From what I understood from Thomas Sowell article is that fairness is a word that "has done the most damage to people's thinking, and to actions to carry out that thinking". That fairness is a restriction for people and a massive advantage for politicians. Sowell expresses that to believe that theirs fairness in "odds for achieving success", that our life is nowhere near of being fair. Not only did he give examples of things we think are fair which aren't, he also implied that we all have a different meaning of fairness, I never thought of it that way but we do.
I agree with Sowell's article because he is stating the truth and he gave examples that had me rethink about the definition. I use to think fairness is equal, to be same in all ways; but that's my own definition, fair may be a whole different meaning to you. Now I think it has no definition that it’s a "want". There are things in life that may be fair but when you take a closer look, it may not be; for example the division of a box of pizza, say theirs twelve slices and four people so you would fairly divide it by the four and each would get three slices. Now that is fair, but then there’s always that one person that says “that slice is bigger than this one”, now the slices are cut equally and the four people don’t have an equal nor fair amount of pizza. There is something that I believe exhibits fairness; various types of music, I believe that it’s fair to have a variety of music so that everyone has something that they enjoy listening to.
Now would I say my definition is valid? Of course, we all can have a different opinion to what “fair” is but fairness is usually something you desire. Now I think that minimum wage should be twelve dollars for all people, but you say it should stay at eight. Well it’s not fair for both of us to decide. Minimum wage should be set by the people and if that were the case we wouldn’t receive an answer because everyone wants something different.
I will always try to be fair, but it isn’t easy. I believe in order to be fair, you need to find out what it means to everyone, and then have to consider what people want and how you provide everyone something they want equally to all. That will take too much time. Society and government should work on what fair is, but it may take them awhile, and that’s not a problem waiting for. Once we figure out what fair is as one definition of all opinions, then we can start talking about what’s we want and believe is fair.
