Is it fair that some people have more money than they can possibly spend while others are struggling to pay for essentials? It depends on what you mean by “fair”.

There’s never been a better time to be a billionaire. An Oxfam report released last week reveals that billionaires around the world have added a tidy $3.2 trillion to their wealth in 2024 alone. To put that in context: on average, each billionaire expanded their wallet by 3.2 million bucks every day over the last 12 months. That’s a tidy $400,000 an hour, or over 6,000 times the median hourly rate. 

If you believe that innovation and hard work ought to be well rewarded, you might not be perturbed by these numbers. Except that the Oxfam report found that around 60 percent of the wealth captured by billionaires didn’t come from their labour, but was handed to them via an inheritance, or was secured through cronyism, corruption or their ability to exert monopoly power. So, there’s also never been a better time to have ultra-rich parents, or to have enough power to tilt the playing field in your favour. 

Meanwhile, millions of hard-working people are struggling with cost-of-living pressures while their wages have stagnated. It’s probably no surprise that the phrase “every billionaire is a policy failure” – coined in another Oxfam report from 2023 – is having another surge in popularity. 

But is the existence of billionaires itself a bad thing? Or is the existence of poverty the real problem? Should we change the way our economy works to make it impossible for someone to accrue that much money and power? Should we spread some of that wealth around to people who didn’t happen to be born with wealth and privilege? 

These are not new questions. Ever since human societies started to accumulate wealth, inequality has been a hot topic for philosophers. But questions about inequality are fundamentally questions about fairness. The problem is that there are different ideas about what is fair. 

Just deserts

One way to think about fairness is in terms of what someone deserves. Intuitively, if someone is talented, works hard and produces things that other people want, then they ought to be rewarded for doing so. A society that operates this way is often called a “meritocracy”.  

This approach is often used to justify the vast wealth accrued by billionaires; presumably they’ve earnt their wealth because they’ve worked harder and smarter than most, and produced things that society wants or needs. And, on the flip side, many people assume that someone who’s living in poverty must be lazy or they made some dumb decisions, so they deserve their lot too. 

But things aren’t so simple. Is it talent that we’re rewarding? Or is it effort? Or one’s contribution to society? Because what someone deserve differs depending on which we focus on. 

If we focus on talent, then it’s clear that the world isn’t a level playing field. Some people are genetically endowed with higher intelligence, imagination or tenacity, or they’re born into a family that can afford a top-class education, all of which can give that person a huge boost to their talent. And, if they haven’t earnt any of those advantages, we might be reluctant to say they’ve earnt the disproportionate benefits that accrue because of them. 

If we focus on effort instead, then the harder someone works, the more they deserve in return for their labour. Setting aside the question of whether tenacity is to some degree genetic, by this logic, someone who works long hours doing two jobs – as do many people to make ends meet – ought to be paid more than someone who earns a passive income from huge investments or a trust fund, let alone the significant proportion who were just handed their fortune.  

Perhaps we should focus on contribution instead. Not all work is created equal. Some work only benefits the worker rather than society as a whole, and some is outright destructive or harmful. That brings us to the idea that people ought to be rewarded for what they offer society as a whole. No doubt, many billionaires own or head companies that produce things that people want. But is their personal contribution to society proportionate to the huge salaries they demand or the value of their share portfolio? Is a CEO really contributing more than hundreds of workers who actually produce the products and services? Many people would say no. 

There are also many people performing essential jobs, like nursing, teaching and aged care, who are paid a lot less than people who just shuffle stocks around or who produce things like cigarettes or fast food, which are known to cause harm. 

And there are plenty of people living in poverty who made all the right decisions in life but ended up unlucky. They’ve worked hard, taken risks – as all good entrepreneurs do too – and it just didn’t pay off, or they were struck by some illness or disability that prevented them from hitting the big time. 

Libertarianism

There is another avenue of argument that has been used to justify the wealth of billionaires: libertarianism. American philosopher Robert Nozick argued that people have a fundamental right to own and trade property, and as long as they do so according to principles of justice, then they can accumulate as much as they want. In fact, taking someone’s property away and giving it to someone else, such as through taxation and welfare spending, is unjust. 

