15 November 2010

The issue of the relationship is indivisible

Fairness lends itself to quantitative measures in a way that deservedness does not. To analyze the distinction between fairness and deservedness is to explain the difference between market exchange and covenantal exchange. 
Fairness presumes divisibility in a way that deservedness does not. Indeed, deservedness is often about the maintenance of the relationship precisely because the issue of the relationship is indivisible. Fairness answers the question of how do you allocate value given the dissolution of the relationship; deservedness answers the question of how do you preserve the relationship given the indissolubility of the value. 
Markets are solvents of covenants. Radical market fundamentalist advocates dissolve the bonds of covenant in the interests of promulgating the markets. That is the reason the Muslim world objects to the incursions of modernity. Modernity systematically and at the institutional level undermines and then violates the values of covenantal exchange.  

No comments:

Post a Comment