Good article. I think your equal opportunity shot at the left was a bit weak and contrived, but I suppose it was needed for some show of political balance given the thrust of the argument clearly indicts the orthodoxies of the right more than the left's.

Your argument that markets are fundamentally contingent creations, which are only possible through sustained moral, political and legal institution building is fundamentally undeniable. Unfortunately, it also happens to run contrary to the mother's milk of just about every business school in the country, and uncomplicated neo-classical economic orthodoxies that have crept into a host of other vocations and academic disciplines in modern times.

Good article bit nevertheless I will make a couple of suggestions.

"Ethics is objective, founded on the intrinsic worth of persons."

The subject does not agree with the predicate. The intrinsic worth of persons does not mean that ethics are objective - but it can mean that they are universal. A subtle, but important difference in moral reasoning.

"Because humans have a certain nature, they have certain rights."

More to the point they have certain needs.

"It is actually possible to take planned action to improve society."

Well yes. Taking Hayek and the so-called economic rationalists to issue they seem to forget that their beautiful model requires empirical foundations. The ability for an economic actor to make a rational decision is dependent on a lack of biological *and* social coercion.

A very conservative and narrow explication of Catholic social justice which supports the status quo while preaching that we should all be nicer to each other. It simply isn't good enough if you're a refugee, homeless, disabled, chronically ill, live in an isolated region, illiterate or penniless (for example).

The cardboard king - in this formulation - can get away with highway robbery so long as he gives a bit to charity (for tax purposes).

FrankGol hasn't taken on board a word of what my original argument said. Social justice theory is a theory of *justice*, not of charity. Refugees, the disabled and their carers, etc have rights, that is claims on the State/economic system. The theory is however to a degree conservative in saying that it might be a good idea to preserve a healthy State/economic system so as to be able to pay out on the claims.

All notions of “social justice” are founded in a sense of ethic and morality.

Social justice is about respecting others and being compassionate toward others.

“compassion” is a uniquely “human” characteristic which government cannot dispense. Compassion recognises the uniqueness of the beneficiary of the compassionate action separately from all other possible beneficiaries. Government has no capacity to dispense such “qualitative discretion”

the error of FrankGols “It simply isn't good enough if you're a refugee, homeless, disabled, chronically ill, live in an isolated region, illiterate or penniless.”

What can we say, if you are a refugee, you are probably enjoying the benevolence of Australia freedom and receiving nothing, compared to the oppression and murder of the place of origin.

“Homelessness” for which some are themselves “responsible”.

do we “equalise” the “disabled” and “illiterate” by deny education to the literate and make the able-bodied wear shackles?

If one lives in an isolated area, “Move”!

“penniless” Some of the penniless spend everything on poker machines whereas others, with the same income, balance their budget and manage to save.

Chronically ill – as someone who could claim to be one of them,

I manage it, deal with it, visit my doctor and take daily medication. I am not complaining or expecting alone else to treat me differently to a person in full health (and with whom I compete for business).

Whining about the lot of some folk whose lives may be blighted (to a lesser or greater extent), is no solution.

“Social Justice” does not justify imposing restraints on the general population or the curtailment of personal discretion through the levying of taxes to supposedly finance a government managed “social justice system”

Far better we consider the words of one of the worlds leading politicians of the 20th century

“We want a society where people are free to make choices,
to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate.
This is what we mean by a moral society;
not a society where the state is responsible for everything,
and no one is responsible for the state.” - Margaret Thatcher

Engaging, well written – and still, as FrankGol says, a pretty conservative account of Catholic social teaching.

To take one major point: it’s a game claim to suggest that ‘sending in the army’ to Indigenous communities is a good solution to the problems there. That’s the author’s opinion, not the Church’s. There are no grounds for suggesting that this action was in line with Catholic social teaching. In fact, the Catholic bishops voiced significant concerns about it (http://www.acbc.catholic.org.au/bishops/confpres/20070705451.htm). Its long-term benefits are far from obvious so far.

There’s a very meliorist tone to the claim that ‘social justice is already here’. In fact, the poor are always with us – but you wouldn’t guess it from this piece. There’s no hint of the deeply radical change that a commitment to Christian social justice really demands if poverty is to be alleviated, refugees accommodated and our responsibility to the environment observed.

To suggest that intellectual property laws are a splendid example of social justice at work is also tendentious. Modern intellectual property laws seem to me to protect the strong and, only as an afterthought, chuck a few bob towards the true creators of the content.

