Justice

Punishment for what a person does (a "crime") in terms of what that person's motivation was is perhaps less important to justice than how evenly that punishment is distributed among all persons who commit the same "crime".

Let us say that all crimes are punishable by death, but that not all criminals -- that is, people who commit the crime -- are punished. Further let us say that the people who are punished are poor and those who are not punished are rich. Let us further stipulate that the poor are punished while the rich are not because the rich can buy their way out of punishment.

Now if simple commission of a crime were the only criteria for punishment, the evolutionary natural selection would work in a straightforward way: all criminals die. But if we add the variable of relative wealth (the distinction of rich and poor), then we "complicate" natural selection so that our result is that rich criminals live and poor criminals die. Under this condition, we are selecting for rich criminals. Under these pure conditions, rich criminals are more likely to reporduce than poor ones. Under these conditions, evolution is likely to create a species of rich criminals and pious poor people.

This thought experiment of course ignores the baby-boom effect were people are likely to reproduce at high rates if they believe their lives are threatened.

In this case, it is possible that rich criminals will not feel the need to reporduce at high rates while poor cirminals will respond to such a need.