Life Is Not Always "Fair"

Even in an open society where one can literally go from rags to riches, how many people are even oriented toward doing that, much less equipped with the attitudes and self-discipline that are as essential as ability, is often dependent on the family and community in which they were raised, or on a chance encounter with someone who helped set them on the path to personal achievement - or to ruin.  There are things societies can do to mitigate the inherent unfairness in life.  But there are also limits to what society can do.  No society can change the past - and, as a noted historian once said, “We do not live in the past, but the past in us.”

To suggest that “society” can simply “arrange” better outcomes somehow, without specifying the processes, the costs or the risks, is to ignore the tragic history of the twentieth century, written in the blood of millions, killed in peacetime by their own governments that were given extraordinary powers in the name of lofty goals.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.166