Social justice is a lot more uncomfortable than you’d guess from this article.

So James Franklin thinks I haven’t taken on board a word of what he said (i.e. agreed with him). “Social justice theory is a theory of *justice*, not of charity,” he says. Who argued charity is the alternative to Catholic social justice?

Franklin’s social justice awards refugees rights – but they have to get out of detention first to exercise them.

Franklin supports a justice system that dispenses justice according to how much you can afford to outlay on smart lawyers while low-income people are told that legal aid has run out of funds.

And his social justice enables the PM’s wife to get immediate hospital treatment for her gallstones while thousands of ordinary folk wait…and wait…and wait.

His social justice enables wealthy Christian schools to rip off taxpayers many of whom can’t afford to pay even the modest levies in state schools.

So all you people out there who feel things are not as fair as they should be, those who are or will be (sometime, some day) the beneficiaries of a healthy economy against your own felt experience, remember what James told you: “There is nothing utopian in looking for the secret of our own society’s success, social justice, and urging it to be implemented more consistently.” Now that’s a mathematically neat formulation.

If only they’d be more patient, eh James? We’re all God’s creatures and social justice is available to us…but not just yet; or not consistently yet.

Col Rouge starts with platitudinous ‘respect for others’ and ‘compassion’ then proceeds to insult and patronise refugees (should be grateful), the homeless (it’s their own fault), the disabled and the illiterate (want us all to wear shackles and deny us worthies an education), the isolated (move!), the chronically ill (whingers) and the penniless (fritter away their money on poker machines).

When people like Col Rouge endorse James Franklin’s concept of social justice by reference to Mrs Thatcher, you know it’s crook.

Col Rogue,

On this point I must disagree with you; not for what you say about compassion, but because you neglect to address the question of justice within political economy.

All legal rights, and economic rights, are founded in a sense of justified moral claims.

For example, is there a just moral claim to the ownership of natural resources? Many thinkers argue there is not - and also argue that all individuals have equal right to a share of its proceeds.

You can read a list of quotations on the matter here:

http://www.taxreform.com.au/intreformers.php
and
http://www.taxreform.com.au/economists.php

Government certainly has a role in dispensing this sort of social justice; and it is not merely qualitative, but quantitative - divide the site rental value of all natural resources by the number of people.

DNB's points are good ones, but it's exactly in matters like the problems of remote communities that the hard edge of social justice comes to the fore. Most of us in Australia are doing just fine when it comes to the protection of our rights, which is why I said social justice is already here. But if you're a child with foetal alcohol syndrome or abusive parents in a remote community, the pieties of the city folk calling for "reconciliation" and "apologies" are not doing anything for you - as explained in the recent Bennelong Society paper I helped write: http://www.bennelong.com.au/occasional/Warin2007.pdf . Hobbes was right: in cases as bad as that the first thing justice requires is an authority prepared to suppress violence.

bulldust leavened with pious platitudes.

James Franklin says, "I’d suggest intellectual property as the perfect model of social justice: it’s because creators of books and inventions morally deserve to be rewarded that there ought to be such protections; implementing IP law is possible but it took several centuries and as we all know China hasn’t caught up even now. And there are major economic benefits from it, through the encouragement of the bright ideas that drive technological progress."

I'd suggest Jim, that this an absolute load of rubbish. Copyright (and other IP rights to a lesser degree) have become a money-making racket for copyright owners. Sometimes copyright owners are the creators (or their descendants) , but more often they're corporate entities. Copyright in Australia was recently extended to 70 years from death (up from 50) to "harmonise" our copyright laws with the United States. NOTHING NEW will enter the public domain in Australia before the year 2025. And if you believe that there won't be an extension to 90 years before then, well, I've got a large metal-arch bridge I'd like to sell you.

The advance of copyright has nothing to do with creativity, especially when it comes to derivative works. Disney relied on a great deal of public domain music and stories for Fantasia. While happy to take from the public domain, Disney Inc. is anything but pleased at the idea of contributing anything to it.

Copyright law is now written at the behest of the major copyright holders (who, unsurprisingly, are major political donors). What began as a protection for creators, has become a form of welfare for corporations, who are impoverishing the public domain.

