Last post

Logics For Deciding Who Gets What

Contend with distributive justice, and some of the ideas we hold most dear about what is a fair way to decide who should get what, in different contexts. Whether they know it or not, philanthropies engage with distributive justice every time they decide to allocate resources -- whether to investments, grants, administration, or human resourcing.

Wait, What is Distributive Justice?

"It’s about distributing benefits and burdens in society. How should people [benefit] from whatever we produce collectively? To get a clear grasp on what distributive justice entails, you need to answer a couple of different questions: What are the benefits and burdens? What is it that we’re interested in [distributing]? Welfare... happiness...health care, education, infrastructure, or access to public goods. There’s the question about, what are we distributing? What do we care about? Then, there’s the question about the pattern of justice. How should it be distributed? Should everyone have the same amount of whatever it is that we care about? Or are there other distributive patterns that societies or states should pursue? Distributive justice, in a nutshell, is a question about benefits and burdens and how they are distributed.”

Dick Timmer

Dick Timmer is an Assistant Professor in moral and political philosophy at the Technical University Dortmund, Germany. His research focuses on distributive justice, economic ethics, climate change, responsibility, activism, state neutrality, and moral status. He proposes a theory of limitarianism which imposes wealth thresholds as a means to achieve a more just distribution of goods in a given society.

What are the go-to logics we use to divide up goods fairly?

Professor Josh Rottman sees three over and over again:

Equality

“Potentially the most primary way, the way that even very young children tend to adopt readily is that resources should be distributed equally. If there are eight coins and four people, it just seems clear that we should split it up so that everybody gets two coins regardless of the identity or needs or anything else.”

Need

“[This logic] pays much more attention to the qualities of the recipients and the degrees to which they either deserve or need the resources, for example.”

Merit

“Another way is [to think] about whether people merit the resources that they’re being given. If some people are more deserving -- either because they worked harder, or for some other reason, maybe we should give them more.“

Joshua Rottman

Joshua Rottman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the department of Scientific & Philosophical Studies of Mind at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His research lies at the intersection of cognitive development and moral psychology. He primarily focuses on children's acquisition of moral norms, the role of disgust in moral judgment, and what leads certain entities to be attributed with (or stripped of) moral value.

Distributive Logic	Most attentive to ...	For example
Merit	Quantity or quality of output	In a workplace, those perceived as producing more value, or working harder or longer, are rewarded with higher salaries. In the criminal justice system, punishments are distributed on merit (ie. to those who committed a crime.)
Need/equity	Qualities or context of potential recipients	In a public health context, those individuals perceived as more vulnerable may be offered more supports or earlier access to opportunities such as vaccination.
Equality	Moral principle	At a party, identical goody bags may be divided evenly among guests, regardless of interest, behaviour, or how much a guest already has, to show fairness.
Purpose/ teleos	How well the aims, qualities, or potential of a recipient fits with the purpose of a resource or opportunity.	A violin player passed away leaving two violins and two children. She bequeaths both violins to one child, a violinist, and none to the other child, who does not play violin, because she understands that a violin’s purpose is to be played.
Stochasticism/ randomness/ lottery	The balance of good (well-reasoned) and bad (biased) reasons that a set of decision-makers might employ in making a decision. If the bad outweighs the good, stochasticism can have a ‘sanitizing’ effect.	A worker co-op has to lay off one worker for budgetary reasons. They decide to lay off the most recently hired person; however, there are two workers who were hired at the same time and who have comparable performance. The co-op elects to use a lottery to select one. The laid off worker is disappointed but understands that the choice is not a judgement on her performance.

Key Points

Distributive justice is dividing things fairly

Whether it’s access to benefits (eg. health care), or the obligation of burdens (think taxes or jury duty) at a societal level, or the cake and clean-up duty at a children’s birthday party, distributive justice concerns itself with the fairest way to divide things up.
There are several distributive logics but three are most common

The top three are merit (based on qualities and output of potential recipients), need (which takes context into account as well), and equality, which is focused on a moral principle rather than the recipients. However, there is also purpose, and stochasticism, which consider the quality of the resource and the limits of the distribution logic, respectively.

Reflection Prompts

Experiences & Observations

Thinking of a foundation you are close to, can you recall instances in each of these distributive logics were considered or employed? What was the context? Do you note any possible trends around why and when particular logics prevail?

Reactions & Impressions

When have you felt a sense of injustice because you disagreed with the choice of a particular distributive logic? What considerations were behind your feeling?

Questions & Hunches to test

How could a foundation you are close to begin to experiment with some different distributive logics in low stakes allocation processes? (It's okay to start with meeting snacks).

Glossary

Bias

What to read next

Theme: Decisions Type: Core concepts

Making Ethical Decisions

Explore six ethical lenses that can help us surface our default logics and offer alternative ethical frameworks for decision making.

Two people in conversation, sitting outside at picnic table, facing each other

Theme: Decisions Type: Case study

Four Case Studies of Decision-Making

A series of mini-case studies. Read about the experiments of four different organizations who align decision making with their values and purpose.

Photograph of two people facing a wall, placing interconnected string onto a board

Theme: Narrative Type: Core concepts

Navigating Complexity

Grapple with the challenge of influencing a complex system. Appreciate how experimentation, emergence, and creativity can serve better than subject expertise and rationality.

See all themes

Narrative

Origin

Money

Purpose

Boundaries

Intergenerational

Decisions

Learning

See all blog posts

Logics For Deciding Who Gets What

What to read next

See all themes

About us

Explore

Contact us