He's a good writer, but completely off the rails. One of his early examples not only has a tavern owner hiring his brother's mediocre band over better entertainments because of nepotism, but the brother then skims off the top of the payment for his own needs (his daughter needs braces) before splitting with his band members. Asma thinks both the tavern owner and his brother are acting correctly. I'm prepared to think the tavern owner is within his rights (but his business will soon fail for consistently having awful music, so how does that advance his nepotistic interests?), but the brother cheating his fellow musicians (maybe they also have children needing braces) is wrong by any ethical standard. He also believes politicians should guide public monies to their relatives and friends because they have "history."

To put this perhaps in terms closer to the author's interest, if Asma was the editor of a prestigious philosophy journal, his argument puts the world on notice that he will choose his friends' and family's mediocre squibs over the superior work of strangers. And believe he is acting correctly and morally while doing so. Such favoritism exists in the world, but he hopes it becomes dominant, prevalent, and admired. All this he justifies by arguing that in elementary school children are not friends with everyone, they must discriminate, and therefore the ethos of "fairness" is a lie.

It doesn't help his case that he can only make his argument by lampooning what simple fairness demands. For most of the book he assumes "fairness" means everyone gets the same thing, no more, no less. That's naive, and suggests if nothing else he's never heard of Rawls. Because it fails this test, Asma says Occupy Wallstreet was not about fundamental fairness, but only about "justice," not fairness (cue Rawls). He offers no theory about why justice is not grounded in fairness, especially given he already concedes that fairness should prevail on questions of law and order. But not justice, it seems, leaving us to wonder that justice actually is, if not fairness. We're not told.

We always have favorites, and it is natural to want the best for them. Handing them unearned opportunities over others, even if better qualified, not only in private situations but public, as when a politician gives sweetheart deals to a nephew, though, does not follow from that simple observation. But such corruption is his ideal world.

That Asma views such dreadful self-interest as how morality ought to work says quite a bit about him, at least, but very little about how we should think about moral philosophy unless you favor some Ayn Randian self-interest as the highest good. Despite an early claim that he is adverse to Rand's objectivism, it is oddly ironic that he winds up in much the same place: my duties extend only as far as me and mine; everyone else can go to hell. This book, whatever his intention, will be warmly received by white supremacists who want to believe they're morally upstanding when restricting all privileges and benefits to people like themselves. Even Rosa Parks he rewrites to be someone who was not fighting for basic fairness, but only advancement of her own in-group, like all good nepotists ought.

The best that can be said is that Asma is a good writer. He is a provocateur, though, and not a careful or deep thinker. ( )

A good poke at the overly exalted position of the concept of fairness, along with a defense of favoritism. Very thought-provoking. A great challenge to many of my assumptions. Read this after reading an Asma essay in the NYT blog. ( )

I was prepared to be convinced, but I'm afraid Asma is arguing entirely orthogonal to the thing I'm interested in (I'm against fairness because it's an impossible abstraction, he's against fairness in favor of nepotism) and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get anywhere interesting with this. Gave up fifty pages in.