I note, James, that your own article is licensed under Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ My own view is that such a CC license (allowing non-commercial copying, distribution and transmission) is a much more appropriate model for many (though by no means all) works in the current era. Open-source software, Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org (to name just a few examples) suggest to me that restrictive copyright is the enemy of "the bright ideas that drive technological progress."

hi to all the forgotton australiansout their and to those who understand us victims , social justice is for everyone but we the forgotton australians are receiving any social justice ,justice is for all and its their to protect the victims something the australian goverment does not seem to care about when it involves the forgotten australians , i was going to have a rest and stay away from having my say in the forum but i just could not help my self as i am fighting for social justice in the court system so the forgotten australins will be acknowledged , maybe mr rudd might put his hand up for us as he has for the aboriginies ,we are the forgotten australians kind regards micheal i hope you all have a good new year ,and im just still hanging in their ,

It's fair enough for Johnj to point out that certain big players have made a nuisance of themselves over copyright and skewed the system. But they haven't entirely succeeded in locking up content. How copyright works depends on how the courts let it work, e.g., to take a current issue, what the US courts let Google Books get away with - a lot, as it turns out. "Open source" plans are good for some stuff, e.g. academic papers, but don't adequately protect those who have a good saleable idea. It's somewhat ironic that one of the open source projects you mention calls itself "Gutenberg", given that most of what we know about the real Gutenberg comes from the legal documents in his endless litigation to protect his rights in his amazing invention...

More generally, just complaining about what's wrong with IP is a mild instance of the leftist disease of which FrankGol's comments above are a terminal case. Either you maintain ideological purity and your self-image of "solidarity with the oppressed" by complaining endlessly, or you work out how the system does right what it does do right so you can see how to extend it to the cases it misses. But you can't do both.

JimF

Throwing labels around beats putting up a decent argument, doesn't it James? Beats contending with contrary views?

Has my alleged 'ideological purity' challenged your 'ideological purity'? Is your Catholic social justice at odds with 'the leftist disease'? Hiding behind cliches is intellectual bankruptcy.

God's in his heaven and all's well with your socially just world, eh? No room for debate?

I presume then, James, that you're conceding that copyright is not the "perfect model of social justice" then? Google may win in court, on the basis of "Fair Use", a copyright exception that we don't have here in Australia....

You accuse me of having a "leftist disease" and suggest that I must "maintain ideological purity and your self-image of "solidarity with the oppressed" by complaining endlessly, or you work out how the system does right what it does do right so you can see how to extend it to the cases it misses." Funnily enough, I thought I was critiquing your argument. You claimed that copyright was a perfect model, I disagreed and cited both evidence and alternative models. That's not complaint, that's debate.

I'm afraid your post is full of bluster and cliche. Not to mention factual error: eg you can't copyright or patent an "idea" (you can only copyright the expression of an idea, not the idea itself).

As for Johannes Gutenberg, the cases brought by Riffe, Dritzehn and Heilmann, and by Furst seem to have mainly revolved around money. His main tactic to prevent competitors was secrecy (which is partly why we know so little about him).

Well, OK, "perfect" model was a bit strong. I didn't really mean that actually existing IP law was perfect, but that the concept of IP, realised imperfectly in law though it is, is a good model of social justice that we can appreciate free of the ideological carryings-on that tend to cloud some other topics.

The slogan that you can't patent ideas but only their "expression" is approximately true, but isn't holding up very well in marking the boundary as it now is. Yes, you can't patent the number 3 or Newton's Second Law, but you can patent a reasonably detailed mathematical algorithm, which is an idea, whether or not you've expressed it in software. Really, just about everything that's patented is what would normally be called an idea.

The fact that Gutenberg had to rely on secrecy - in his day even table s of compound interest tended to be guarded as industrial secrets - goes to show exactly why strong IP law is needed to protect his rights of people like him.

Oh dear Jim, surely you're joking? You complain of "ideological carryings-on", when your own posts are full of pejorative political slurs. It wasn't me who used "leftist disease", "ideological purity" or "solidarity with the oppressed" was it? I'm happy to argue a position without name-calling and I hope you're grown-up enough to do the same.

But, putting that to one side, perhaps we might consider IP further, specifically the World Wide Web. The basis of the web are open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, XML and DHCP, which ensure interoperability between a wide variety of software and hardware platforms. I can use an open source browser (such as Firefox) or proprietary one (like Internet Explorer or Safari) running on a proprietary operating system (Windows, OSX) or open source (Linux).

Imagine for a moment the idea that Tim Berners-Lee had patented the Web and charged royalties for implementing HTTP. Sir Tim would no doubt be rich, but the Web (and the world) would be poorer. The Web is a transformative technology of the same order of magnitude as the printing press and it has succeeded partly because no-one owns it.

