Of Laws and Men

Like other lawyers, I am accustomed to thinking in terms of fair solutions. While lawyers know better than most just how incongruent law and justice often are, they also know that a thirst for fairness/justice is a powerful motivating factor in human intercourse.

They also know how unfair and blind to fairness most people routinely are when other emotions have been engaged. We have seen this recently in Ireland in the course of recent public fits of indignation e.g. against the people of Listowel.

The foregoing is by way of background to this observation: an informal (and entirely unscientific) survey of Irish people by me reveals that they are unanimously of the view that the second of these options is better:

Option 1 A thoroughly ruthless economic recovery plan carrying a guarantee of success within two years

Option 2 A thoroughly fair plan that will take 10 years to succeed, if at all

My own "gut" preference is for Option 1 but so far no-one has agreed with me. I have deliberately excluded people like me (lawyers and financial/economist types) from the survey. (I was vindicated in this decision, I think, when I broke the rule this morning and asked an economist. He answered "10" - but then refused to confirm that he was not using the binary base !).

I am currently exploring options for making a more formal survey, perhaps via FaceBook. In the meantime, I have to say that the results so far would tend to explain the political reaction to our economic situation i.e. rather sclerotic. And it is rather worrying to reflect upon the considerations set out by Jim O'Leary:

...notions of fairness must cede some ground, if not priority, to considerations of what works best.

On this question, analysis of the large reservoir of experience in dealing with fiscal crises, accumulated by governments worldwide over the past four decades, is unambiguous: adjustments based on spending cuts are more effective and more likely to boost economic activity than those based on tax increases....

Good conscience may well require us to have regard to issues of fairness in designing a response to the current crisis, but it also requires us to go beyond reflexive thinking, to interrogate the basis of our sense of fairness, and to consider the wider and longer-term consequences of pursuing what seems fair.