What if some people do not believe in fairness?

"The alarming level of economic inequality globally has been well documented by prominent economists," wrote Prof K Basu. The rich work hard while the poor are lazy, is a myth. "The reality is that the poor, more often than not, must work extremely hard, often in difficult circumstances, just to survive." But, are we really aware of this extreme inequality that Prof Basu writes about? The rich live in such luxury, protected by private security, that is impossible to imagine. We may see a huge building from the outside but we can never imagine what is inside. We never see the super-rich getting their passports renewed, queuing to get visas to Europe or the US, so difficult for us, and we never see them being frisked at airport security. There are companies to cater to their whims, however extreme they maybe, although a demand to detonate a nuclear bomb was politely refused. So, if the super-rich are invisible to us can we really be jealous of them? Perhaps, people are offended by the disparity because it seems immoral that some people can afford $600 gold toothpicks or have luxury showers for their pet pooches, while others are sleeping rough on pavements, very often without sufficient food. Human beings have an innate sense of fairness and altruism which help us live in societies, wrote Prof R Hausmann. So, what is the solution? "A first step would be to give all of a country's residents the right to a certain share of the economy's profits." Instead of competition, monopoly production is to be encouraged because "a monopoly of production need not mean a monopoly of income, as long as the shares in each company are widely held." Someone has to run those monopolies and then distribute profits to the people and only governments have that kind of reach. This is communism with sugar-coating and the lessons learnt from the Bolshevik revolution 100 years ago is that a centralised system results in extreme coercion, wrote Prof S Rajagopalan. Those of us who are old enough remember the days when a telephone call to another part of India was called a 'trunk call' and cost Rs 100 per minute. Prof Y Varoufakis recommends a share in capital wealth for everyone, because "wealth was always produced collectively and privatized by those with the power to do it: the propertied class". Every time there is an Initial Public Offering of shares in a company, a portion will go into a public fund which will distribute dividends to the people. Utilitarianism is of no use because although the utility of a handicapped person maybe less than that of one who is fit, his need is greater, so there must be some sort of redistribution, wrote S Subramanian. Perhaps, instead of such complicated theories we should rely on simple demand and supply. To increase the value of the poor we must reduce numbers.