Fairness

I often laugh when someone declares a thing to be fair. Fairness is a funny illusion. It’s one of our most useful illusions, but it’s an illusion nonetheless.

Imagine trying to “fairly” divide ten identical marbles between two kids. You could give five marbles to each kid, wave your arms and declare it fair. The kids would probably agree with this arrangement. The illusion of fairness works.

Is five marbles apiece actually fair?

Don’t you need to know how many marbles each kid already owns? What if one kid has a thousand and the other has none? The marginal utility of an extra marble is much higher for the marble-poor kid.

Doesn’t their different level of enthusiasm for marbles come into play? If you think about it, you’re trying to be fair with their happiness, not their marbles. What if one kid loves marbles five times more than the other? In that case, the fair thing to do is give most of the marbles to the kid who doesn’t enjoy them as much. He needs more marbles to obtain the same level of happiness as the marble lover gets with one. Of course that solution would cause one kid to melt down because it wouldn’t have the illusion of fairness.

Even the simplest example of fairness falls apart when you put it under scrutiny. Luckily, people are morons, so they imagine fairness where none exists. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.

I was thinking of fairness the other day when considering my next car purchase. I figure I need to do my part to conserve energy. I considered buying a fuel-efficient car that would give me no joy whatsoever. It’s the fair thing to do. We all need to pitch in.

Then I remembered I’ve never procreated. That’s a huge energy savings. When you create new humans, they start leaving the lights on, driving, eating, pooping, and doing all sorts of energy-inefficient things. By not creating any new humans, I’m saving a huge amount of energy!

I walk to work. That saves a lot of fuel too. If you consider my total energy drain on the planet, I could own a small fleet of gas-guzzlers and still be greener than 95% of the citizens of the United States. That seems fair to me.

If you were the judge in this decision, and considered all the facts, would you give me a Hummer?

Comments

[vader1941]

No procreation! They need more people like you in India or Bangladesh. If you ask them, maybe someone will send you a freight-load of children. You can use them as Hummer fuel, or food, or for extra organs, or whatever you like, there are just too many of them.

[Pascal]

By all means get the Hummer. After the damage a Prius battery does to the environment and the relatve inefficiency of driving it compared to a Hummer (http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188) I'd rather get that.

Personally, I drive a '67 Mustang because it's a fun car to drive. I do less than 2000 miles a year, so not too worried when so many of my countrymen would drive a 100 yards to the corner grocery.

[arlo]

maybe we should give charlie manson his own hummer factory..

[Air Phloo]

While not procreating certainly has environmental benefits, at least avoiding environmental costs, there are other benefits to society that come from offspring. We may be having too many children as a whole, but we still need some people to reproduce. It is just too bad that the people most qualified to raise a child (educated and affluent) are the only ones choosing not to.

[Morten]

Come on, Scott...

Everyone can see that this is just a cheap way for you to round up some good excuses you can use when justifying to your wife that you bought a Hummer. Just go over to whereever you hid the Hummer, drive it home to the wife and take the beating you obviously have coming to you.

Then, and only then, can you start enjoying your new Hummer...

Morten

[Noah Vaile]

Fairness, I'll tell you fairness. You're sitting playing games on your PC and everything is right with the world and then the power goes off and when it comes back on your computer is set to miniature and none of your games are visible much less playable and where's tyhs fairness in that....? Fair is for jerks. F**K fair. Just try and fix a problem in Windows. huh? go ahead... And don't tell me to get aMac. I did. But thyat doesn't help my PC now, does it?

[naz]

Scott, I think it's fair to thnak the Gods of Procreation that your genes end here.
p.s. Yes, thnak is a typo, but just imagine what it would feel like to thnak the Gods of Creation. It would be sweaty, and I reckon very awkward what with the other Gods watching (Bacchus, you perv, you know who I'm referring to) but the benefits would be the ability to crush snakes in your cradle, lift wild boars, get free boots from Mercury and have your liver pecked out on a daily basis. (My dodgy understanding of Greek mythology)

[wolfger]

"Fair" is not an illusion at all. It's just poorly defined. Dictionary.com has 31 different definitions of "fair". At least 3 of them are applicable to the marbles example.
Moreover, the way people use "fair" (i.e. "That's not fair!") is often out of touch with any dictionary definition whatsoever. People often say something "isn't fair" simply because they don't like it (although I guess, technically, they could be using definition #13). That's not fair.
What we need is a better, more accurate, language. Whenever you have 31 definitions for 1 word, there's bound to be problems.

