Do not violate justice to protect the weak

The principle “do not violate justice to protect the weak”, for me, is behind free markets, feminism, and the Enlightenment.

It is behind free markets because one should let people be as successful as they can be with their own powers, either inherited or acquired through property to which they have a just title (ultimately derived by voluntary exchange from original acquisition by the first user). For some people, this means being poor: they can’t be successful at all with their own powers, and they can’t convince anyone to support them voluntarily. But in that case, those people should be left to their poverty, because it is a violation of justice to violently take from those who can be successful to those who can’t.

It is behind feminism because one should let women who are educated and intellectual be the equals of their husbands, and/or independent of any husbands (or any other men). The qualifier “who are educated and intellectual” is important because I think feminism is true even if women really were somehow biologically inferior to men (although even if they were, I would be too feminist to say so). We can see that clearly some women are good enough to be independent. Even if most women ended up making poor decisions and leading unhappy lives when left independent, even so, those women should simply be left to be broken and unhappy to allow the educated intellectual women to be independent, because it would be a violation of justice to subject the female elite to their husbands only to protect the less capable women.

It is behind the Enlightenment because people should be allowed to think for themselves. Everyone should be allowed this, even the unintelligent masses. Yes, in the case of the least intelligent people, their free-thinking does not get us novel science but rather conspiracy theories. I acknowledge that most people would have more accurate beliefs about the world, and fit better into society, if they simply trusted the established intellectual authorities. Nevertheless, those people should still be encouraged to think for themselves, and simply be allowed to have wrong beliefs as a result, because it is a violation of justice to put anyone under intellectual subjection who could succeed without it, even if the rule protects more people than it hurts.

Similarly, some people acknowledge that homosexuality and polyamory are good for those who prefer it, but think allowing it as a publicly acknowledged preference would be bad as a societal policy. I think those are bad arguments, and I say again: if it hurts most people, let it hurt them, if the alternative violates justice.