
The Equality Conundrum: What kind of equality is good? - pepys
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-equality-conundrum
======
cjfd
This piece is jumping from (un)equality in the family to (un)equality in the
state. That itself does not seem to be a good idea. The state cannot be run as
if it were a family.

Regarding the family conundrum I would say that the four children should get
an equal amount unless there is a very severe reason not to do so. One does
not want to risk poisoning the relationship between the children after one is
gone.

Regarding equality in the state the answer is that the state should strive to
not have severe inequalities of opportunity, especially if they are so severe
that they inhibit social mobility. This can never be done perfectly, though.
Also, a situation of equality of opportunity will not lead to equality of
outcome because, as this piece also discusses, people have different
abilities, interests, and other attributes.

~~~
TuringTest
_> Regarding the family conundrum I would say that the four children should
get an equal amount unless there is a very severe reason not to do so._

There's also evidence from the _Talent vs luck_ model that doing so must be
the most beneficial strategy to maximize the potential benefits of their
talent. It shows that giving opportunities among all players is a superior
strategy to giving more resources to those who have performed better so far.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-
smart-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-
arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/)

------
throwGuardian
The best we can do as society is to offer equal opportunity at success.
Success is multifold: physical, mental and economic health jump to mind.

Beyond opportunity equalized, an equitable society should bestow success
proportional to the ambitious, persistent hard-working individuals. That might
be imperfect, as a few statistical outliers who tend to have outsized innate
advantages (Einstein, Ramanujam & Usain Bolt for instance) are likely to be
more successful, but that's the most equitable design possible, within the
bounds of reality, including evolution - where the fitter tend to survive
better

~~~
js8
More than that. In my opinion, it's better to offer lots of small equal
opportunities (which means certain forgiveness) than one big equal opportunity
(which you can get easily wrong). That's why I would favor a minimum basic
income, which gives people a small opportunity to do better every month,
although it has its downsides, too (I wouldn't want to replace all public
services with it).

Also, this only addresses the low-end of the inequality, for example people
being poor. But inequality (of power, money are just a proxy for that) also
causes problems at the high-end, because power corrupts and the more power you
have, more corrupt you can become. So it is desirable to limit that too.

I wouldn't mind if there was a cap on personal wealth (say $10M), but many
people feel it's wrong. I don't think it's necessarily unfair, I mean if
economics is a competition (and not a power grab), in other competitions you
don't get an advantage if you have been previously a winner (for example,
Usain Bolt doesn't get to start 10m ahead because he won all the races up to
that point). Even though people in other competitions start at the same line
again, it actually doesn't seem to affect their willingness to participate. I
don't know why people believe business should be any different.

~~~
logicchains
If you have a system that caps personal wealth, you've just given more power
to the people running the system. And if it's like any such system that's
existed historically (e.g. communist Russia and China essentially capping
personal wealth at zero), the people running the system will end up
accumulating way more wealth than the cap (and way more power than in a system
that didn't give the rulers such strong influence over people's lives).

~~~
js8
Capping personal wealth at zero (or less than wealth per capita for that
matter) is obviously a nonsense, so you should be careful with this strawman.
Reasonable amount probably starts at some multiple of that.

Of course, you need democracy too. Since the beginning, the democratic concept
was about equality of access to political power among citizens.