[Wolfger]

"Fair" is not an illusion at all. It's just poorly defined. Dictionary.com has 31 different definitions of "fair". At least 3 of them are applicable to the marbles example.
Moreover, the way people use "fair" (i.e. "That's not fair!") is often out of touch with any dictionary definition whatsoever. People often say something "isn't fair" simply because they don't like it (although I guess, technically, they could be using definition #13). That's not fair.
What we need is a better, more accurate, language. Whenever you have 31 definitions for 1 word, there's bound to be problems.

[HS]

Marbles, environmental issues. You have said it yourself here, life isn't fair.

So someone has a lot of kids and has his own plane and 6 cars. Does that mean you have to have the right to equally destroy the environment? That's not marbles, that's like defending abusing someone on the grounds that someone else has abused a lot more or even killed.

Now this is starting to sound like I want to take everyone's marbles away... But if the marbles were dangerous, would you give them to kids? That's the thing about the polluting cars and things. They are not just fun, they may kill us all.

My not fair but reasonable solution is that you can't get a Hummer, but you can have other fun stuff you enjoy. Kids also accept reasonable solutions, if you explain them.

[charmaine]

have you ever taken a lesson in economics? check out equity vs equality in wikipedia or something. gah.

[Tom]

How many square inches of newspaper does Dilbert appear on each day? It has to be more than a million. Scott, you should buy a Mini-Cooper.

[Kilgore J. Trout]

Maybe if I was a hard up girl.

[Bulbboy]

Hummer: only if you use it as a sculpture inside your house, a la Hugh Grant's scooter in 'About A Boy'.

Kids: 5 marbles apiece, the more enterprising one could maybe exchange them for a Dilbert book.

[Bill]

If the recent studies on gas hydrates are right, we actually have TOO MUCH fossil fuel for our own good:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070423114156.htm

[arlo]

baaah, hummer, john travolta has TWO airplanes..

[Thmz]

No, cuz Hummers are ugly. Guzzle gas in a Ferrari or something.

[Gustaf Sjöblom]

Scott, to your question in the end I choose to answer by your illusion of fairness concept applied to it.

A car is primarily a means to an end, getting from point A to B. It can be more than that but quite possibly at large cost on the enviorment It is exactly the kind of thing that we should be prepared to give up on in an effort to improve on the enviorment.

One of the big problems however is that for each thing that we could give up there will always be someone who would very much like to retain that very special thing. Being liberal enough to let people do choises like that we do want to refrain from forcing it, on that I'm sure most of us agree.

Then the concept of "fairness illusion" make others unwilling to give it up even if it matters a whole lot less to them. This leads to everyone still doing all the less good things since their neighbor is doing it, instead of just doing the things that they themselves value too high to be willing to give up. Our illusion of fairness is a big problem for the fight for a better enviorment, less poverty and a whole lot of other problems in the world.

So I would gladly let you have the Hummer if it would mean very much for you, I would however ask you to consider if it really is that important. I do however belive that the fact that you even considered a more enviorment friendly car makes it very likely that not that important for you.

There is no reason to fill your "quota", do only the things that really matter to you and you will live a full life without feeling that you are part of the problem.

[sven]

I thought you already owned a nice bimmer?

[Aaron Ortiz]

Justice can only be dispensed by an omniscient being, otherwise it becomes merely a convenient fiction, like free will.

[Aaron Ortiz]

Justice can only be dispensed by an omniscient being, otherwise it becomes merely a convenient fiction, like free will.

[Kelly Cho]

That procreation statement almost made me fall off my chair! LOL!

What about a bio-diesel Hummer? Fair enough?

[RavenBlack]

The correct distribution of marbles is to give the kid that likes five marbles five of the marbles, and then exchange the other five marbles for something that makes the other kid equally happy and give them that. Perfect, equal distribution of resources *and* everyone gets equal utility.

Also very likely impossible, since five marbles are unlikely to exchange for something of equal personal value. Solution - everyone should like marbles, then we'd all be happy all the time at very little resource cost.

[~C4Chaos]

of course you are entitled to buy what you want. i think you're a reasonable guy, Scott and you'd consider your values to reflect your purchase. same way you choose to be vegetarian.

but imho, if i have your money, i'll have more joy riding this:

http://www.lexus.com/hybriddrive/

or, if i really want to show off, i'd buy this:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

instead of this piece of crap :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caterina/9447686/

my two cents.

~C

[Aaron Furious]

Scott,
I think I love you. Civil-union me.