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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (93494)	11/4/2008 12:44:28 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541518

Going back to the distribution of property when a couple separates, I'm still not quite sure why you object to the word "fair." I don't object to the word, "fair." I need to back up a bit. This is going to be long. My apologies in advance. This subject started with my taking exception to the notion that OF COURSE governing is ALL ABOUT FAIRNESS--that applying the overarching fairness metric is how we produce "good families, good neighbors, good countries and good civilizations." I was challenging the "of course," the notion that fairness is so obviously inherent to everything, key to everything, that no rationale for using it as a metric is required. The point of offering the anecdote about my divorce settlement was not to deny the existence of fairness or the situational utility of fairness an emotion or as a metric but to counter the "of course" by demonstrating that operating without the fairness prism not only exists in this world but works. So my point one has been that using the fairness metric is not a given but a choice. Point two is that it's a poor choice. You may recall a piece from Brooks posted here maybe a week ago--you commented on it--about errors in decision making and how so many were made in step one, the perception of the problem. If we perceive problems as questions of fairness, we get different results than if we frame them some other way. Sure, fairness can be applied in most any scenario that includes more than one person but is that optimal? And, more important, is that the optimal default frame for matters of governance? We all have default ways of framing things. Right/wrong and moral/immoral are very common. We get that a lot from the religious, the family values crowd, and the lower-left-brainers. My personal favorite frame is constructive/non-constructive. Sometimes I express "helpful" or "useful" or "healthy" or "smart" rather than "constructive." Sometimes I use a workability/feasibility frame. I almost never use the words, "right," "moral" and "fair" because I don't find the notions behind them, er, helpful. I'd hate to see the country adopt a default governance frame of fairness. If we frame things in terms of fairness, we invite resentments, unhealthy competitiveness, and "othering," which isn't constructive. We set ourselves up with a moving target, which isn't workable. We also invite emotional responses rather than practical, thoughtful ones, also problematic. All of which might not be so bad if fairness were a potentially achievable goal, but it's not. So, re your question, again, I don't object to the word, "fair." And if folks want to approach their divorce settlements with a fairness prism, whatever that means to them, that's none of my business. I would offer only the suggestion that doing so is a choice, not a given, and they might be better of considering a variety of options. However one applies logic to the situation, it would seem that the goal would have to be one in which neither party is disadvantaged by the outcome. And isn't "fairness" just a shorter way of identifying that goal? I would not assume that to be the goal of any couple or either of the parties. If I were facilitating the discussion, I'd start by getting the parties to clarify their goals. Take the idea of equal pay for equal work. On what basis can one argue against paying women less than men for doing the same job? If that's not a question of fairness, what is? IMO there's no justification for paying women less than men for doing the same job equally well. Now, you can frame just about anything as a question of fairness if you want to. It's really easy to do so in your example. But is that the most useful way to frame it? Say the woman in the next cubicle is earning less than you for the same work and you don't think that is fair. So you go to your boss and state your case in terms of fairness. Your boss rolls his eyes and ushers you out. The woman feels victimized and resentful of the boss, you, and the world, you feel guilty and inept, the boss thinks you're an idiot, and the woman is still earning less. Another personal experience, this one from my management consulting days. It's common for management problems to include claims of unfairness from employees. I've dealt with bunches of them. In my reports you would find acknowledgment of the perceived unfairness in the findings section. You would not find any reference to fairness in the conclusion or recommendations sections. Because it is just not useful. No one knows what to do with charges of unfairness. That's why they call a consultant. The consultant needs to analyze the complaints, ferret out the underlying problems and address them in the appropriate frame. There may be productivity, communications, competence or other issues. Making it a fairness issue effectively makes in unsolvable. There's always a more apt and more effective frame. [(This topic engages me because I seem to be missing the fairness gene just like I'm missing the religious gene. Maybe it's because I was an only child so I didn't grow up with typical fairness issues. Maybe it's just temperament. Dunno. One day I just looked back and realized that I never viewed things in terms of fairness. I'm also missing the offended gene. It's all but impossible to offend me. Now that wasn't accidental. It was self-applied cognitive therapy plus later job training. "Missing genes" tends to give one a different vantage point.]