Social Justice

Social justice aims to put philosophical concepts of equal access to wealth, health, and opportunity into practice. If our political, economic, and other systems are discriminating against people, social justice aims to level the playing field and right the wrongs.

In an economic sense, social justice can be thought of as fair access to utility. That is: to maximize the well-being for most people in society, utility needs to be spread out among people in a non-discriminatory way. The less discrimination there is against minority groups (by class, race, sex, gender, sexual orientation), the more utility everyone has access to, and the better off society is as a whole.

Also, in the economic sense, discrimination is actually hurtful to the economy. Like in real, hard numbers, it decreases output. So there’s that, too.

To be clear, social justice doesn’t necessarily equate with egalitarianism, socialism, or any other -isms. It’s just about getting justice...righting wrongs...for groups and people who have been wronged by those in power.

Social justice goes waaayyy back, though, before we were even talking about economics. Pretty much every religion has some kind of social justice philosophy...which makes sense, right? Otherwise, why would we ascribe to it?