Nozick’s argument harkens back to one offered by the English philosopher John Locke. Locke argued that raw natural resources, like land or minerals, start off belonging to no-one, and while they’re left idle, they’re worth nothing. But as soon as someone claims some natural resources (provided there’s still some left for others) and works or improves them to produce value, then they deserve to keep that value. 

The problem is whether those who have amassed great fortunes today actually acquired their original property justly.

If it turns out that the property or resources they are using to generate wealth were appropriated from others, such as through conquest or colonialism, or if others were not given the same opportunity to put a fence around their own bit of nature, then the billionaires have received an unjust and unfair advantage.  

Egalitarianism

If it’s the case that the world isn’t a level playing field, then perhaps we should focus less on what people currently have and do, and focus more on what they are owed as human beings. This brings us to egalitarianism. The most radical version states that every person, having fundamentally equal moral worth, has an equal right to share in what their society produces. According to this view, then everybody would have basically the same amount of wealth at all times.  

However, this might not feel satisfactory if it means that people get the same amount regardless of whether they work hard or not at all, or whether they contribute to society or just laze around the beach.  

Economists have also argued that a world where everyone has the same amount of stuff would be substantially less productive than a world where people are able to accumulate more resources and be rewarded for innovating and investing them efficiently. So, a world with perfect equality might see everyone living in poverty, while a world with some inequality might generate so much more wealth that everyone would, in principle, be better off. 

This has led to yet another approach, called the “difference principle”, which was advocated by the American political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls argued that we should allow some inequality, but only if those inequalities end up benefiting the least advantaged people in society. So, it doesn’t matter if a few people accrue billions, as long as it means that the poorest people also benefit to some degree. One might imagine Rawls saying: “every billionaire is a policy failure as long as there are people in poverty”. 

What’s fair?

No matter which way you think about fairness, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to justify the existence of billionaires in a world where millions of people are struggling to satisfy their basic needs.  

However, while our economic system is geared to generate the maximum possible wealth, if we leave it alone to do its thing, inequality is likely to continue to surge. The challenge of tempering inequality falls into the political sphere, with mechanisms like taxation and welfare spending being highly effective at spreading wealth and opportunity around.  

The problem is that those who are the beneficiaries of the current system – i.e. the billionaires – have a strong vested interested in preserving the status quo in order to maintain their wealth and lavish lifestyles. And it certainly helps their cause that wealth buys power and influence on the political level, as described in the Oxfam report. 

Even if we can solve the question of how best to distribute wealth in our society, which is no easy task, we are still faced by an even harder question of how to change the system to make it just. 

Work hard, play by the rules and you will have a successful and good life. Or so we’re told. Trump’s recent Presidential victory says a lot about how democracy has failed us.

It’s been a few days since it was announced that Donald Trump would be returning to the Oval Office after winning a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, and it already feels like 2016 again. Like then, many people are straining to make sense of how a man they deem to be morally bankrupt could have secured the votes of over 72 million Americans. 

There will likely be pools of ink spilt attempting to explain the political and economic factors that returned Trump to the White House. But I want to view this moment through a broader moral lens. Because, while Trump’s first victory in 2016 might have been interpreted as a freak event, where a political outsider disrupted an otherwise healthy and functional democratic society, his second decisive victory suggests there’s something deeper and more pervasive at work – a failure that persists at the core of democratic society that Trump was able to exploit. 

The Grand Bargain

Go to school, behave yourself, study hard, get a job (any job), work hard, pay your taxes and play by the rules. If you do all this, then society will ensure that you will be a success and enjoy a good life. 

That’s what I call the ‘Grand Bargain’ of modern liberal democratic society. It goes by different names, with a different spin, in every democracy through terms like the “American Dream” or the “Great Australian Dream”. But it goes beyond just the idea that opportunity is open to all or that home ownership is a natural step towards financial security. It’s like an implicit agreement between the state and the individual: play by the rules and everything will be OK. 

However, many people in ‘rich’ countries are not OK. I barely need to mention inflation, the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, exorbitant rent, the offshoring of jobs, the rise of insecure gig work, the closure of traditional industries and manufacturing, not to mention the fact that corporate profits are skyrocketing and the top 10% are doing better than ever. The Grand Bargain has been under pressure since the 1990s and, arguably, it’s been broken ever since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. 