Some past and present legal campaigns (try searching on DirecTV, BT hyperlink, SCO vs Novell, or RIAA) suggest there is a bizarre parallel world where justice is about the last thing that IP has anything to do with. Unless, of course, you've got plenty of money. There is a place for copyright, but it is not a model for "social justice". To think otherwise would seem to be a "utopian fantasy".

Lev “For example, is there a just moral claim to the ownership of natural resources? Many thinkers argue there is not - and also argue that all individuals have equal right to a share of its proceeds.”

Lev I would note land and other natural (and some unnatural) resources are licenced by government for use.

Examples – mining exploration licences, radio and tv broadcast licences, gaming licences etc

Through the process of government “licencing”, the collective tax revenues generated there from being applied to say the operation of schools, hospitals etc; “all individuals” acquire a share in the proceeds.

That we individuals do not see such proceeds directly is neither here nor there. Without licence revenues, other taxes would need to be higher to meet the same expenditure needs.

On the matter of “tax reform” I am an ardent supported of tax reform. However, my interest is to simplify it and not use it as an instrument to enforce some form of “wealth distribution”.

If “society” wanted to “get real” about that sort of stuff, death duties would be set at 100% of all estates, be they wealth or modest. No politician is ever going to get elected on that policy.

My view remains, as a supporter of small government, of which one of the worlds leading proponents and champions, I have already appropriately quoted, in my earlier post.

An increase in the impediment of taxes is the least effective way for a “society” to advance, since all that is achieved is the “reward”, which motivates the individual is directly diminished through taxation, for some supposed “benefit of society”.

Further, I have never heard of anyone in society being motivated because they received some benefit or bequest from government.

Indeed, if Australians of aboriginal descent are used as an example, the receipt of special benefits from the state appear to have had as demotivating an influence as would extra taxation.

Johnj's example of Tim Berners-Lee and the WWW is a worthwhile one, in that it did produce a fantastic benefit without any IP protection. But personally, I would have preferred it it he and his employers *had* taken out copyright, which would have funded basic physics indefinitely. I don't see that that would have slowed its adoption (if they'd charged reasonably) - I mean, Microsoft charged unreasonably for its stuff and it was still adopted. The WWW case is also special in that CERN was a stable and publicly-funded organisation able to play with projects like that (as were the military projects that created the computer itself, computer graphics and the internet). Since then, Open Source projects have produced some good things, like Linux and Firefox, but OpenOffice is still inadequate after all these years. I think I'm right in saying computer hardware developments are still all IP-driven? Naturally, since you can't create a new chip by some altruistic guy in a back room cutting code.

Jim, I think you make a good point particularly in relation to computer hardware development. IP protection is a form of monopoly, that, like any monopoly, should be strictly limited. Given tooling costs and the need to amortise the cost of development, I believe that current patent protection (20 years) represents a reasonable compromise for manufacturers and consumers. At the end of 20 years, innovations become part of the public domain and any person/organisation that hasn't managed to exploit an innovation will give way to someone who can.

British Telecom's dodgy hyperlink patent claims http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/06/37095 suggest that fairness (and reward for innovation) sometimes fall by the wayside. I particularly like the quote from the PR flack, who said BT were looking "to the places where the predominant revenues are flowing," I suppose I can't blame BT for wanting a slice of that revenue, but it looks more like opportunism than innovation. Or maybe that's just me?

I think that patent protection is less about fairness than it is about utility. It is not about "rewarding" innovators, but instead a protection against competition while they commercialise their ideas.

I'm not so sure about copyright protection. Why exactly do we need to grant exclusive rights (ie a monopoly) for a minimum of 70 years? Seems to me that it is all about copyright owners (mostly corporations) wanting to keep milking the cash cow. Is this really a model for social justice?

Well, yes, there's a utility issue and a fairness issue, and they're separate but related. There's an need for secure IP to make possible massive investments in development of e.g. computer hardware and pharmaceuticals. That needs some basic fairness in that the people protected must be the ones who actually put in the investment, but really it's more a utility issue.

But what about the fairness needed by an author of say a textbook? (Delaration of interest: I am one.) I need copyright to make it worth my while to put my considerable effort into doing that - for me, that's a large effort. It's true I don't need it for 70 years after I die, but in the short term, my protection is a matter of social justice.