Supporters of liberty, limited government and rule of law will never win our argument, in the public arena, until we can compellingly make the case that free markets and voluntary exchange are inherently fairer than alternative forms of social organization. Proving that free markets and voluntary exchange lead to higher living standards, greater wealth and greater liberty is not nearly as persuasive as the argument that free markets and voluntary exchange are morally superior.
Interventionists make their case for social controls and income redistribution based on the unfairness of outcomes such as differences in income, education and wealth. Most people find that argument quite persuasive. After all how can the game of life possibly be fair when some people's yearly income totals in the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, while many others scarcely earn ten or twenty thousand dollars? Our response to the interventionist's claim of unfairness should be that results or outcomes cannot possibly determine fairness.
Here's one way to think about it. The Chicago Bulls basketball team has won the league championship five times out of the last seven years. There are twenty teams in the NBA league. Is it fair that one team wins league championships so often? By knowing simply the results of basketball competition, or for that matter any other competition, can anyone give an unambiguous answer as to whether there's been basketball justice? The answer is no. Chicago's winning might be a result of a collusion between the Chicago Bull players, referees and timekeepers or it could be the result of superior playing ability of Chicago's players.
Justice or fairness of any outcome can only be meaningfully determined by examining process. To determine whether the outcome, where the Chicago Bulls dominates league winnings, is fair or not, one must ask process questions such as: (1) Did the players play according to the rules of the game, i.e., obey basketball "law"? (2) Did referees apply those rules in an unbiased fashion and were penalties evenly exacted for infractions? (3) And was there voluntary participation? If the rules of the games were obeyed and enforced in an unbiased fashion and the teams participated voluntarily, then any outcome (Chicago winning all the time or losing all the time) is consistent with basketball fairness and justice.
Similarly, consider a game of poker where three players play regularly. Mr. A wins 60 percent of the time; Mr. B wins 30 percent of the time and Mr. C wins only ten percent of the time. With the knowledge of the poker game outcome, what can we possibly conclude about fairness? The outcome is consistent with Mr. A being an astute and lucky player or with his being a clever cheater. Mr. C's poor showing could be a result from his ineptitude, bad luck or victimization by Mr. A's clever cheating.
In order to say anything meaningful about whether there has been poker justice requires, like in basketball, that we ask process questions like: did the players play voluntarily, did everyone obey Hoyle's rules of poker (poker law), were the cards unmarked, was there honest dealing? If affirmative answers can be given to each of those questions, then any game outcome was fair or just.
Suppose we forsake the process approach to determining fairness and justice and take the results-oriented approach. We say that based upon the outcome, whereby the Chicago Bulls win disproportionately, something should be done to create basketball justice. One approach would be to control the distribution of championship winners by the creation of a Board of Game Deciders. Under such an arrangement, team owners and coaches, might present their cases to the Board of Game Deciders. Washington Wizards (formerly Baltimore Bullets) coach Bernie Bickerstaff might argue that his team has not won the NBA championship for twenty years and is truly deserving of a win in 1999. He might strengthen his argument by pointing out how hard his players worked in the off-season to maintain physical fitness. They attended all practice sessions and did everything assistant coaches asked to develop good mental health, fitness and skill. Moreover, Coach Bickerstaff might ask the Board to consider the great psychological damage and embarrassment his players face being seen by friends, fans, families, investors, and the press as perennial losers.
One can well imagine the resulting conflict and rancor that would develop over the issue of which team is most deserving of the NBA championship. We would find decent people becoming bitter enemies over who had the more just and persuasive case to be declared winners.
The fact of the matter is NBA championship games are played every year, as well as championship games in football, baseball, and tennis, with little or no hatred and bitterness among the contenders who have as many reasons for deserving to win as there are players. How is it that people having such conflicting interests, and reasons for winning, play a game, agree with the outcome, and walk away as good sports? It is a minor miracle of sorts.
