Fairly
Fair means at least four different things in ordinary life, and the four often point in opposite directions. Naming the one you are using will end more arguments than winning them.
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Fair means at least four different things in ordinary life, and the four often point in opposite directions. Naming the one you are using will end more arguments than winning them.
Four people finish a meal and the bill arrives. One says split it evenly. One says pay for what you ordered. One says the person who is between jobs should pay less. One says we agreed at the start that whoever booked the table pays, so that settles it. Nobody at that table is being difficult. Each of them is applying a rule that is genuinely a rule of fairness, and each rule has a long history of ordinary use. The trouble is not that three of them are wrong. The trouble is that the word fair is being asked to carry four separate jobs at once, and it cannot.
Call the four by their plain names. Equal shares: everyone gets the same amount. Shares by need: the person who needs more gets more. Shares by contribution: the person who put in more takes out more. Shares by an agreed rule: whatever we settled in advance is what happens, regardless of the other three. Every one of these is described as fair by people using the word in good faith. In many situations they happen to agree, which is why the conflict stays hidden most of the time. When they diverge, the argument starts, and it usually starts without either party noticing that the disagreement is about vocabulary.
Equal division is the default because it needs no information about anybody.
Allocating by need is intuitive until somebody has to decide whose need counts.
Effort and prior agreement are both called fair, and they routinely collide.