Egalitarianism

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What is your opinion on egalitarianism? In most modern societies, egalitarianism is taken almost axiomatically to be an ideal- people should be equal, this is only fair, we are taught from a young age. But why is egalitarianism correct? People are not alike in their physical or mental endowments, and generally speaking are not all socieoeconomically or culturally alike. So what is meant by equality, and how can it be attained? Is it something after which we should even strive?

There are certain basic minimums every member of a decent society should be able to count on. That's about as far as equality should go. What those minimums are, of course, is the basis if much dissension.

Why?

If a citizen can not count on minimum safety, ability to do business, some sort of general education to permit easy communication amongst members, infrastructure to provide transportation and some sort of health, the community cannot exist.

Agreed. I see it this way - everyone has problems and struggles, very few have it easy and many of what even seem like 'power couples' or have-it-alls even have some sort of disease, dietary restriction, or something that they share with world, as with most decent people, on a need-to-know basis only. In that sense most people could parade some kind of hardship, some kind of victimhood, or some reason to be unhappy or feel like a higher power or simply luck of the draw shafted their life up.

That said though its important for us to focus on equality in the eyes of the law and anything that we decide means something as 'being part of the human family'. I think at this point some just have more overarching goals in this than others. Most people agree in equality of opportunity and legality, what can't and what many people feel should not be guaranteed is equality of outcome. Its a hard enough world to where if someone has gifts in a specific area and is able to shine out, especially in an enterprising/entrepreneurial way, they're technically paying their dues to society by carrying the weight that they can carry. Egalitarianism is good when left to be in what used to be considered the 'natural law' sense, however when it does come down to applying an arbitrary smoothing gradient to a society in terms of outcome, its an extremely blunt instrument and like a really dirty psychiatric drug it may have an ounce of benefit but hemorrhages twice or three times as much out the sides in terms of side effects. I think at that point usually is where we realize that quite often, most people accept that fact - some are unwilling to take the side effects for the supposed adventurous movement forward to a truly 'equal' society, others feel that even having people equally less well off across the board is very much an acceptable outcome because the inequality of outcome bothers them more than the somewhat lowered standard of living - and they sincerely mean this, its their conviction.

Why is egalitarianism good?

Orwell, the quest for foundations is dead. The only answer that can be given is the one that emerges from our guts, and maybe the covering that we put to make this answer seem clean in our eyes.

Why egalitarianism? Because otherwise it is UNFAIR! Why should people suffer due to luck such as their genes or education, Orwell?? Don't you know how difficult life is and how outcomes can vary??? Don't you think some risk-pooling is in order??? If we were behind some veil where we were ignorant of our place in society and we were determining how society should work, don't you think we'd care more about the least off??? Would *YOU* want to be at the bottom??

As for whether egalitarianism can *really* be attained?

Why won't people help their children have better lives, even better than their peers? If you could help your child have a better life, even if others couldn't benefit, why wouldn't you do this? Would you *really* be so UNKIND to your own BLOOD, just for some ABSTRACTION?? That's absurd. That's hurtful!! Not only that, but the ideal is silly. People are fundamentally different. You and I aren't the same. We don't want the same things at all. You want material goods, and I want status. I have status and I use it to get material goods by smooth-talking. You want to be popular and well-liked, even to have sex, and I am popular, I hold parties every night, and I regularly get this service from my fellows. Can you compel them to like you and to sex you up? It seems not. But how is that not important? Social well-being is as important if not more so than material well-being.

Is it something towards which we should strive?

Who is we? Who am I?

What do I think?

I don't think I even know. The question seems somehow absurd to me, but I am in a mood of some form.

People are NOT equal. I think everyone should have an equal chance and not stopped by sex or race or religion, but after that may the best person win based on results.

France has just passed a law that 40% of company directors must be women.

Really? Why? To make it "fair" for women?

We can't stop there. What about gays and blacks and fat people and dwarfs, and ret*d people? Don't they deserve to succeed too?

Yesterday I read that a company in England was told that they cannot advertise for "hard working motivated people" because that would be an insult to lazy people.

What kind of a world are we making for ourselves?. I just hope that if the "politically correct" people need a life saving operation then they get a black ret*d gay dwarf surgeon who passed his medical exams as part of some quota.

