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Table of Contents
A Claim is a person's moral right to use, consume or otherwise possess a thing. While there are many types of claims (financial, legal, etc.), the only one relevant to me and how I live my life is the moral one. A claim can be established by three things: Need, emotional desire and fairness. The first two concepts describe the two kinds of motivations that can lead a person to want a thing, Intrinsic value and Extrinsic value, while the third one is an auxiliary dictated by a moral system.
Need
The strength of a claim will depend greatly on need. In case of limited resources, the one with the greatest need has the strongest claim. In food terms, for example, if there is one bowl of rice left and everyone's satiated while one person is about to starve, their claim on the rice bowl is the strongest, so they are awarded the rice bowl. Someone with an emotional desire can cry about that bowl of rice all they want, even if it was their rice, the starving person is completely justified in enforcing their claim.
Emotional Desire and Fairness
Everyone should get on the ride. Because everyone wants it, everyone has a claim on getting on the ride. This is just human nature and a good moral system is built around our emotions.
However, letting emotional desire alone dictate who gets what would mean that all you have to get everything you want, even over the need or wants of others, would be just crying loud enough until we you get it - and we are not small, spoiled children (or at least we shouldn't be). While need is an obvious reason for a claim - maintaining survival of a human being for example - emotional desire is more than just need. Emotional desire involves wanting things even if we don't necessarily need them. These kinds of claims are valid and reasonable (because even just wanting to survive is essentially just a desire in a human brain) - but without an actual need to compare, this type of claim is another kind of beast. A beast to be tamed using fairness. We “offset” a person's emotional desire for something by fairness.
For example, every kid at the table wants some of the tasty bacon. There is enough food for everyone, so everyone is going to survive, but the bacon specifically is limited (and coveted), so we need to set priorities beyond just the need to survive. So, assume a situation which one kid didn't have any bacon yet while another wants a second portion of bacon. There's only one portion left, so whoever gets that last bit of bacon will be the last to get any bacon, the other will go home without any bacon. Maximum fairness in this situation is achieved by letting the kid who didn't have any bacon at all, yet, have the last kid of bacon. That way, everyone had the same amount of bacon and nobody was “preferred” over anyone else.