In the long run, such policy only injures the deserving. For instance, the failure of a courtroom judge to require a convicted burglar to answer fully for his crimes adversely affects the burglar's future victims. Similarly, feelings of sympathy might motivate one to confer an unearned benefit upon an undeserving Peter, not realizing that said benefit must necessarily now be withheld from a more deserving Paul.

Many of the injustices practiced in our society can be attributed (at least in part) to defaults on the mental effort of judging the actions of individuals qua individuals. Evading the responsibility to examine an individual's record and to evaluate him or her accordingly, some resort to simple, unrealistic assumptions based on superficial characteristics, such as the person's race. Racism—the belief that a person's ideas, values, or character are determined not by that person's mind but by his or her race—is fundamentally a failure to practice the virtue of justice. (More specific causes of racism, sexism, and other collectivist thinking will be explored at several later points.) Racism can be overcome only by a culture in which reason, objectivity, and justice are highly valued, and in which human beings are regarded as individuals rather than collective categories.