In many ways, it's what traditional anarchist/liberal left is about - equality
in power (egalitarianism?) and not necessarily in the outcome.

~~~
logicchains
>Capping personal wealth at zero (or less than wealth per capita for that
matter) is obviously a nonsense, so you should be careful with this strawman.
Reasonable amount probably starts at some multiple of that.

There's not much more power needed to cap wealth at zero than at 10 million:
the enforcement infrastructure would be the same.

------
username90
We should use inequality whenever it is more efficient than equality to reach
our goals. No free society will ever get rid of the following list of
inequalities, we can reduce them but never completely eliminate them:

Having leaders is a good thing, it makes decision making a lot more efficient.
But having leaders is a direct source of inequality.

Having owners is a good thing, it incentives people to take care and grow
humanity's wealth and resources instead of falling for the tragedy of the
commons. But having ownership is a direct source of inequality.

Having highly skill dependent jobs be better paid is a good thing, it
incentivizes top talent to solve more important problems. But this is also a
source of inequality since not every person is equally talented (hard work is
a part of talent).

Valuing what you know and are used to is a good thing, it helps you reduce
variance and risk so you can focus better on other things. But this is a
source of inequality since it means that you discriminate against people who
are different than you are used to.

------
echlebek
Some may find this trite, but for me, the best part of the article is how one
of the twins, James, gets absolutely thrown under the bus for being a stoner.
Utterly savage.

~~~
josteink
I thought it was funny too, in that it was a super-obvious attempt at
reversing the typical gender-stereotypes:

> Chloe, the oldest, is a math wiz with a coding job at Google; she hopes to
> start her own company soon.

Smart. Successful. Can't be man. Must be a woman.

> Will, who has a degree in social work

Man assigned to non-stereotypical female role? Check!

> James, a perpetually stoned underachiever, is convinced that he can make it
> as a YouTuber.

The typical guys being lazy and stupid stereo-type, that's a _bad_
stereotype... Can't put women in that one, can we? That would uh... not serve
equality?

So by desperately trying to reverse gender stereotypes, but bailing out where
it's not beneficial to women to do the gender juxtaposition, this article
helps highlight the gender stereo-types it wants to avoid more than anything
else.

Modern PC equality is pretty funny at it's heart :)

~~~
vore
They are literally just talking about what their children do. What do you
expect them to say? Make up careers for them?

------
GrayTextIsTruth
> We all agree that inequality is bad False

I don’t like blanket moral labels like “bad” and “good” used for things like
inequality. It’s simply a fact of existence... it is what it is.

~~~
claudiawerner
A great many things that were facts of existence (such as warlordism and human
sacrifice) no longer are, at least partially, I think, because people go as
far as to apply those labels, in order to change them. Recognition of what is
and isn't does not go as far as what will be or could be.

~~~
GrayTextIsTruth
Inequality is always seen as negative, but the best art, literature, anything
are also products of inequality. Diversity of skills and circumstance cause
people to do great things. It’s a universal truth, a law of nature.

Warlordism and human sacrifice are not.

~~~
claudiawerner
"Inequality" here clearly does not refer to the idea that diversity of skills
or circumstance (circumstance considered above a certain baseline) should be
eradicated[0] - of course, they cannot be, as you point out. However, both
warlordism and human sacrifice also had their uses within the societies that
used them (or they would not have emerged as cultural phenomena). The fact of
a positive (such as literature or art) obviously does not outweigh whatever
negatives there may be - after all, it is possible to create an artistic
threatening letter, or artistic child pornography. But we are justified in
prohibiting both of these regardless of their artistic merit.

People having different qualities and experiences is a positive. That
inequality is generally agreed upon to be good. People living in poverty in
first world nations which hosts billionaires is generally agreed upon to be
bad.

[0] If you don't believe me, here is a quote from a famous Russian who
advocated against inequality, dated 1914. Your objection was replied to more
than one hundred years ago: "It goes without saying that in this respect men
are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind
of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. [...] he would find
there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic
equality means anything else than the abolition of classes."

~~~
AmericanChopper
That quote doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Perfectly normal differences
from one person to another will result in perfectly normal differences in
economic outcomes from one person to another. To eradicate classes, you must
eradicate differences in economic outcomes, or at least make the differences
so small that they cannot possibly be classifiable. The first half of the
quote contradicts the second half.

~~~
claudiawerner
"Classes" to the person writing means ownership and control of major
productive capacity in society - i.e. the Marxist concept. It does not refer
to people with different wage levels, different skills, or people with
physical differences. Considered as that, the quote is not contradictory at
all.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Even within the Marxist two-class world view, it is still contradictory. “We
recognise people are unequal, but we will ensure that their economic outcomes
are”. If the first part doesn’t contradict the second, then it certainly isn’t
a relevant part of the message.

