Values et cetera

Metaphysics and Epistemology
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What people deserve is a matter of justice. If people are attempting to gain the same value, than the creator or holder of the value is the one who is supposed to determine who deserves (if any) anything of theres and why.

Well, justice is more or less synonymous with giving people what they deserve but, naturally enough, different people make different claims as to what is just. In particular, the idea that the creator of value deserves that value has three problems:

  1. It is not the only conceivable concept of justice. Others argue that people deserve equal outcomes. Or, more importantly, different people flourish under different concepts of justice (either in their pursuit or their enjoyment thereof).

  2. It is not trivial to discern who is the creator of value. Adam Smith and Karl Marx put forward different claims here.

  3. Even setting the above aside, even if we agreed on a capitalist concept of justice, it is impractical to actually allocate value to the creator. There is always a spillover effect. If I start a business I create jobs or new products that benefit others beyond what they receive or pay in the market.

However, I think the question we want to ask is why one should defer to the decisions of somone else when it comes to the values they have to offer. My answer at the moment is that defering to the creator of a value when it comes to negotating for that value is a good course of action in the long term is because violating the rights of the producer is an attack on the source of the very thing you value. Its clear though that one can get away with doing something like that though and still benefit from it, but that is beside the point, because this argument was meant to establish a principle, not a give you an absolute rule to all behavior.

This takes too much for granted. If a lion takes down a gazelle she has created meat to share with her pride. If I conquer a territory have I not created value to dispense among my lords and knights?

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  1. I presented an argument for my/egoist definition of justice and my argument for one why should care about justice. I see no reason to consider other theories about the issue until they are presented.

  2. Animals don’t create values.

A territory wouldn’t be of use to any knights or lords, maybe to a farmer, but not knights.

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I presented an argument for my/egoist definition of justice and my argument for one why should care about justice. I see no reason to consider other theories about the issue until they are presented.

Here is what you said previously:

What people deserve is a matter of justice. If people are attempting to gain the same value, than the creator or holder of the value is the one who is supposed to determine who deserves (if any) anything of theres and why.

I don’t see any sort of persuasive argument there, only an assertion or two including the equivalence I noted in my own post.

That (some) people do care about justice is a fact of life. But what they mean by justice varies considerably. Simply asserting one among many competing concepts of justice is not an argument.

Animals don’t create values.

Of course, I was being figurative. If you prefer we can discuss human predators.

A territory wouldn’t be of use to any knights or lords, maybe to a farmer, but not knights.

Lords and knights sublet the land to peasants who do the farming for a portion of the food.

My purpose is not to dump on you but to show how difficult a problem this is.