“No justice, no peace!” The words felt right in his head: a calming mantra, and an unmovable pillar of truth. Peace cannot long tolerate injustice, and where there was unfairness, there was injustice. To be sure, he thought, not all injustice was created equal…or was it? He stopped himself as his father’s words tried to creep back into his head. The suggestion that injustice might be naturally occurring, and inherent in any civilization was clearly his father’s suggestion arising from his subconscious, a vestigial idea long past its usefulness.
“No justice, no peace!” Like a talisman, the phrase warded off the evil spirits of self-interest, and relieved him of their burdens. He needed to focus, he needed clarity, and the mantra reminded him of his purpose: he would bring fairness where no one had sought it before. He would bring justice to the burdened and peace would necessarily follow.
He had arrived early for his appointment, and noticed that he was being made to wait. He felt put upon. He wondered what unnatural force had caused this delay. If he could learn the cause, then he would be able to work upon a solution, and no one would be required to wait again. No doubt a solution would become clear to him now that he was aware of the problem.
It was then that it occurred to him that he had never noticed the problem before, and it pained him to think of all the people that went through life not knowing that they were the victims of injustice. Maybe not all problems need to be solved, he thought for a moment. Maybe it’s not a problem if the people don’t think it’s a problem. His father’s words again. “No justice, no peace!” He reminded himself. After this meeting, he would have time to warn people, and educate them on the existence of the problem.
His father had died of lung cancer at the age of 72. He had smoked his way through life, and it had killed him. His father knew the dangers, but kept smoking anyway. When his father was near death, he cried and to him about the injustice. His father replied, rather stoically, that he knew what he was doing, and that he had wanted to enjoy his life on his terms. His father was too simple to understand what was being taken from him, and too simple to know that it had been the lust for tobacco profits that had robbed him of his life. If his father had lived long enough to see the ban on tobacco, he would have lived until he was 80, like non-smokers.
About 20 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, he was called into the office. In the room were the decision makers: society’s best and brightest who were called upon to serve the common good. A perfectly diverse panel of highly educated and generally well-thought-of persons (representing the 435 legally recognized public interests, categorized (and sub-categorized) by race, class, gender, education, sexual preference, religion, age, health, ability, and luck) awaited his presentation.
The room was dark, and barren, except for the ubiquitous images of children holding hands. The audience members seemed little more than silhouettes, lighted by a handful of fluorescent bulbs. He was unfamiliar with the process, and began to speak.
“Equality before the law is not enough” he began. “In point of fact, equality before the law is the surest path to inequality. When the law treats each person as if they are identical, it consigns that person to a prescribed outcome in which some people win, and other people lose. If a person is born with natural advantages over another person, and the law treats each equally, one will necessarily achieve greater success than the other. This, I don’t need to tell this august group, is unfair to the person who does not have such a natural advantage. It is the duty of the law to ensure that each person’s abilities and desires are accounted for, and to balance the equation so that no one is treated unfairly. Without fairness, there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.”
As he had been paraphrasing the preamble to his country’s 3,500 page founding document, which had been written by many in his audience, he was losing his audience. They already knew all of this as immutable truth. Intuitively, he knew that he had to skip ahead to the best part.
“Until now, these words have been applied with great success in nearly all aspects of public life. Everyone now has the advanced degree of their choice, or no degree at all. Everyone has a job, or no job, as they see fit. Everyone has the clothes they want, the food they want, the care they want, and no one person has more than they need.”
He paused a bit as he thought about the comparative wealth of his audience, who did seem to live a bit more lavishly than he did. It was not that it caused him moral discomfort, but rather that he hoped to be one of them, and if this presentation went well, he too could help bring about fairness, which obviously required a bit more financial security, so that their decisions could not be influenced by greed.
“But there are places where the law has fallen short. Places where it has been taken for granted that the law is limited in its application, and can only treat everyone equally. These interstices must be breached so that everyone can be treated fairly: and it is to that end that I humbly submit by invention. No longer will the law treat everyone as if they were the same, but will treat everyone based upon their individual needs, resulting in fairness and peace to all.”
A voice came from the audience. “Exactly how does it work?”
“I have designed a sophisticated algorithm that incorporates an individual’s needs, class, sub-class, a relative success on the current day, and over the life of the individual. That information is processed on the individual’s shoulder processer, and broadcast over a low frequency spectrum. The signal is received by nearby computers, and processed in real-time against other individuals in the same grid circuit. Once the information is processed, the computer ranks the relative needs of each individual at the grid, and makes its choice based upon the relative need of each potential user.“
“So it turns a light green for the person who most needs a green light?”
“Sometimes. But it also considers the relative users need, but how successful that person has been in obtaining an earlier green light than other similarly situated individuals. It will learn from its ongoing application, and give priority to historically disadvantaged groups, ensuring that both individual and class based results are factored into crating the fairest outcome possible. Most people, of course remain unaware that they may, or may not, have been adversely impacted by the application of the law in the past, but education on the issue will raise awareness, and this solution will provide them with the security of knowing that they are being treated equally. Ultimately the technology has limitless applications.”
“So, how is it better than a regular stoplight?”
“This one treats people fairly but making sure they are not treated equally. Equality after the law; not before. Why should one person have to wait as long for a left turn, as someone who is not in a hurry, or someone who got to turn left yesterday? Why should the law be indifferent to the person who is on a longer trip, or who is down on their luck, or whose people have been historically forced to wait longer than other groups. The law will now make everyone’s life better by making sure they are treated individually and therefore fairly.”
Another voice came from the darkness: “Wouldn’t it be easier to simply get rid of all cars and make people ride buses and trains?”
It was a curveball from an unexpected direction. He knew they were right, of course that was the simplest way to treat people equally. He struggled with an answer knowing that all his hard work, and his dream of helping others was in jeopardy. If he answered honestly he would be through, his dream brought low. As he stewed he heard his father’s voice again: “Now, Rosa Parks, son, she fought injustice. Injustice doesn’t come from the law treating people as if they are the same, but from treating people as if they were different. When a woman can’t sit in the front of the bus, or a man can’t sit at a diner because of who they are, that’s injustice.”
His mind raced to an answer that was so obvious he was almost embarrassed by it. “Of course you are right, but as I mentioned, this algorithm has numerous potential applications. It can be used to create bur routes that are fair, and assign seats on the bus based on fairness. It could be used to allocate seats at diners, and set the fairest train schedules. It really is limitless.” He squeezed his own hand.
There was a long period of silence, which made him uncomfortable. He wondered what it was that caused the silence, and how he could make sure that people never had to feel uncomfortable in it again. His father’s voice was about rise once more when his whole nervous system was caused to shudder, and it was beaten back for the final time:
“APPROVED. NEXT.”
And a fine bike that would be …
Verily! (I think).