Brent Parrish on The Inequality of Equality, and questioning the concept of “social justice.” It’s not too long, check it out.

Where most Social Justice types get hung up is confusing fairness for justice. What’s fair is not always necessarily just.

The hot trend among social justice crusaders nowadays is “income inequality.” This parallels another problem, which I believe is just as serious – Traffic Inequality. It’s not fair that Sunshine Mary and Donal Graeme, among others,¹ get more readers than I do.

Clearly, the answer is to redistribute readers. Enacting a Minimum Traffic law would transfer excess readers from high-traffic sites to writers like myself who fall under the Readership Poverty Line. Seriously, does Mary really need all of her (as of this writing) 1,378,008 hits, compared to my 9,923? That’s over one million more hits, and she only started writing about 3 weeks before I did (and if we consider that those numbers only track her current site, I’m actually about 8 months ahead). If she cared, she would distribute some of those hits to the rest of us.

Under the labor theory of value which many SJ crusaders seem to subscribe to, I should get the same amount of traffic as SSM, and more than Donal. So why should they get more traffic?

Readers – like most incomes – aren’t distributed, they are earned. Value isn’t determined by labor, but by the benefit one gains from the product. Other writers post material that readers place a higher value on, and so those readers are more likely to return.  More people want to read about traditional sex roles or the definition of Game than about 3D printing firearms or Batman vs. Donkey Kong. One might even argue that they are better writers than I am.²

Those others also post on a more consistent schedule than I do, which attracts and keeps readers. They also promote their work more than I do. They’re the 8 PM show five nights a week and get paid accordingly, whereas I show up Saturday night and hang around the parking lot after hours entertaining a few friends and passersby with off-the-wall stories for tips and free sodas.

No one held a gun to anyone’s head and forced them to read SSM or Donal or whoever over me.³ Unfair as it might be, it’s not unjust. Trying to get readers from them by any means other than writing to suit the existing market – or finding a new one – would be coercion, which is both unfair and unjust.

¹ Waaayyy too many others. A pimp can’t catch a break these days.

² Stop smoking crack. Your mom would be so ashamed.

³ Okay, Donal might have. He’s tricky like that.