On Equality Among Humans
On Equality Among Humans
Introduction
The question of equality is by far probably the most discussed among intellectuals, prevalent in western societies. This is one of the most favorite topics in liberal circles, probably because it provides instant gratification since it gives the most bang for the buck to people who talk about it without having to spend a single cent on it. The process looks something like the following: recognize that the world is unfair, agree that if only every one of us…, receive instant gratification, and move on with your day.
Sometimes, people talk about equality as a way to virtue-signal. Nevertheless, this is an important subject and when discussed, needs to be addressed holistically and as objectively as possible. Hence, just like any “truth-seeking” discussion, it needs a rational inquiry. We shall define the precise language, clarify the bounds of the problem space, and try to come up with conclusions.
Types of equality
To have a productive discussion on equality, we need to be operating within well-understood precise definitions in the subject matter. Therefore we need to agree on what type of equality we are talking about.
When we think about equality, we can think about possessing physiological equality. For example, for someone being equally strong or equally pretty, etc. In other words, share the same physical attributes as everyone else does. Another form of equality is an even distribution of wealth among people, regardless of their input or desire for that matter. Last but not least equality could be about providing equal access to opportunities.
Explorations into types of equality
Now that we’ve identified the three types of equality let’s look into the feasibility of each and pick the one that is worth talking about.
Physiological Equality
People are born in different circumstances, at different times, in different places with different sets of genes, making it virtually impossible to achieve such equality. Even if it would be possible to modify humans to be alike due to gene editing, we would contradict a fundamental human desire to be unique. Therefore, feasibility aside, this is unlikely to be desired.
Welfare Distribution Equality
This idea of equality basically states that all wealth, generated by society should be distributed equally among members of society. We see a few questions that need to get answered before we proceed.
Is it hard to quantify the wealth to be shared? Should money be the only thing to be shared? If money is not enough, what else should be shared? Manufacturing? Commonwealth such as land, water, air? What about intellectual rights, such as copyrights, patents, etc.
Since money is the universal measure of the value of things, all assets can be expressed in currency. It is easyish to quantify and split so, we’ll be talking about the distribution of money, specifically.
What would happen if we were to distribute all of the money evenly, today? Today the world has approximately 1.3 quadrillion dollars. With a current population of roughly 8 billion people, the distribution amount would be around $163,458 for each person. This includes people of all ages. From here on, we have to make a few assumptions. The first assumption is that money will not just get re-distributed as cash deposits. This is for two reasons. reason 1, remember that the total money amount includes not just cash deposits but also illiquid assets and financial instruments such as derivatives. Reason 2 is that the money will likely disappear from the “weak hands” of those who have poor financial hygiene which will lead to the reaccumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. Therefore, the idea will probably be similar to the current thinking of the WEF (World Economic Forum) - stakeholder capitalism where people don’t actually own anything and don’t have the power of decision making but are entitled to a small portion of profits. We see a few problems with such a setup, First, as a stakeholder, an individual doesn’t actually have any control over what should be done with the investment. Similar to today, a person doesn’t have any say in where society is moving. Second, in this system, the few still control the resources. And last and probably, the most important aspect is the entitlement reloves and desire to excel at something for most. This is especially the case in societies that accentuate personal consumption as the ultimate good. In general, it is unnatural for humans to reward everybody when only a small percentage take on risks and make personal sacrifices. Unless humanity finds a way to distribute not only wealth but also the effort and risks that come in the process of accumulation, evenly among its members, it is not a feasible goal to achieve.
If the welfare distribution is based on how much a member of society contributes then it is a different matter and it is out of the scope of this essay.
Equal Opportunities
We hope we were convincing enough above to show that physiological equality or equality in wealth distribution is not feasible nor desirable in our society. Next, we think we should consider the equality of opportunities. By equality of opportunities, we mean equal access not only to essential goods and services but also to so-called higher-level benefits such as education, financing, a fair judicial system, and information. Things such as access to physical locations with different jurisdictions, i.e. another country are not included. Thus, we define equal opportunities as scoped to a particular society with strictly defined borders.
