Why should life or societies be fair? What is driving fairness?

We had an interesting discussion about fairness last night at the New Westminster Ideas Cafe.

Is fairness subjective and relative to the observer?  It would seem that way given the example from Shula about the perspective of the driver versus the pedestrian and how each think the other should behave.  The interesting point is that when the driver gets out of the car to walk and the pedestrian gets into the car to drive, it does not take long for them to change their perspective to their new identities.

This rapid change in view point brings the two perspectives in consideration and remind us how much we change when we change our perspectives.

Fairness then involve understanding the two or more sides of the situation and the compromises that inevitably is required for these sides to coexist.

Even with these perspectives, and the understanding of these perspectives,  there can still be several points of compromise that can be reasonably "fair" positions.  These can be arrived at from different considerations such as waiting time of the pedestrian versus the driver, safety of the pedestrian, stop and go of the vehicle etc.

Fairness is therefore a concept that is superior to equal treatment in one dimension only but tries to encompass other considerations to arrive at an overall equitable situation for all parties.

RJ mentioned that the courts do not want to address "fairness" but strive for equality under the law.  The legal system therefore is our attempt to strive for fairness but we will have to settle for equality in particular matters.

Why do we esteem fairness as a desirable trait for our society? Perhaps against our evolutionary self interest to give up some of our benefits to share with others in the name of fairness?

One possibility is that we all want to live and be part of a social group that is fair. Partly because we may be on the other side of this fairness evaluation someday and therefore investing in fairness today by sharing may benefit us later on.  The other part is that self interest is a lonely pursuit and against our social nature to be accepted and valued by others of our social group.

Shula reminded us that we are unfair when it comes to treatment of our children versus other children.  We all want the best there is for our children.  We still teach them to share with other children but we treat our children better.

This unfair treatment extends to other social boundaries beyond our families to our immediate neighbourhood, our city, our province, our country etc.  There is always an unfair bias to our social group and this fairness line gradually shifts as our social group definition gets bigger.

Therefore, it seems that we have these two competing considerations of self interest versus group interest.

We like to be part of a stable social group but that stability is promoted at the expense of some of our self interest.

This compromise of self interest versus group interest continues on to interest of the social group we are currently in versus the social group that is immediately outside of our current group.

For people living outside of the Vancouver area, is it fair to have the province spend money on the Winter Olympics ?

I am sure that they would rather have money spent in their area but they would also like to be in a province that had raised its image because of the Olympics.

Is it fair to have paid sick leave when some people are sick more often than others? Abuses aside, it is much easier to say yes if the sick person happens to be a close friend or relative than a stranger.

Again, we have made progress in understanding fairness but only to find that there is much more to be discovered!