And people are angry. This is not just because the failure of the Grand Bargain has resulted in real material disadvantage, but the anger has a moral dimension due to a deep sense of injustice at the failure of the state – especially politically and economically – to live up to its end of the Bargain.

Injustice breeds outrage, and outrage is a moral emotion that creates a desire to punish the perceived wrongdoer. In this case, the perceived wrongdoers are the political ‘elites’ who have been instrumental in promoting economic growth at the expense of the workers within that economy. In most modern liberal democracies, those elites include members of both the Left and the Right, especially since the neoliberal turn of the 1990s. So, over the last two decades, no matter who people vote for, the Grand Bargain has remained broken. 

It doesn’t matter that Trump is part of this elite political class. It doesn’t matter that his policies are little more than a basket of fantasies that will almost certainly worsen the economic circumstances of most of those who voted for him while enriching the super rich even more.

What matters is that Trump has effectively given voice to those who feel that the Grand Bargain has failed, and that it’s politics-as-usual that has let them down.

And what Kamala Harris represented – as did Hillary Clinton before her – was politics-as-usual: a kind of politics that tinkered around the edges by providing small perks to certain groups to offset the huge systemic disadvantages they faced. Meanwhile, they were afraid to enact systemic change because that would require facing off against the powerful vested interests who continue to benefit from the current economic paradigm. 

Identity crisis

But this is not the full picture. The Grand Bargain isn’t just about economics, it’s also about identity. In order to live a good life, we need more than just material prosperity, we also need to have our identity recognised and to experience a sense of pride. 

Whether justified or not, large segments of the population in many liberal democracies have felt that their identity has been under attack. Neoliberal policies have taken away the work that gave them a source of meaning and pride in their lives. Multiculturalism has fragmented their communities, eroding social capital and leaving them feeling unmoored in their own neighbourhoods. 

The recent historical reckoning over colonialism and racism has contributed to a narrative of shame directed at the beneficiaries of systemic discrimination, particularly white people. Similarly, the historical reckoning over sexism has promoted a narrative that many men feel has disempowered them and challenged a core feature of their identity. 

I hasten to add that there is much that modern liberal societies must reckon with. But what’s of importance here is how that reckoning has been perceived by many people, especially at a time when their material circumstances have been increasingly precarious. 

Meanwhile, the ‘elites’ – particularly on the progressive side of politics – led these attacks on identity, policing speech and behaviour, and perpetuating a narrative that expressions of pride in one’s heritage or culture, or any expression of concern about diversity, inclusion or the welfare of men was to be perceived as a form of bigotry. As a result, many people changed the way they spoke and behaved in public, but they didn’t change the way they thought.  

Then along comes Trump. He didn’t change the way he spoke or behaved. He said what many people were thinking. He validated the identities of many people who felt under-recognised. He offered a counter-narrative of pride rather than shame. 

Be bold

When you look at Trump’s victory through the moral lens of outrage directed at the failure of the Grand Bargain and at the narratives that cause people to feel shame, then it makes a lot more sense. 

Trump was uniquely positioned to exploit this outrage, to give voice to the indignance that many Americans feel in being ‘left behind,’ and to offer a narrative of ‘greatness’ that promised to restore their pride.  

It doesn’t matter whether his solutions are the right ones to fix the grievances he’s tapping into. What matters is that he validated public outrage at the failure of the Grand Bargain, and he presents himself as strong enough to do something about it even in the face of powerful vested interests (even if he, and his friends, are those vested interests). 

Those who are concerned about the implications of a second Trump presidency, or who lament the rise of populism in democracies around the world, would do well to shift their attention from blaming voters and direct it towards restoring the Grand Bargain. That is not an easy thing to do. It will likely require facing off against powerful vested interests. But through this moment might come avenues to rectify the deeper failures of modern democratic societies and prevent the rise of populists who recognise those failures but whose solutions only make the problems worse, not better. 

If there’s one lesson that Trump has for all politicians, it’s that if boldness and fearlessness coupled with a commitment to promote the interests of one’s supporters can overcome the many political drags that Trump brought to his campaign, imagine what it could to for someone of principle. 

