Justice as group bargaining

Social justice can be modelled as an explicit bargaining problem between social groups who can accept or exit a social contract; the chosen rules (favoring equality or maximizing total welfare) depend on each group's outside option and information about the consequences. Framing justice this way foregrounds leverage, secession threats, and institutional rules that constrain bargaining rather than abstract moral first principles. — This reframing shifts public debates from abstract moral disputes to concrete negotiation dynamics and institutional designs that determine which groups can extract what from collective rules.