People should have equal opportunity to pursue their best destiny and should be rewarded based on personal merit.

That's more or less what I suspected.


Begging the question by appealing to the principle for which I requested a justification.


Why should people be shielded from the effects of the differences that exist? Why must opportunity even be equal?


Of course I do, but how is that relevant?


Maybe, maybe not.


You do seem to be in an odd mood, and the question is meant to seem somewhat absurd but also (hopefully) to get people to question their basic assumptions. So far it has failed, as most posters have just given the textbook "equality of opportunity, not outcome" line.

To everyone else: I am asking why we want equality of any sort, including equality of opportunity. "Egalitarianism" as I understand it is the notion that people should be equal before the law, have equal rights, and have a more or less equal opportunity to compete for the best outcomes they can obtain. I wonder why we assume people must have equal rights, why we must be equal before the law, and why equality of opportunity matters.

Studies show that there is a direct link between economic inequality and murders, inequality and bad health, inequality and the lack of trust, inequality and social disintegration... Unequal societies are not healthy places to be. It's clear to me that such things override the moral absolutes crafted by some Soviet woman whose motives were unclear.

And that's the basis of many of the answers I gave. Everything is built upon piles of flesh.


I'd say I've gone the deepest.

"Equality of opportunity not outcome" is a cop-out because what is considered to be "equal opportunity" is so broad as to be meaningless - certainly in the American context it is. They claim to provide equal opportunity when clearly this is not so. As for outcome, is it OK that a horrible, premature death be the outcome for large numbers of people just because they spun the wheel and landed a zero? Some seem to think that it is. There is another point I want to make - some seem to enjoy the idea that people can win huge amounts and lose huge amounts, to be totally ruined overnight, or be millionaires overnight, that this is somehow fun, that it makes life interesting. I don't think so. I think it just makes life needlessly stressful and this is bad for people's health. They think it's good that there's a pool of totally ruined "losers" living nearby who might slit your throat - doesn't that make life more stressful too? Why do people want to needlessly burden themselves with stress, it is not worth it. Perhaps this is one explanation as to the U.S.'s extremely expensive health care system... apart from the fact that private organisations are allowed to get large cuts of what people put in it.

Now that I think about it.... I don't think there CAN be equality of opportunity. People with more money have more opportunity to make more money. But if you gave everyone the same amount of money, they wouldn't have the opportunity to make more money than others. Well, that equal opportunity wouldn't last very long, anyway.

People also have different social networks. Some peoples' networks come through for them more than others. If Person A has a brother-in-law who's a higher-up in some large company, he has more opportunity than Person B whose family is all farmers. Even if everyone knew everyone, the more able people would climb above eventually.

Plus, if you forcefully take away peoples' advantages, isn't that ridding them of their equal opportunity? That is, if you count being able to use whatever you have at your disposal to raise yourself up higher equal opportunity...

Would your answer be different if economic inequality actually decreased murders, bad health in your segment of the population, increased trust, and if stratification cemented social structures? Or if some of the losses were met with things like greater personal financial welfare or something?

I am just curious, as something of that nature is a logical possibility, I would think.

That being said, I'm feeling very cynical towards "studies", as the only way I can see that one can do a study like that is through statistical wizardry. I am not saying that maybe the findings towards that kind of idea ends up being very robust using different metrics, but I am feeling very untrusting towards correlation studies, and I find it hard to believe that macroscopic causation studies have been done.

It is because all people should be considered equal that we should treat all of them proportionally to their skills, effort and accomplishments. In other words, since we are all equal in our human condition , some people deserve a lot more than others. In order to think otherwise, we would be forced to create double standards in which people are not being treated equally.

If we suddenly decide that all human beings deserve a free piece of bread daily then we'll begin to treat them unequally. Because some people that don't work will have the priviledge of free food while other people -apparently less worthy of our appreciation- will have to work to deserve the bread we are giving to them.

Why should all people be considered equal? Aren't you assuming part of what you are trying to prove.

Secondly, isn't your idea perfectly compatible with inegalitarian caste systems. I mean, the leaders may have accomplishments because they were born into positions where they can have these accomplishments. They may have skills because they were trained from birth for their roles. Etc.