Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #102 of 2019. Read August 27, 2019. 

While the last chapter did its best to pull the rating of the rest of the book up, this was basically a book belonging in an Ethics 101 class about the differences between Kant, Rawls, etc. I really was hoping for more of a discussion about how to help society instead of rehashing the views of utalitarians and non-consequentalists…

Quotes:

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be.”

“Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts…the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.” – Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 speech at KU

“This generation could commit itself to an equally consequential investment in an infrastructure for civic renewal: public schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children; public transportation systems reliable enough to attract upscale commuters; and public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, libraries, and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of a shared democratic citizenship.”

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