalities within the states, ranging from around twice (including East Timor, Belgium, Romania) to over seven times (including Belarus, the Netherlands, Russia) pass. This comparison suggests that a country has particularly wealthy citizens whose wealth is accordingly well above average.

Ancient and Middle Ages

In his standard work on legal philosophy, the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle regards state laws as the formal object of rule justice. He separates between distributing and compensating justice. Thomas Aquinas follows in part and mentions the common good. For Thomas legal justice is general justice, which he contrasts with distributive justice ( iustitia distributiva ) and exchange justice ( iustitia communtativa ) as separate types of justice from his point of view.

Experimental game theory

Games in the area of ​​distributive justice often turn out to be a combination of games directly about an openly named result (e.g. increase in money) with games about the rules of the game themselves. The latter games are also known as "meta-games" and are among other things because of their internal feedback is more complex than games about a simple utility function with fixed rules: compliance with the rules is both a framework condition and a game object. Apparent paradoxes and unreasonableness arise in such combined games for the observer who only considers partial aspects of distribution games. In the case of repeated games between societies, even complete self-sacrifice of individual players can be explained by meta-games.

Variations of the ultimatum game can be used to examine the assessment of "fairness" in the distribution of goods . In the following examples, the sanctioning of distribution was examined in a worldwide research project by 12 US American and one Colombian universities. These sanctions can also have disadvantages for the sanctioning party, which the latter accepts:

  • “Ultimatum” for two players: Player A is offered an amount of money to be shared with Player B. Player A offers player B a share (between more than 0% and a maximum of 100%). Only when player B accepts the offer will A and B be paid out their share of the amount of money decided by A. If player B does not accept the offer, no one receives anything. Both players lose.
  • “Ultimatum” for three players: Like “Ultimatum” for two players, but a third player C can additionally “punish” player A if he thinks A is too “ selfish ”. Player C receives an unconditional amount of money and the right to punish player A for an inappropriate offer to player B. It is up to player C to judge what is an inappropriate offer. If player C chooses to punish A, he determines how much penalty A must pay. The cost of the penalty for player C: One third of the amount that he determined as a penalty for player A.
  • "Dictator" for two players: Like "Ultimatum" for two players, but B must accept the offer. So B cannot punish A by renouncing.

In two of the three "games" described, the penalty is associated with costs. This allows the punishment to be assigned a value. It is believed that people will only act selflessly when selfishness is sanctioned. However, there were differences in the assessment of the appropriateness of the proportion that B receives from A. In two cases in Accra ( Ghana ) and the Sanquinaga ( Colombia ) B-players did not accept shares even if they were too high. The B-players rejected not only inappropriate egoism, but also what they saw as inappropriate favoring of themselves.

Systems Theory and Econometrics

For this graph, the symmetrized Theil index, the Hoover inequality and the Gini coefficient were calculated from the income distributions of the WIID (World Income Inequality Database) for each distribution. The corresponding differences between the symmetrized Theil index and the Hoover inequality were then plotted over the Gini coefficient. Each of these differences is an unequal distribution weighted with its own information content minus the unweighted unequal distribution. For Gini coefficients up to 40 percent calculated based on deciles, the differences are mostly negative.

In closed systems , equal distribution in all categories is the most likely result of the processes taking place in such systems. The entropy of the system has then reached its maximum. Human societies are limitedly open systems because they can export entropy, even if only to a limited extent. One way of reducing entropy in society is to increase the inequality in some category that society can influence. Resources such as income and wealth are one of the most important categories here. What is the result of a “fair” distribution of income or wealth ?

There are many different measures of the unequal distribution of wealth and income in econometrics , including the Gini coefficient , the Hoover inequality, and the Theil index . Econometrics shows that the degree of inequality in the distribution of resources has very different effects on people. It is not about "equality or inequality", but about the degree of equality or inequality. If this fact is not taken into account, discussions about economic equality become unnecessarily complicated and normative . There is no " pressure to redistribute " that grows in a purely proportional manner to the uneven distribution, but there is behavior from which optimality can be derived, as can be shown using the three unequal distribution measures:

