I 'spect Beck is getting his notions about social justice from Hayek.
John Tomasi of Brown University will deliver the March "Bradley Lecture" at the American Enterprise Institute. The title of his lecture is "F. A. Hayek, Spontaneous Order, and the Mirage of Social Justice."
To apply notions of justice to the relative holdings of people across an entire society, Hayek says, is simply confusion. The term "social justice," Hayek tells us, "does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone.'" On this orthodox reading, Hayek is opposed to social justice. Indeed, in one place Hayek compares a belief in social justice to a belief in witches. So Hayek is for Ron Paul. And he is opposed to Barack Obama--not just in terms of policy strategy but in terms of basic moral ideals.
There is a problem with this simple reading of Hayek, however, and it has much vexed Hayek scholars. For while claiming to reject social justice, Hayek often invokes a standard of social justice in arguing for his Ron Paul-like policies of limited government. Thus, Hayek says repeatedly that a society of free markets and limited government will be beneficial to all citizens, providing each his best chance of using his own information for his own purposes. On occasions where he fears that the market system may not have this hoped-for result, infamously, Hayek advocates governmental correctives: a guaranteed minimum income, public funding for schools, and an array of social services for needy families--all to be funded by increased taxation. Perhaps we would merely call this Obama-Lite. But whatever we call it, it looks a lot like a concern for the pattern of material holdings across the whole society--a concern, that is, for social justice. |
