Einstein and Me
That’s right. I’m comparing myself to Einstein. Freak out if you feel like it.
Einstein started out trying to solve a problem left over from Clerk Maxwell’s explanation of electromagnetism. He used imagination and mathematics to create sets of equations that redefined our understanding of the Universe.
The point is that Einstein did not set out to change our understanding of the Universe. He started out trying to solve one problem, and in the process he discovered the key to a fundamentally better understanding of the Universe.
I started out by parting company with Karl Marx. He rejected justice as a ‘real’ thing, but considered it to be only a device used by people in power in society to justify their place of power in society.
I feel justice is something human beings actually need, that its presence makes our lives inherently better and its absence makes our lives inherently worse. I am convinced that living with injustice is a source of anxiety and stress even if we aren’t consciously thinking about it. It keeps us subconsciously dissatisfied and unsettled.
No on has any choice but to participate in the economy of the society of which one is a member. If that economic system is inherently unjust, if the structure and functioning of the system is fundamentally unjust, we will be forced to be experiencing injustice day in and day out.
I began by asking myself what a really just economy would be. I thought of trying to borrow from political democracy (assuming it to be, for present purposes, a really just process).
The solution I came up with was a “democratically distributed income.” Once I figured out a way to implement such an income without using taxes (because of the unavoidable injustices inherent in all taxation), it turned out that it solved all of the problems for society associated with the existing economy. [It also turned out that this is a solution any nation could adopt as a strictly economic matter, without any reference to justice.]
The point is that I didn’t set out to solve all of those problems. The only thing I was focused on was the problem of justice in the economy. Similar to Einstein, in seeking after a solution for that problem I happened upon a fundamentally better understanding of the economy as a system (specifically, how the process of supplying it with money makes all of the difference in its outcomes for society).
[Note: I did have to circle back around and consider whether democracy really is a just process. The result of those efforts is “Real Justice.”]