ABSTRACT
We know that from the beginning of written history, people have asked themselves the question: what is justice? Although Greek philosophers coined the term justice, behaviors and attitudes with regard to the exchange of goods (resources) must have been developed long before that period. For instance, following the period when people settled more permanently in fertile areas and agriculture developed, they produced more food than they could consume and began to exchange this food for other goods. Questions must have come up as to how much should food cost—that is, how much, in terms of goods or services, can be asked for the labor to produce the food? Or how much of a certain type of food should be exchanged for what amount of other goods? All sorts of rules may have been tried out until some were accepted by most of the agents involved in the exchange. The assumption is that the rules that have survived were those that were beneficial for individual members of the group or category, as well as for the group or category as a whole. These accepted rules of exchange were coined “just” rules. The social environment is constantly changing, giving rise to new behavioral and social patterns. How rules of fair exchange and allocation of resources develop, how people decide what is right or wrong in terms of allocation, and how psychological and social processes affect fair allocation of food and other resources in the changing world is the subject matter of this book.
