Computer Access Equity - Concern for Justice - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Walter Maner

5. Concern for Justice

It is a shame that life does not distribute benefits and burdens with even hands. We can always hope some combination of philanthropy, charity, and self-improvement will rescue those who are at a disadvantage. But apart from benevolence and self-help, should anything more be done? Not if the imbalance is merely unfortunate or transient or easily righted by individual initiative. But if the imbalance is arbitrary, if it is systemic, if a principled analysis shows it to be unjust, society may have sufficient moral grounds for taking remedial action. It is therefore important to decide whether access inequities are merely issues of outrageous fortune or issues of social justice.

A concern for justice arises when the demand for some important social benefit or advantage (e.g., replacement organs from donors) exceeds the ability of society to provide it. This unsatisfiable demand forces a recognition of scarcity. This recognition of scarcity, in turn, leads to the ethical demand that some fair procedure be invoked to reconcile the various conflicting claims on the scarce resource. A concern for justice also arises when the demand for relief from some important social burden (e.g., economic distress) exceeds the available provision of remedies, thus producing conflicting claims for assistance. If the benefits of computer access and the remedies for lack of access were inexhaustible, or if claims on the limited amount of available access never came into conflict, no issue of justice would arise. In reality, however, both benefits and remedies are finite, so the existence of access inequities raises profound issues of social justice. These issues are made even more difficult because access claims tend to clash along the entire length of social class boundaries, not just within the interpersonal zones between individuals.

Given that concerns about justice are necessarily motivated by conditions of scarcity which are then exacerbated by conflicts of interest, it follows that we could eliminate much inequity in computer access simply by addressing supply-side issues. We could work to make computer access convenient and plentiful and public and cheap. The declining cost of hardware, media and telecommunication services bolster this dream of electronic equality, but not well enough to sustain it. Although access opportunities may continue to improve with advances in technology, proprietary and profit-taking interests will ultimately prevent a supply-side-only solution from reaching all segments of society equally. So, even if access improves markedly with progress in technology, it is possible and likely that groups already advantaged by access will attract a larger share of the increased benefit. In the end, given the finitude of all resources and a steepening demand for better access, we will have to face difficult issues of distributive justice. Sooner or later, when we reach the point where we can no longer resolve equity issues simply by throwing more resources at the problem, we will have to ask and answer fundamental ethical questions.

How do we resolve conflicting claims on limited resources in such a way that we produce a fair allocation of benefits and burdens? This is the central question of distributive justice. How can we arrange structures, procedures and incentives so that people get their deserved share of benefits and burdens? In this context we ask: What kind of equity strategies are required to produce a fair redistribution of access opportunities across individuals and groups?

Two special circumstances lie at opposite ends of the current mal-distribution of access opportunities: (1) cases where individuals or groups have been unduly disadvantaged because their access benefits, if any, are less than what they deserve and (2) cases where individuals or groups have been unduly advantaged because their access benefits exceed what they deserve. The maldistribution of bad and good fortune may initially be innocent. It may be the pure result of a no-fault social lottery which leaves us with several thorny problems to resolve . . . but no one to blame for them. The first type of case creates problems of compensatory justice. Perhaps some new benefit must be provided or some existing benefit expanded in the interest of justice. The second creates problems of capitulatory justice. Perhaps some existing benefit must be surrendered or reduced in the interest of justice. (If blame could be assigned, we might also have problems of retributory justice. Perhaps then some punishment would have to be accepted in the interest of justice.) In order to formulate an equity strategy that addresses these kinds of problems, it is necessary to ask what kind of access to computer resources is deserved.

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