Social Justice: What Is It?

from Tom Woods' Episode 2595, "The Myth of Social Justice," January 18, 2025.

Find Wanjiru Njoya's Twitter. Her books. Her latest,  Economic Freedom and Social Justice: The Classical Ideal of Equality in Contexts of Racial Diversity, Wanjiru Njoya, 2021.

Most people think of distributive justice when they hear social justice.  

14:48. I want to get back on the Justice thing.  I've diverted us a little bit.  A false assumption about this is that in a purely private society that we would have to pay exactly the same amount for poor relief that we're paying now, but the bureaucracy, I know for years that the statistic was at 70% of your dollar going through the federal government relief system was getting eaten up before it gets to anybody.  So only 30% is getting there anyway.   So right off the bat, it's just 30%.  Secondly, I do think it's the case that when some anonymous distant institution sends you a check with your name on it, you know, there's no shame associated with that.  I don't think you feel overwhelmingly compelled to get your act together and get off of that.  But when there's people in your neighborhood, and you know they're not doing that great either but they're pitching in for you, well, unless you're a complete and utter deadbeat, you would feel a compulsion to pull your weight, and figure something out come what may. It's interesting.  It's not to deny that people have hard times at times, but you know, as having grown up in a neighborhood where I saw one of the stuff going on, people would be out of work and then suddenly it would turn out that they weren't really out of work.  They were just being paid under the table.  And then when the unemployment benefits ran out suddenly they were employed legitimately.  My point is that the amount that you would actually have to raise to make life livable for these people is much much lower than what we're spending now.

16:40. One more point that has to do with reparations because I think it's linked to what you're saying, the way the whole reparations debate has proceeded people are assuming it'll be personally in that way.  That if you're a black person, you will somehow see that your white neighbor who is struggling more than you is paying you reparations.  That's what people imagine because they say, you know, why should a white person, who is struggling, have to pay to a black person?  But, of course, that's not what's going to happen because I used to ask the same question.  I used to say,  "Wouldn't black people feel ashamed of having reparations when they can see their white neighbors struggling?  So they're getting money.  So let's take the example of people who are getting $220,000 to buy a house.  How would you feel knowing that your neighbor has to struggle to get their house when you just got free money off them to buy yours?  But, of course, that's not how it's going to work.  As you said, they're just going to get a check from the government, so it's coming out of taxes, reparations are coming out of taxes.  It's not coming out of communities helping each other.  So it's such a good example of what you're describing