And my comment to Professor Wierzbicka was:

In economics we have an elaborate analysis of marginal valuation which goes to show how competition reduces variation in prices, bringing consumers and producers to their knees to face the One Price. It seems people do recognize at least the end-product of a competitive market, which is the One Price. And when prices start to vary a lot from it, well, that’s “unfair.”

Fairness in the case of prices has to do precisely with equality of opportunity, everyone facing the same price, whether the prices are *actually* driven toward the equality of One Price by justice concerns or not (a point economists have been railing against since they were economists).

And even when people pay different prices, as long as so-and-so is assumed to be able to “afford” the price, she gets her due: the exchange is fair. Here equilibrium is achieved between what she “can” pay and what she “does” pay, satisfying the egalitarian ethic. Any way it is sliced it seems to me Fair Prices are always conceived of via equality, and hence fairness too sleeps safely in equality’s blanket.

But more of Liberman’s skepticism about comparing cultures and historical trends through lexicon development is ABSOLUTELY in order.

Thank you overall for a thought provoking post.

In closing, given the meanings of these less common usages, perhaps fairness doesn’t have a word for word translation in any other language. Nevertheless, to hold that the lack of the word equals an inability to understand the concept is, well, unfair.