Justice Has Made the World Worse

I believe in “moral desert” or “justice” — the idea that people deserve different things. If one is virtuous, it is good for them to be well-off, and if one acts sufficiently badly, it is not good if they prosper. If you freely choose to murder someone, it is not good if you prosper: you haven’t gotten your just desert.

Now, despite this, I’ve recently come to realize something: I think justice has made the world worse. This concept we have — in particular, that people must face some kind of retaliation, or at least be deprived of well-being, for doing something deeply immoral — has very likely driven us to act in ways that make the world way worse than it would otherwise be.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we are incorrect in thinking that justice or desert exists. I think it is indeed a moral ideal. Rather, my point is that our having this belief in desert has probably made the world worse.

Consider the history of war, at a very high level of generality. Many wars in human history — whether they were between tribes, clans, kingdoms, countries — have been waged in large part out of a collective sense of injustice. Some “other” group wronged “our” group (perhaps by killing one of our members, or mistreating one of our members, or wronging us in some other way) and, in response, we wage a full-scale, bloody war that results in lots and lots of death, often significantly more than the original incident, involving many innocents, and far from what might be “deserved”.

A particularly crazy example of this is the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Apparently, in 1731, Spanish coast guards boarded a British ship and maimed its captain, Jenkins, and cut off his left ear. This incident was later used in Britain to stir up outrage at the Spanish, leading to a war with Spain that would eventually kill almost 35,000 people over the course of a decade.

Did those Spanish coast guards deserve some punishment for what they did? Yes, probably so. But moral desert is one of many moral ideals — another of which is welfare. And it is grossly immoral to destroy 35,000 lives simply to get justice. Of course, things aren’t as simple as I describe them: the incident with Jenkins was really more of an excuse used by British politicians to incite the war, and the many casualties came as a result of several tit-for-tats that happened after Britain’s first attack on Spain in response to the Jenkins incident. But if it is foreseeable that your attempt to give enemies their just desert will lead to responses by your enemy, which will snowball into a 10 year war of tens of thousands of deaths, the moral thing to do is to not engage in warfare (assuming your not engaging won’t itself lead to worse consequences).

But this is hard to see in the moment. The idea of seeking justice for a wrong is so deeply ingrained in (at least some) people that it becomes used as a blank check for grossly disproportional amounts of violence in the long term. Even if justice is indeed a moral ideal (as I take it to be), if we were morally perfect this is not how we’d act. Instead, we’d balance the intrinsic value of giving people what they deserve with the expected harms that result from our act, and do the appropriate balancing, inflicting harm only to the extent that it is purely preventative of future harm, or worth it for the intrinsic value of the justice we might be able to serve.

Similar things can be said about much of modern-day foreign policy, from the US war in Iraq to today’s war in Gaza. Gaza is, indeed, a case in point.

First, start with October 7. Many defenders of the attacks by Hamas will appeal to the long history of fighting between Israel and Hamas and various acts of alleged wrongdoing by Israel to the Palestinians. Let’s just grant that this is fully right and that, from the perspective of desert, Israel deserves some sort of punishment. Does that really justify killing thousands of innocent people, which will predictably lead to immediate, prolonged warfare, and likely massive instability across the entire region? In fact, that is not even the question. Rather, the question is: is the justice that would be served outweighed by the ungodly amounts of disaster, death, and misery that the attack inflicts and will predictably lead to more of? Or, instead, would it be better to literally forget all of the atrocities and injustice that Israel has (we are granting) committed, and negotiate for peace without holding any grudges? Of course, there are going to be important arguments in response that peace is impossible and that it would be naïve to think no violence will happen in the future. Naturally, these arguments need to be treated on their own terms, but notice that these arguments are not based on justice, they are based on deterrence, incapacitation, and preventing future harms.

Now, turn to the 2-year war that Israel has waged on innocent Palestinians. Hospitals have been bombed, schools have been destroyed, homes have been pummeled. Today, there is a growing threat of famine, starvation, and a stifling of aid by Israel. A tragedy of unspeakable proportions. The defenses of Israel’s actions are all centered around punishing Hamas in various ways: if Hamas gets access to some of the food aid going to starving children, the aid has to be blocked. If Hamas might be in the hospital, we have to bomb it. If Hamas might be in area, we’ve got to blow everything and everyone away. Until the hostages are released, it seems, all actions are on the table.

Of course, Hamas may well deserve to suffer for what it has done: but, just like in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, justice is not infinitely valuable. Justice is one of many moral ideals. And when one’s pursuit of justice comes at gross costs to well-being … its time to cut the losses and pursue the greater good. But, again, it is hard to see that in the moment.

Here too one might point out that there are non-desert reasons for unrelentingly attacking Hamas, namely, safety and prevention of future attacks. But it seem pretty plausible that the nature of the attacks in Gaza, and the growing threats of malnutrition, are not near the optimal maximize-the-total-number-lives-saved, even when justice is weighed in and the prospect of future attacks are included. Especially if our analysis is done fully impartially.

The tragedies of wars and attacks on the basis of past actions all make me think that the world would probably be quite a bit better if we lacked the concept of justice and desert. If, instead, everyone simply thought in terms of what things we need to do to make sure people are well-off — irrespective of who it is — probably the world would be much better, even if justice and desert are actually morally valuable.