Two Diverging Approaches to Social Justice

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Last week, I asked what you think about an argument between Petra and Rodrigo.

(As a reminder: Petra thinks people should do their job, narrowly construed, as well as they can. CEOs should maximize profits. ER doctors should strive to save the life of every patient. Lawyers should do their best to represent every client. Scholars should publish their findings as accurately as possible. And parking-meter attendants should write citations without regard for who is getting them. Rodrigo thinks the world is better if everyone is not only doing their job, but taking a broader view. CEOs should feel a social responsibility to donate some corporate profits. ER doctors should treat shooting victims before treating the shooting perpetrators. Lawyers should try less hard when their clients are odious. Scholars should withhold findings that cut against social justice. And parking-meter attendants should give a break to, say, a shift worker who always refills her meter but is regularly five minutes late because at her job, she must clock in and out on the hour.)

Replies have been edited for length and clarity.

Ann argues that your conscience should be your guide:

What we say and do matters. What we feel within ourselves as we are doing our work matters. It matters what is in our hearts. I would not want to live in a world as described by Petra or Rodrigo. Each option is, in its own way, too narrow. In every situation, let your heart guide you. We can “stay in our lane” when that seems the right thing to do, and we can step out of line and perhaps stand up for something larger than ourselves when to do so feels right and true for us. Living from our hearts means being true to ourselves. It means living with integrity. It means acquiring, honoring, and applying wisdom.

Errol worries about ad hoc judgments:

I believe we all have a moral duty, especially in situations such as law and medicine, to treat everyone on a completely equal basis, because we cannot reliably achieve enough accurate context to determine just how gray the situation is to justify treating them differently. We must acknowledge our fallibility. So I have to side with Petra on most occasions.

Florian agrees:

No individual alone has an accurate understanding of “society.” From my perspective, improving society might mean something very different from what the person next door may think, and both of us are probably wrong. Acts of good in the world are something all of us should do. If you really want to do good, do your job well. If someone is sent to the hospital and finds a competent surgeon, if someone is in court and has a competent lawyer, that is when they are assured that life is better than it could be. Do not think about “society” but rather about what you can do here and now to help others.

Peter dissents:

While it’s most efficient to focus on your speciality, how can you know the broader consequences of your actions if you do not understand the big picture? Humanity faces uncountable problems exactly because people are too focused. Most people who buy a T-shirt or a can of tuna do not think of social justice, climate change, or biodiversity loss, and that’s exactly the reason why consumerism is so destructive. Capitalism is so successful because it is efficient and has maximized division of labor, but that is why its ability to destroy the planet is equally gigantic. In theory, educated politicians would make smart decisions in the interest of both the people and the environment, but many, if not most, politicians are elected by short-sighted consumers who often don’t even care if their representatives make an honest attempt to understand the world.

Ryan disagrees with Petra, at least when it comes to business:

As a public-affairs and public-relations professional, I find the notion that companies and other economic actors should “stay in their lane” risible. As a social scientist, I find it flawed and applied in inconsistent—one might say hypocritical—ways. In Petra’s understanding, each actor occupies a clearly and easily circumscribed lane. A CEO is only a CEO; a lawyer is only a provider of legal services; a doctor is only a provider of health care; a company is only a provider of goods and services. Every economic actor is only an economic actor. It’s not just a description but a role, and in this role, the goal of the actor is clear, and so are the means of achieving it. None of that is actually true in the real world.

Firstly, people are economic, political, societal, familial, and personal actors at all times in all places.

Secondly, the same is true for companies. The economy does not exist in a vacuum inside of which companies can maximize their earnings without simultaneously impacting and being impacted by society and all of its cooperating and competing nonbusiness factions.

Thirdly, we know this is the case because companies are engaging in politics literally all the time. When they’re donating to candidates and PACs, they’re engaging in politics. When they’re paying lobbyists to influence laws and regulations, they’re engaging in politics. When they make private decisions about issues of public concern (e.g., wages, parental leave, off-shoring), they are engaging in politics. These are seen as “in their lane,” so companies get a pass on this from folks with Petra’s worldview, but this is still politics, and politics is also not a vacuum. For example, Petra would say a company lobbying for lower taxes is in its lane, but if the company were to come out in favor of the subsidized child care those taxes are meant to fund, Petra would say the company is out of its lane.

Lastly, politics is a means to achieving some other ends. When a company lobbies on taxes, it is seeking to maximize profits. That’s a very easy-to-understand, direct connection. To Petra, that’s just the role of the CEO doing what they’re supposed to do: pursuing what’s in the interest of the company. That’s still the case, however, even when Petra doesn’t understand how it is in a company’s financial interests to, for example, be seen as an LGBT-friendly brand.

People define the appropriateness of a company’s engagement on an issue based on which side the company takes. When it takes your side, the company is being socially responsible. When it doesn’t, it’s “playing politics” and should “get back in its lane.” This is only a topic of debate because some people with microphones don’t like the things other people with microphones are saying. This issue of other people’s “lane” gives a philosophical patina to what is essentially a way of telling other people to shut up without being impolite.