The "miracle" is that it is far easier to reach agreement about rules of a game than outcomes. Even basketball teams in the cellar, or poor poker players, will conclude that their long rule interests lie in rules that are durable and applied evenhandedly. They can more adequately plan their winning strategy because predictability is enhanced. For example, if a coach yearns for a NBA championship, he can recruit and train superior talent, scout winning teams to see what they are doing and spend more money on assistant coaches to get the best out of players. On the other hand, if it was the outcome, rather than the rules, that was predetermined, what might a team owner do? Instead of trying to raise team productivity, owners would allocate resources to lobbying the Board of Game Deciders officials who determine the game's outcome, and bringing lawsuits for what they see as biased Board decisions. There would be at least two predictable negative results. Predetermined outcomes would lower the skills and fitness of all players and lower the overall quality of the sport. After all, if winning the NBA championship is the owner's goal, why spend resources recruiting and training superior players if team productivity has little to do with winning? Predetermination of outcomes would also heighten interpersonal conflict over the outcome.
We might ponder a moment to discuss rules (laws) themselves, for there can be considerable disagreement over rules. In coming to an agreement about what are good rules, we should not evaluate rules in terms of the likely outcomes they will produce for certain people under a specific set of circumstances. Instead, rules should be evaluated more generally in terms of the long-run opportunities they create for a wide variety of people under a wide variety of circumstances. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek argued, "It is the ignorance of the future outcome which makes possible agreement on rules which serve as common means for a variety of purposes." To the extent we can have a reasonable discussion about what is fair, the discussion must be centered around rules and people's behavior with respect to those rules. This does not mean that certain outcomes cannot be deemed undesirable, but so long as they result from adherence to generally agreed upon rules they cannot be labeled as unfair.
Returning to our basketball and poker examples, many may deem it undesirable for the Chicago Bulls to dominate the league or Mr. C winning at poker only ten percent of the time. However, despite that consensus, one cannot call the outcome unfair; because if we deem disappointing outcomes as unfair, then the term fair has no meaning whatsoever. The reason is that virtually all human actions and outcomes can be interpreted as unfair in one sense or another in that they produce a disappointing outcome for someone else.
The mass production of automobiles, thereby making them financially accessible to more people, produced a disappointing outcome for buggy manufacturers and their employees. The invention and marketing of handheld calculators produced a disappointing outcome for producers of slide rulers. My marrying Mrs. Williams produced a disappointing outcome for other women. In each of these instances, and millions more, the actions taken by one person or group of persons produces undesirable outcomes for others.
Therefore, to the extent we can say anything meaningful about fairness and just conduct, it has to be centered around the question: did the actors play according to commonly agreed upon rules? But questions about justice cannot be fully settled simply by asking whether people conducted themselves according to rules. All societies have rules. In pre-Civil War United States, there was the rule that blacks could be owned as slaves. In Nazi Germany, there were rules that Jews could be relocated to work camps. In the former Soviet Union, there were rules that a citizen could not emigrate freely. Conduct in accordance with rules or laws alone can never be the sole criterion for establishing fairness. We must think about the nature of just rules and laws.
When we discuss just rules for our market relationships, we will find that they are not substantively different from basketball and poker rules. In the marketplace, just rules surely include the right to property and its transference by consent and the right to engage in peaceable, voluntary exchange. If these rights are protected, any result is just and fair, including the fact that some people are very rich and others are very poor.
Thus, the important task for we who cherish liberty is to focus our arguments on the rules of the game. In doing so, we should make the case that there is not total fairness in the rules governing our market relationships. That unfairness masks itself as social caring in the form of many laws that restrict rights to property and peaceable voluntary exchange such as: occupational and business licensing laws, laws that set minimum and maximum prices and otherwise dictate the terms of exchange, regulation of economic activity and legalized theft.
Even though libertarians share goals of interventionists such as higher living standards and greater wealth for our fellow man, we differ on means. That's because we look to process and they look to results as a criterion for justice. If we could argue our case more effectively, and through the political arena eliminate unfair rules, both libertarians and interventionists would be pleased with the results: greater prosperity for all.
Walter E. Williams
Ideas on Liberty, October 1998
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