"It seems to me morally a decent society will try to take some of the increased benefit and use that to alleviate the pain of the few who are bearing the cost that made it possible"
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Progress often produces gains that are widely shared while imposing losses that are concentrated and personal. The line draws a moral through-line from that asymmetry to the obligations of a community. If the prosperity of the many was enabled by sacrifices borne by a few, fairness requires channeling part of the upside to ease the downside. It is an ethic of reciprocity applied to public policy.
Economists describe many reforms as efficient because the winners gain more than the losers lose. That is only a potential justification unless compensation actually happens. Turning potential efficiency into lived justice means using some of the surplus to help those displaced by trade, automation, deregulation, or environmental transition. Not all costs are monetary; dislocation, loss of identity, and community decline are real harms that deserve redress.
The phrase some of the increased benefit is careful. It does not demand confiscation or stasis; it affirms dynamism while insisting that the social contract travel with it. Relief can take the form of wage insurance, retraining, portable benefits, relocation support, or direct dividends, as in proposals to return carbon pricing revenue to households. The point is not merely charity but legitimacy: people will accept change, even painful change, if they can see themselves in the gains and are not left to shoulder burdens alone.
There is also a prudential dimension. Failing to share gains breeds backlash and erodes trust in institutions. Sharing gains, by contrast, preserves consent for growth-enhancing policies and sustains a common civic project. Tim Bishop, a former U.S. representative from New York, often framed policy in terms of how to preserve opportunity without abandoning those whom creative destruction displaces. The standard he invokes is both moral and practical: a decent society does not deny the calculus of efficiency, but it refuses to let that calculus be the last word.
Economists describe many reforms as efficient because the winners gain more than the losers lose. That is only a potential justification unless compensation actually happens. Turning potential efficiency into lived justice means using some of the surplus to help those displaced by trade, automation, deregulation, or environmental transition. Not all costs are monetary; dislocation, loss of identity, and community decline are real harms that deserve redress.
The phrase some of the increased benefit is careful. It does not demand confiscation or stasis; it affirms dynamism while insisting that the social contract travel with it. Relief can take the form of wage insurance, retraining, portable benefits, relocation support, or direct dividends, as in proposals to return carbon pricing revenue to households. The point is not merely charity but legitimacy: people will accept change, even painful change, if they can see themselves in the gains and are not left to shoulder burdens alone.
There is also a prudential dimension. Failing to share gains breeds backlash and erodes trust in institutions. Sharing gains, by contrast, preserves consent for growth-enhancing policies and sustains a common civic project. Tim Bishop, a former U.S. representative from New York, often framed policy in terms of how to preserve opportunity without abandoning those whom creative destruction displaces. The standard he invokes is both moral and practical: a decent society does not deny the calculus of efficiency, but it refuses to let that calculus be the last word.
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| Topic | Justice |
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