JUSTICE, EQUITY, AND COMPETITION

The 1960s in America was the decade of social responsibility, founded upon fifteen years of unparalleled economic growth. To some, world prosperity seemed a realizable ideal. Social theorists like Buckminster Fuller, John Gardner, and John Rawls saw opportunities for sharing wealth in a cooperative net that assumed a rising standard of living across the world. While some might find little cheer in John Kenneth Galbraith's model of the “New Industrial State,” few would now argue that his model was not, in the main, correct. The following two decades proved that while global industrialization was realizable, perhaps inevitable, there was no guarantee that social equity across the board would be the result of that process. In a competitive world marketplace, it might seem that abstract considerations of justice and equity are a luxury few firms or nations can now afford.