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https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/justice-creep

Freddie deBoer says we\\u2019re a planet of cops. Maybe that\\u2019s why justice is eating the world.

Helping the poor becomes economic justice. If they\\u2019re minorities, then it\\u2019s racial justice, itself a subspecies of social justice. Saving the environment becomes environmental justice, except when it\\u2019s about climate change in which case it\\u2019s climate justice. Caring about young people is actually about fighting for intergenerational justice. The very laws of space and time are subject to spatial justice and temporal justice.

I can\\u2019t find clear evidence on Google Trends that use of these terms is increasing - I just feel like I\\u2019ve been hearing them more and more often. Nor can I find a simple story behind why - it\\u2019s got to have something to do with Rawls, but I can\\u2019t trace any of these back to specific Rawlsian philosophers. Some of it seems to have something to do with Amartya Sen, who I don\\u2019t know enough about to have an opinion. But mostly it just seems to be the zeitgeist.

This is mostly a semantic shift - instead of saying \\u201cwe should help the poor\\u201d, you can say \\u201cwe should pursue economic justice\\u201d. But different framings have slightly different implications and connotations, and it\\u2019s worth examining what connotations all this justice talk has.

\\u201cWe should help the poor\\u201d mildly suggests a friendly optimistic picture of progress. We are helpers - good people who are nice to others because that\\u2019s who we are. And the poor get helped - the world becomes a better place. Sometimes people go further: \\u201cWe should save the poor\\u201d (or the whales, doesn\\u2019t matter). That makes us saviors, a rather more impressive title than helpers. And at the end of it, people/whales/whatever are saved - we\\u2019re one step closer to saving the world. Extrapolate the line out far enough, and you can dream of utopia.

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