B.T. favors creating structures that bring about better outcomes:

Rodrigo is right about the kinds of considerations that are necessary for a just society. Petra is right that individuals should ideally be responsible only for following the rules and doing their jobs as best they can. Instead of leaving social and ethical responsibilities up to individual actors, we should use organizations, and government, to make our collective choices about what constitutes just behavior structurally, not idiosyncratically. Corporations should pay taxes that support collective welfare and not be incentivized to dodge them. Triage decisions should be made according to medical ethics codes. Fines should be set up to build grace and accountability into the structure. And lawyers are already required to do their best for every client, for good reason.

When good outcomes depend mostly on the choices of individual actors, rather than structural support, we ask too much of people and we basically rule out real, durable social justice.

Pat tries to improve Rodrigo’s arguments:

I lean toward Rodrigo’s view that these individuals should take a broader view of their impact on the community and society, but not in the same ways his arguments propose. For example, scholars shouldn’t be withholding their work, but they should certainly be thinking about the broader societal implications of the work they are planning before they even start, and including some perspective on those implications in their findings if they do proceed. As for the meter, how about an automatic five-minute grace period for everybody, whether the shift worker who had to clock out, or the office worker who had to wait for the next elevator, or the CEO who stopped long enough to take a call from his wife reminding him to pick his kids up from soccer practice?

Tom is a retired university professor. He writes:

Should scholars “publish their findings as accurately as possible”? Of course. As an engineer and a scientist, I am intellectually a product of the Enlightenment. Should scholars “withhold findings that cut against social justice”? Of course not. Advocacy has a legitimate place in our society, but it should not corrupt academic inquiry. As free citizens, we have lots of opportunities to make our views known honestly, or even dishonestly.

Should lawyers “try less hard when their clients are morally odious”? A lawyer should do enough to avoid legal liability or a mistrial, but if she decides to go home to spend time with her little girl instead of spending the extra time to acquit her clients, that is okay with me.

We live in a world of rules, some formal, some informal. But we should temper our adherence to those rules with the decency and common sense that we probably inherited as behavioral genetic predispositions that result from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as a social species. We have constructed a complex and wonderful cultural edifice, but most of our virtues and vices probably have some evolutionary utility.

I do not mean to denigrate our humanity. We are pretty nice as animals go, nice enough that our toddlers, dogs, and cats love and respect us. If aliens come to Earth and see that, they will probably look at one another, shrug, and take their “death ray” someplace else.

Jackie generally favors Petra’s approach:

In any civilized society, there has to be a social contract with a commonly accepted set of standards. Every person and institution in that society has a role to play, and should try to do it to the best of their ability, and without favoritism. I will concede that strict (or even obsessive) adherence to a set of rules can detach a society from its humanity. Rodrigo’s approach is an empathetic one, by saying that the needs of the less fortunate should come first. The problem is that it’s highly subjective and opens the door to all kinds of errors of judgment without a full understanding of the facts and circumstances. The best we can do is to find balance by recognizing the stakes of each situation, adhering to a rules-based order when the stakes are high, and offering respect and kindness to all.

Parker has a harsher assessment of Rodrigo:

Rodrigo's position is fundamentally advocating for corruption—the belief that rules and laws should be unilaterally bent when a given individual in charge of executing the rules believes that’s what is best (for themselves, for another party, for society, etc.).  This is toxic to any organization, the United States included. Choosing to disobey the laws and rules one’s tasked with executing is the road to the breakdown of those rules altogether.  It’s something that should be considered only after all other approaches have failed. If the scholar is so worried about the ramifications of their findings, they shouldn’t suppress them, but instead get their results further reviewed. If the meter minder is so worried about a particular client, they can avoid ticketing them by filling their meter.

DV shares a story:

Thirty-five years ago my daughter was playing on an elementary-school basketball team. The girls were not very skilled but were having fun. They usually double-dribbled, for example, or walked with the ball.  Of course (sadly), some of the parents started yelling at the referee for not calling fouls (against the other team, of course). He was getting this from both sides. He tried to explain that he was “letting them play,” but the abuse continued. So he called every foul: Five seconds of play, a foul, five seconds of play, a foul, five seconds of play, a foul. It shut up the parents. He went from what was “best” to doing his job “right.”

The problem with this dilemma you pose is that it takes a great deal of “wisdom” to know when to apply either approach. And wisdom is an acquired skill, not one most people are born with. One needs good teachers. Trying to “better the world” without that wisdom will result in “unbettering the world.” It opens an unwise person to the very powerful influence of bias.

R.H. sides with Rodrigo:

I refuse to accept that a person’s job defines in total who a person is. Doing one’s job to the best of one’s ability is certainly admirable in most cases. But if that same person takes no stand of any kind at the injustices that fall before their very eyes, then neutral becomes an evil, if just by default. If the human journey is to be measured, in my opinion, it is to strive for better. Granted, that is subjective, but that is what freedom is about—individuals being free to determine for themselves what better looks like and what they can do to help get us all there. Put another way: How can honor ever be ascribed to one who will not dare to right a wrong? And do we want to live in a world that has no honor?

J.P. can’t quite bring himself to agree:

I’d like to think that Rodrigo’s approach is better for society, but it reminds me of one of my favorite Adam Smith quotes: “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”