But even then, the strict two class world view doesn’t describe Marx’ entire
philosophy regarding class, which was founded on ideas of social isolation.
Something any level of class inequality will create.

Though in any case, the two class world view doesn’t fit into reality at all.
According to that theory, anybody with capital is in the upper class. That’s a
huge majority of people today. The moment you let people use capital, you have
a Marxist theory class system. How could you possibly eliminate that? There’s
no way? Well this was actually a problem Marx solved, and the quote makes much
more sense when you account for that:

> The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all
> private property.

~~~
claudiawerner
>“We recognise people are unequal, but we will ensure that their economic
outcomes are”.

That's not the message at all. Marx makes no mention of equality of outcomes,
and in fact, he is known to be one of the first socialists to speak against
the abstract idea of "equality". The class system, determined by ownership and
control of large scale productive capacity in society, is founded on (but,
supports in turn) the notion of private property. For Marx, alienation was not
a by-product of class inequality, or even the class system, at least not
directly - it was a result of the nature of the capitalist production process
in which people do not see themselves in the goods they make at another's
direction.

>According to that theory, anybody with capital is in the upper class.

This is the problem with strict definitions of "capital" and "upper class".
You end up saying that most people in our society are capitalists, which while
it may be terminologically true, it misses the point of the critique, which
appears to apply whether people are termed capitalists or proletarians. Most
people are wage labourers - the fact that they may also own some mostly
immobile capital, stocks and shares in public companies does not make them
capitalists, any more than fur makes a wolf. This is because capital is about
the production process: its appropriation of the product of labour at the end
of the day, its extraction of surplus-value (or, if you don't care for Marx's
value theory, UE-exploitation and domination) and its totalization in society.

The majority of people may have some kind of capital (do they?), yet given
they can't live from it, it still rings strikingly true to say that a
proletarian is defined by being only the possessor of his capacity to labour.

~~~
AmericanChopper
> Marx makes no mention of equality of outcomes

This is an absurdly revisionist view, that can be falsified simply by reading
his work. The only way to dismantle class structure is to institute equality
of outcomes.

His view of equality of outcomes is perhaps the most extreme view of equality
possible. His view was to abolish private property all together. Something he
passionately and repeatedly promoted.

> In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single
> sentence: Abolition of private property.

> But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears
> also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave
> words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any,
> only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered
> traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the
> Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of
> production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

> You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in
> your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-
> tenths of the population

> In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.
> Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

The nice sounding quotes about dismantling class structure don’t stand up to
even passing scrutiny. These ideas are not compatible with a free society, and
by presenting them in that way, you are concealing the oppressive nature of
the system they are promoting.

~~~
claudiawerner
>This is an absurdly revisionist view, that can be falsified simply by reading
his work.

Cite some, then. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy actually makes quite
a point about Marx on this[0]. There is no "equality of outcomes" in Marx, or
as I cited earlier, Lenin. Marx repeatedly and ferociously argued against
these abstract notions such as "fairness", the equality of wages, and other
things you associate with him.

>The nice sounding quotes about dismantling class structure don’t stand up to
even passing scrutiny.

Why not?

>These ideas are not compatible with a free society

It's ironic that before approximately the middle of the 20th century, there
was hardly a single philosopher who argued that "free society" or "freedom"
should be understood as private property (state-protected large scale means of
production). Seriously - look at almost any major modernist or pre-modern
philosopher concerned with political philosophy, from Rawls and Sen today, to
Nietzche, Marx, Proudhon, Rousseau, Stirner and perhaps even Hegel in the
past.

These figures were arguing for free society, and precisely from the same
premises of self-actualization that Marx was.

[0] "Hence with the possible exception of Barbeuf (1796), no prominent author
or movement has demanded strict equality. Since egalitarianism has come to be
widely associated with the demand for economic equality, and this in turn with
communistic or socialistic ideas, it is important to stress that neither
communism nor socialism — despite their protest against poverty and
exploitation and their demand for social security for all citizens — calls for
absolute economic equality. The orthodox Marxist view of economic equality was
expounded in the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). Marx here rejects the
idea of legal equality, on three grounds. In the first place, he indicates,
equality draws on a merely limited number of morally relevant vantages and
neglects others, thus having unequal effects; right can never be higher than
the economic structure and cultural development of the society it conditions.
In the second place, theories of justice have concentrated excessively on
distribution instead of the basic questions of production. In the third place,
a future communist society needs no law and no justice, since social conflicts
will have vanished."

