I don’t believe this to be true. Fairness only matters to people who value fairness. Many people value fairness, but it is irrational to believe that everyone values fairness. Some, not most or even many, don’t care about fairness fundamentally. For these people, interesting fairness does nothing for them. These are the people we need to protect others from while also providing an environment that didn’t necessarily mean removing or killing them.
But what causes people to value fairness so little or so much? When I support equality, I don’t just mean wealth or resources, but everything, and in this case it’s intellect or knowledge. When people have different intellect or knowledge, there is bound to be misunderstanding or miscommunication or other issues. People who have low empathy or are ignorant or dumb to realize how fairness affects people can make things worse. I guess in this case we can make everyone equally smart so no one can deceive and no more misunderstanding. Can’t make smart people dumber so I suggest making dumb people smarter which is to give education to those who need it.
You answered it yourself, but I will elaborate.
Humans are different between individuals. Some people are dumb. Some people are mean. Some people are evil. Fundamentally the paradox of tolerance applies to fairness as well.
Well you wouldn’t like this answer probably. I suggest to eliminate the differences but i think it’s impossible. As long as there is positive, there is negative. To eliminate the negative is to eliminate the positive too, which is neutral and can make life very dull. So my other suggestion is quite radical which is to eliminate life itself. Or just make life or the world as fair as possible even if it’s impossible.
Except for those deformed by conditioning into abject servility, everyone values fairness at the moment of being unfairly deprived of the means of one’s own survival.
Valuation of fairness is a rather robust human trait. In some individuals it may be less pronounced, but as a tendency it is robust, not only among humans, but also among various non-human species.
Members of societies with low levels of inequality generally have more favorable subjective experiences, even those within the cohorts with greater privilege.
Nurturing the vitality of society as a whole, and the health of relations in community, has been a facet of human behavior indispensable for our survival.