Two kinds of judgments

We have two kinds of judgments. The preference ordering is a judgment of what one good is worth relative to another good, or one unit of a good relative to another unit. Deservedness is a judgment of whether some value has been earned or not. 

The calculus (calculus A) that goes into devising a preference ordering is in some way associated with but largely dissimilar from the calculus (calculus B) that determines whether some allocation is fair or not, deserved or not, just or not. Clearly, the case of the preference ordering does not take into consideration the manner in which an allocation is arrived at and so deserts or undeservedness do not factor into the equation. Nor, in the case of fairness, does an adequate traditum correspond to a price. 

Prices tend to evaluate things by the marginal person (the individual) with respect to the marginal unit. Tradita tend to evaluate things by the average person (the community) with respect to the median unit. A preference ordering is with respect to the goods, a sense of justice is with respect to the society. The two styles of judgments address two different universes. In the one case we have a basket of goods, in the other case we have a population of people. 

That society is best which inculcates the impulse of deservedness into its members. That impulse is not so keen about the undeservedness of the other, which would incline the society to take from the undeserved that which is unearned, as it is about the undeservedness of one's self, which would incline one to gift away what one feels as having been given to one by way of gift. The impulse about the undeservedness of the other sits at the root of the resource curse.