Reviewed by: Eduardo Reyes
Author: Peter Corning
Publisher: Chicago Press
ISBN: 978-0226116273
Price: £18.00

Can law, with its focus on fair and just outcomes, ever be an effective counterweight to the hard power represented by the apparently more Darwinian forces of greed, power and money? This question is the central focus of Stanford professor Peter Corning’s book The Fair Society: the science of human nature and the pursuit of social justice.

Corning argues that in addition to being naturally competitive, human beings are not fundamentally selfish in all regards, and are partly hard-wired to seek out fair outcomes. The rule of law, present to a greater or lesser degree in all societies, is the most salient expression of their fair nature.

He begins with the example of a case on unequal pay that reached the US Supreme Court in 2007 – a claim brought by former Goodyear employee Lilly Ledbetter, who was paid significantly less by the company than any of her male peers. Her case became a cause célèbre, and was picked up by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. Corning notes that it is a ‘surprising and important finding about human nature is that we prefer (most of us) to have a justice system that is fair to everyone (equal protection under the law) and are offended when we see the system corrupted’.

It is this instinct for fairness that economics fails to take adequate account of in its basic precepts, Corning argues: ‘The root of the problem… is that economists have relied on computer models with assumptions that conform poorly to the way the real world works.’ Economics has turned in to a ‘branch of applied mathematics’ which assumes the existence of a Homo economicus whose energy is purely selfish, and whose energies and actions reflect that.

The Fair Society, though, is much more than law v economics. Accepting that the basis of the Homo economicus idea is underpinned by ‘Darwinian’ arguments, Corning opts to review the relevant science, including changed thinking on evolution, and the amount of ‘group work’ those in the animal kingdom, and early human societies, deployed to thrive. Business thinking, where it is underpinned by ‘game theory’, is also examined and found wanting. He also makes efforts to place political thought in its proper historical context.

His conclusion, that inequality puts societies in fatal trouble, that the economics that underpins much public policy is flawed, and that while we respond to ‘selfish’ incentives, our natures also in large part respond to and demand ‘fairness’ may not be surprising. It is certainly his starting point, and his work is firmly in the tradition of JK Galbraith’s works The Affluent Society and Created Unequal.

The surprise is the authority with which, in 200 pages, Corning manages to cover the role of the many disciplines whose findings and arguments are bound up in the debates engages in. In doing so, he shows how many modern economic and political precepts have their roots in a distinctly shaky set of assumptions – assumptions that too readily pass for accepted fact.

Any reader who feels that the balance society strikes between social justice on the one hand, and ‘economic’ interests on the other – or who simply has an open mind on an important debate – will find The Fair Society a thought-provoking read.

Eduardo Reyes is features editor of the Gazette

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