~~~
AmericanChopper
> Cite some, then

I cited several quotes from Marx claiming he planned to abolish private
property. Did you not see that? It doesn’t matter what he called it, if you’re
promoting one outcome for everybody, you’re promoting equality of outcome.

~~~
claudiawerner
I'm starting to think we're talking past each other. Abolition of private
property, in the sense Marx (and the philosophical tradition of the time)
meant it, is specifically either land for rent, or large-scale productive
capacity. It does not refer to your house, laptop or toothbrush. Nowhere does
Marx claim that under a Communist society, each would be allotted a certain
amount invariably. I quoted the most respected freely available encyclopedia
of philosophy on this matter.

Marx does not, and never has, promoted one outcome for everybody, in the same
way that capitalism does not promote one outcome for everybody just because
everyone has the right to acquire property.

~~~
AmericanChopper
This is simply a convoluted fantasy. Marx’ own words prove you wrong.

> The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all
> capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in
> the hands of the State

> We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products
> of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and
> reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command
> the labour of others

The state will control all property, any property an individual possesses will
be exclusively granted by the state, and no person will possess any property
in excess of their basic needs.

This is the philosophy of Marx. He wrote it down for all of us to read. You
can clearly come up with contrived arguments for why this doesn’t represent a
perfect equality of outcomes, but Marx’ visions would be clearly considered an
enforced equality of outcomes by any reasonable person.

~~~
claudiawerner
>This is simply a convoluted fantasy. Marx’ own words prove you wrong.

Please, for the love of God, read Marx. Actually read Marx and understand the
context he was writing in. Talk to any Marx scholar or go to any encyclopedia
of philosophy. Ask a political science professor, or even just read Wikipedia.
But don't misrepresent someone's thought because you don't understand it.

>The state will control all property, any property an individual possesses
will be exclusively granted by the state, and no person will possess any
property in excess of their basic needs.

The part you quoted does not actually claim this. When Marx talks about
"appropriation that is made for [...] of human life", if you read his Critique
of the Gotha Program, he specifically explicates on this: products of society
to fund education systems, healthcare, expansion of production, funds for
those who are physically unable to work, and protection against natural
disaster. This is exactly how taxes work today. Furthermore, Marx clearly says
"all instruments of production". This does not include, as you falsely claim,
"all property, any property".

What you are claiming is that because Marx talks about appropriation of
_surplus_ , then he must therefore be talking about all labour. This is false
and not backed up with any quote you have shown. Marx is talking no more about
taking away your toothbrush or laptop as much as a Western European state
today takes them away through taxes.

Don't just believe me. Do your own research. Read more than the Manifesto
(since this seems to be your only source, it's worth noting that Marx changed
his views significantly afterwards, and with the publication of _Capital_ ).
If you want a short read as to why you're wrong, where Marx specifically
responds to people who want "equality of outcome", where he specifically
explicates what he means by "instruments of production", read Critique of the
Gotha Program. Consult a scholar on Marx.

This has to be one of the most unproductive conversations I've had on HN, in
which you quote one propaganda document written years before Marx had
published anything serious, in which all Marxologists and philosophers agree
his views and philosophy had changed. _Read, and don 't stop reading._

