Understanding The Importance of Justice

To many economists, questions of justice are not relevant to the study of free markets. In most situations where people try to invoke arguments about “justice,” they are concerned with distributive justice. Their aim is to address questions of wealth distribution and income inequality. They argue that “social justice” requires the state to redistribute wealth.

In this context, Friedrich A. Hayek depicted “social justice” as a meaningless slogan—a mantra wielded by political activists to avoid ha...