Social justice in the crab bucket
For those possible few of us who may not know how crabs in a bucket act, any crab that manages to get a little bit up on the way out of the bucket gets grabbed by one or more other crabs who are also trying to climb out, the result is that the crab that has somehow made it a little way up gets pulled back into the frantic, squirming melee at the bottom of the bucket.
The point of the title is that social justice is something in remarkably short supply at the bottom of the crab bucket, it's every crustacean for itself.
Advanced technologies today are wiping out traditional jobs, for instance it won't be all that long before driving jobs become more scarce due to robotic vehicles. Once it's shown statistically that robot drivers are safer than human ones it's only a matter of time until the insurance companies if nothing else make sure that robot drivers are preferred over human ones. Humans are already as good as they are going to get at driving while robots will only get better at it. The same sort of advances are happening in every facet of life, human intelligence and ability to manipulate the environment is going to become ever less needed while it becomes more readily available as there are more and more humans.
The crab bucket is already here, as the wealthy absorb ever more of the world economic output and the number of people needed to keep the wheels of industry turning becomes ever fewer the sides of the crab bucket get gradually higher and more slippery and the crabs at the bottom of the bucket ever more desperate and frantic to climb up each other to escape. From my point of view I can't see how that type of environment engenders justice of any sort besides that of chitin and claw.
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