In such a system, there have to be non-discriminatory (in its most broad sense) policies, allowing for a fair review of access to educational resources. If it’s a university then everyone has an equal probability to get an enrollment or the same rules if it is to acquire financing for a business or some other venture. A few questions came up right away. What should happen to private institutions in the field of education? What should happen to old money in the way existing wealthy families can pay for higher education? Who is going to enforce the rules, making sure that fair access to opportunities is preserved?
Another aspect, we should dive into is the idea of elite schooling. Let’s take private universities as an example. They are by definition designed to provide privileged education enabling a graduate to have an advantage over a graduate of a public university. Should private universities be removed? If so, based on what reasoning? If the private universities should not be removed then the only way to make them accessible to folks with no money is with grants. If grants are the way to make universities accessible we can assert with a high degree of confidence that those who would want to get access to grants will be much much higher in number than those willing to pay a large sum of money for the private university, even if there is a selection process such as written exams etc. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the university will run out of money very quickly and will cease to exist. The example with private universities can be applied to any other venture out there that provides privileged services offered in exchange for money. So the unexpected side-effect will be the evaporation of private, advanced, or elite institutions and thus a way of incompetence at every level of society.
Also, there is no “legal” way to remove the excess money from the rich today, and thus the problem with some people having privileged access to resources will remain unsolved.
The system of equal opportunities is probably the closest to the ideas offered by communist societies. The Soviet Union has tried to build it but failed miserably due to the same reason individual desire to control the resources and decision-making among high-level party members. And this question is worth exploring in depth. The power process and power dynamics are inherent to humans, probably as a result of the evolution. So in systems such as what USSR wanted to build the power to allocate resources would be concentrated in the hands of a few which would lead to the concentration of those resources and thus provide an unintended effect. People would get equal access to most basic resources such as general education, medicine, and social wealth with an exception of critical resources such as the Party membership and the decision-making roles. The result was not what the system has originally intended.
Does equality exist in nature?
One useful way to think about the likelihood of an occurrence of some phenomena is to find analogs in nature. Is there precedence where in nature we can observe that some goods or benefits are evenly distributed amongst its population? Not in animal tribes, nor in the vegetation world does this happen. The adults take care of the kids only. The elders don’t even get the slack. In fact, the elders often sacrifice themselves for the sake of the young. For centuries, this wonderful tradition has existed in various societies until a few hundred years ago.
What needs to happen for equality to exist?
Potentially, the infeasibility of equality could be achieved by mitigating the human desire to aggregate power. Removing us from the decision-making context by introducing technological solutions that will make the decisions could potentially help. However, this comes at a cost. Fully replacing human beings in the decision-making is dangerous due to the imperfectly designed technological solutions and complete unknowns in what decisions it can make in the future. Think of a sudden decision for technology to remove all humans. Another downside is whoever builds and maintains this technology will become a higher cast, a priesthood if you will who will be able to control how the technology operates.
Why do we need equality?
I think a very important question we should ask ourselves is why do we need equality in its most broad sense? Who is it that is asking us to think about it? Why do people get bothered by it? If this question hasn’t come up while conversing with someone who associates themselves with being a liberal would I think about it? I accentuate the point of liberalism not to oppose myself to it but to point out that I don’t think in these categories on a day-to-day basis. In any case, rather than trying to explore these types of questions that will almost always hit a dead-end in a form of dealing with human nature, people should not be concentrating on the global issues that we have no control of anyways, but rather bring equality and justice how we see fit in our daily lives. These types of questions should not an could not be solved globally.
Another question is do people really want to be equally treated? There a plenty of cases where people don’t want to go into higher education or they don’t want to have a big house with a yard and they are perfectly comfortable living in a van or a tiny studio or living on the street for that matter. It seems that people who are most concerned with issues like equality are people of the upper-middle class who are predominantly white. The only explanation I have for this is that this is coming from the fact that people lose track of their purpose in life. Having to think about these beautiful ideas makes them feel good. Ironically, when the push comes to shove, many bail out.