Unless we want to slip into a world where force and coercion drive politics, then we all must invest in reinforcing the institutions that keep liberal democracy working.

For most of human history, politics was — and in many parts of the world today, still is — a wilderness. Political victories were won at the point of a spear or the barrel of a gun, rather than at the ballot box. When there was a dispute about whose interests ought to take priority, how to distribute resources, or even who gets to have a say in how people live their lives, it was those who wielded the greatest force who typically got to choose. And, unsurprisingly, they often chose in favour of themselves.

This makes liberal democracy an historical anomaly. Within liberal democracy, we fully expect there to be disagreements about how best to run society — not least because the “liberal” part allows each person to define their own vision of a good life rather than having one imposed on us by others. But in liberal democracy, these disagreements are not won through coercive force but through persuasion, or as the German liberal philosopher Jürgen Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument”.

But the wall of civility surrounding the garden of liberal democracy is not impregnable. Coercive force lingers just outside, threatening to burst in and bypass the messy process of persuasion — as it did on 13 July 2024, when a would-be assassin attempted to silence former President Donald Trump with an assault rifle rather than words.

The good news is that the near universal expressions of shock and condemnation at the attempted assassination show that most people in the United States, and in other liberal democracies, still prefer to resolve their disputes within the norms of the liberal democratic garden rather than returning to the wilderness. Still, this episode serves as a potent reminder of just how fragile and important the norms that preserve liberal democracy are, and that the institutions that enable peaceful political debate require constant reinforcement.

The grand bargain

The problem is that, in recent years, liberal democracy has been failing itself. One of the “unforced forces” that keeps the system operating is a tacit buy-in on behalf of every individual within the system. We need to believe that the system is working for us, that it’s fair, and that our voice matters, otherwise we have little incentive to work within it. If we feel powerless, disenfranchised, embattled or feel our livelihood or safety is threatened, we have more reason to step outside the walls of civility.

But liberal democracies, such as the United States — and to a lesser but nonetheless significant extent, Australia — have often failed to give us good reason to believe the system is working.

For many of us, the “grand bargain” of liberal democratic society is breaking down. This bargain states that if we work hard, get a good education, and play by the rules, then we’ll have every opportunity to live a fulfilled and fulfilling life. But that’s just not the reality for a large proportion of the population. Many liberal democracies are facing an omni-crisis — combining housing, inflation, wealth inequality, climate change, mental health, loneliness, childcare, aging, the erosion of traditional jobs, the fragmentation of communities, as well as racism, sexism and other forms of systemic discrimination, and more besides.

If people feel powerless or disenfranchised, they’ll reject the constraints the system places on them to engage in peaceful debate.

Or if they feel that the stakes are so high that they can’t afford to let the other side win, then they’ll reject the ballot box and turn to other means to achieve their political ends.

How to restore faith in liberal democracy

Of course, those in power must not neglect their responsibility to protect and strengthen the system, and restore the grand bargain, even if they might forego short-term political or financial advantage in doing so.

Although it’s up to us to hold them to account. We should demand more of our elected representatives. But we must demand more of ourselves as well. We must lower the temperature of popular discourse: tune out the hyperbole, avoid partisan media, carefully curate our social media, don’t engage with those promoting conspiracy theories, and refuse to feed the trolls. Listen and ask questions of people who have different opinions. Advance our views with conviction, but also with humility. Acknowledge that there is probably not one right answer to many of the challenges we face, and that compromise is inevitable.

Just as important is building the social foundations that enable civil but spirited discourse. That means investing in our local communities to build “social capital” — the trust, respect, and norms of reciprocity that keep society functioning. Talking to your neighbour over the fence, taking your dog to the park, participating in a class at your local community centre, volunteering for a local organisation, joining an activist group — these are the grassroots of the liberal democratic garden, and they’re just as important as the larger institutions. They reinforce our common humanity; our neighbour might vote differently to us, but we still share the same human concerns.

As American political commentator Yuval Levin has stated, those we disagree with aren’t just going to disappear if we coerce them into silence or bully our way into power. Their views will persist, and if we give them no voice, they will be motivated to find other ways to be heard. We must practice tolerance and compromise, because the alternative is a return to the wilderness.