  • The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality constructed without reference to real compensation processes. However, thanks to its popularity, social scientists have gained a lot of experience about the meaning of different Gini coefficients.
  • The Hoover inequality is the simplest of all inequality measures. It describes the pressure of redistribution in a society striving for equality, in which a balance based on complete information could be achieved with minimal effort.
  • The symmetrized Theil index (mean of Theil-L and Theil-T index) is similar to the Hoover unequal distribution. However, here the aggregated individual deviations from parity are additionally weighted with their information-theoretical significance. The symmetrized Theil-Index describes the redistribution pressure in a social system, in which a compensation would take place through random movements of people and resources. (Every closed social system would be such a system. In order to allow internal unequal distribution to grow , systems must be able to burden their environment - that is, often the space shared with neighboring systems - with entropy, which in turn leads to corresponding intersystemic distribution conflicts.)

If the symmetrized Theil index is above the Hoover unequal distribution, then the unequal distribution drives an equalization by itself, because the stochastically occurring redistribution is stronger than an intelligently controlled redistribution. (If the distribution is highly uneven - e.g. if resources are concentrated in a few places in the room - there is naturally a lot of scope for redistribution.)

If the symmetrized Theil index is below the Hoover unequal distribution, then a controlled redistribution would be more effective. However, a conscious effort would then have to be made to control the redistribution, which would result in costs that would reduce the gain in equity. In this area, the equal distribution has already reached a very high level. Complete uniform distribution would then be maximum entropy. However, life is characterized by the fact that living systems actively maintain a minimum distance between their current entropy and maximum entropy. This results in the need for a minimum level of inequality. Scandinavian companies, for example, find their place of work in the vicinity, especially with a very good supply of resources (Norway and, in my opinion, Iceland).

If one subtracts the Hoover inequality from the symmetrized Theil index and plots this difference over the associated Gini coefficient (see graphic), then two zones result. Below a Gini coefficient (calculated based on deciles) of around 40%, the differences between Theil index and Hoover inequality resulting from real income distributions are negative. They are positive about that. It can now be observed that the economic areas with the highest quality of life are all located in the vicinity of this passage at 40% through the zero line. In the current resource situation, there is an optimal value for inequality, which arises automatically with a free play of forces and does not have to be striven for through normative control. Very large deviations from this value (Gini coefficients below about 20% or above about 60% with incomes distributed over equally large deciles) are always associated with the use of strong violence.

The non-normative relationships described here do not dictate to people what kind of distribution is fair, but rather they describe the different degrees to which inequalities are presented to people and what information-theoretical meaning different inequalities have. The decision as to which distribution is fair remains normative and therefore controversial.

literature

  • Stefan Arnold: Contract and distribution: the importance of the iustitia distributiva in contract law , at the same time habilitation thesis at the University of Munich 2013. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-16-152986-3 .
  • Stefan D. Josten: Inequality, State Redistribution and Overall Economic Growth . 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1377-3 .

Web links

Wiktionary: distributive justice  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. Nicomachean Ethics , 3.5, 1130b;
  2. Uwe Wesel : History of the law. From the early forms to the present . 3rd revised and expanded edition. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-47543-4 . Marg. 124.
  3. ^ Compare in total: Summa theologica , II-II, 57-79; Michael Schramm: Justice . In: LThK 3, Volume 4, pp. 498-500.
  4. Joseph Henrich u. a .: Costly Punishment Across Human Societies . In: Science . tape 312 , June 23, 2006, doi : 10.1126 / science.1127333 . Christopher Schrader: Ultimatum on Fiji . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 23, 2006 (article on Henrich et al.).
  5. Joseph Henrich u. a .: Costly Punishment Across Human Societies . 2006, p. 1767, fig. 1 .
  6. ^ World Income Inequality Database
  7. Y.Amiel, FACowell: Thinking about inequality . 1999, ISBN 0-521-46696-2
  8. ISO / IEC DIS 2382-16: 1996 defines this distance in information theory as " redundancy ".
  9. When specifying unequal distribution coefficients, information should always be given about the type of data aggregation. One possibility is to describe the type of quantile on whose data the calculation is based. In this case, these are equal deciles. In Hauser / Becker: Distribution of Income, Expertise for the Second Poverty and Wealth Report of the Federal Government , Frankfurt 2004, p. 96; cited in the DGB presentation on distribution justice , p. 34, these deciles are also given for Germany. Evaluation (year and Gini coefficient): 1998: 38.9% and 2003: 41.7%