Frazz by Jef Mallett for June 04, 2021

In a fair contest either side can win. Not true in court, where fair means the guilty go down & the innocent walk out.

At Caulfield’s age, “Do as you would be done by” isn’t all wrong.

Fairness would require that the best qualified person would get the job, regardless of any factor that wouldn’t impact the quality of the work. It would also require educational availability for anyone willing to put in the effort to learn how to follow their dreams.

Some (Many) people today are trying to equate (or substitute) “Equality” with “Equity”.

Those people “promoting” Equity are often seeking to “get even” … and … those whom they have determined to have “done wrong” will never be able to do enough – so they will forever be expected to pay for their “sins”. (… and the “guilty” should forever be apologetic)

So do we peg Caulfield for politics, a CEO or a union boss?

Only thing in life that’s fair is the thing that comes to the county every fall.

Fair is foul and foul is fair!

“Free people can treat each other justly, but they can’t make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.”

— Andrew Klavan

Fairness is what ever Nancy, Chuck and Joe want it to be.

I didn’t know Caufield had an inner Karen.

Like the third panel, it’s a grey area.

Equal opportunity is what should be important. Equality says to me “Equal Outcomes” and that is not what we want as a society, that tends to pull everyone down to the lowest common denominator, a blandness of everyone having the same low skills.

What our system has lost is the concept of contributing to the Common Good. To those to whom much is given, much is also expected.

In the beginning of this ark, Frazz said Fair is fortune or misfortune equally applied That’s as good an answer as any yet offered.

Just like Frazz, throwing shade…

No, that’s exactly where we are.

Believe it or not, answering this question is what got John Forbes Nash Jr. the Nobel Prize for his contribution to game theory. (He’s the real-life person that the “A Beautiful Mind” movie was based on. Read the book; the movie is as big a fantasy as The Lord of the Rings, from the same year.) His theory says that when each player knows the strategies of the other players and no player has anything to gain by changing their own strategy, equilibrium (fairness) is achieved.

“Fair is whatever benefits me” is this kid in a nutshell. (This admission probably crosses the line from “he’s a misunderstood genius” to “its just a comic strip, and not meant to be taken literally” territory from his incessant apologists, though.)

Remember that the real point of Frazz, as a ‘comic’… is to MAKE US QUESTION OURSELVES! Not to trot out answers. I used to think I knew what “fair” meant. Now I see big gaping holes in each of my concepts. That’s… oddly… an improvement.

I see we moved into a grey area by the last panel.

Everyone doing the best for themselves results in the the best for all is the philosophy of egoism. It is Adam Smith’s basis for capitalism.

People who believe our legal system is fair usually haven’t spent much time in it. Do you think OJ Simpson would have walked if he were represented by an overburdened public defender rather than Johnny Cochran? You get the best justice your money can buy.

“It isn’t that black and white.” And then the next panel is black and white.

Jef Mallett’s Blog Posts

Frazz16 hrs · The third panel definitely belongs in gray, but now I’m wondering if I should have had the first panel in strictly black and white with the second panel in the daily comic strip version of hi-def technicolor.

Sheesh. Not only is everything more complicated than you think, time doesn’t always fix it.

Then again, in 24 hours I’ll be worrying if I got a totally different strip right and will have forgotten all about this one.