Catch Democracy is Not Worth Dying For at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sunday 25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney. Tickets on sale now.

This article was originally published by ABC religion and Ethics.

Which takes ethical precedence: keeping a promise to remain loyal to your group or sticking to your principles?

This is a question that has faced first-term Western Australian senator, Fatima Payman, repeatedly over the past few weeks. Ultimately, she chose her principles, crossing the floor to vote for a Greens bill calling to recognise Palestinian statehood, and now she’s paying the price for breaking her pledge of caucus solidarity with the Australian Labor Party (ALP). 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, faced a different dilemma. Even though his party’s National Platform ostensibly supported Payman’s principled position, the fact remains that she broke caucus solidarity by crossing the floor, an act that he was obliged by party rules to punish with a one-week suspension from caucus.  

But then Payman doubled down on her principled stance by stating on national television that she would be willing to cross the floor again should another vote arise on Palestinian statehood. Again, Albanese felt his hand was forced, with him issuing her with an indefinite suspension. 

Payman’s suspension has proven divisive, with many Labor members and supporters expressing outrage that she would violate her sacred pledge of caucus solidarity and draw media attention away from key Labor initiatives, such as the revised stage 3 tax cuts.  

Others, such as the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, have seen events through a different lens, saying it was “disturbed by the suggestion that towing the Labor Party’s line is more important than standing up for the rights and lives of Palestinians as they are slaughtered in Gaza.” 

Ultimately, both Payman and Albanese were placed in an ethical dilemma, with competing obligations pulling them in different directions. However, the episode raises deeper questions about whether politicians should be allowed to vote on matters of conscience or principle, and whether it is justified for a political party to punish them for doing so. 

Ethical tension

When we vote for a politician based on their stated values and principles, we might expect they stand by them and vote accordingly when they’re in parliament. However, that’s often not the case. 

Members of parliament are typically bound to vote for – and publicly support – their party’s agreed position, even if that position contradicts their own. In fact, since its inception in 1891, Labor has maintained a strict policy of caucus solidarity, with members pledging to uphold it as sacrosanct.  

This means Labor members are free to argue forcefully for their views inside caucus meetings, but once the caucus has decided on a position, they are bound to vote for it. This has sometimes put Labor members in a difficult position, such as when Labor Senator Penny Wong was obliged to vote against same-sex marriage in 2008, despite her deep commitment to marriage equality. 

In keeping with its traditional liberal roots, and the notion that it’s a “broad church”, the Liberal Party takes a relatively softer stance, ostensibly allowing members to cross the floor on matters of principle. However, even though the Liberal Party doesn’t require its members to make a pledge of caucus solidarity, they are still strongly encouraged to vote with the party, and often suffer punishment if they go against the party line. 

The exception is when the leadership of a political party announces a “free” or “conscience” vote. These are rare, and are typically related to bills with a strong ethical element, such as abortion, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research. In these cases, members are released from their obligations to vote with the party. However, over the last few decades the ALP has been less likely to allow a conscience vote than the Liberal Party, and the bill on Palestinian statehood that Payman crossed the floor on was not declared as a conscience vote by Labor. 

Caucus solidarity is often justified in terms of the party being more stable – and more effective in governing – if it works as a collective rather than a group of individuals with diverse views. If every member of parliament were free to vote on any issue, then parties would have to work harder to curry favour with each representative, possibly watering down bills in order to get them on board. That could result in weaker legislation and prevent a party from genuinely being able to enact the policy platform that it presented to the electorate. It would also make it harder to vote for a party platform, knowing that any member might vote against it at any time. 

Still, party solidarity could be seen as a political solution that involves an ethical compromise, not only preventing politicians from voting according to their deeply held views – which might be the very views that got them elected – but also requiring them to act inauthentically by publicly supporting a view they don’t personally hold.

Ultimately, political leaders – Anthony Albanese included – have a choice to make when faced with the dilemma of a sitting member crossing the floor: which is more important, solidarity or principle? And voters have a choice of whether to vote for a candidate, knowing that they might be prevented from voting in accordance with their values and principles.