Inequality

J Bradford DeLong writes that "An unequal society cannot help but be an unjust society."

I believe that it's an equal society that cannot help but be unjust.

People are born with different natural abilities, have different propensities to work and like to take risks which sometimes payoff and sometimes fail. All of these factors create tremendous "natural" inequality.

The only way to suppress this inequality is for the state to play a massive role in the economy. The state will have to regulate human activity to such a huge extent that it greatly diminishes personal freedom and so creates unjust outcomes.

Furthermore such heavy handed state action is inevitably going to empower politicians and the politically well-connected at the expense of everyone else. Reducing economic inequality will necessarily increase political inequality. And the politically empowered will likely impose their preferences on the rest of the population and so make society unjust.