The Equality Mythology
One of the most damaging myths in relatively modern politics is that all people are equal, or rather should be equal. While dead people are equal, equally dead, that is most certainly, most evidently not true in life. People very evidently have differing degrees of ability and people being what they are, the more able want to and do use their superior abilities or even extra opportunities to acquire extra wealth for themselves and their families. That is the reality and it is the unavoidable reality in the past, in the present and in the foreseeable future.
However many people ‘pseudo-intellectually’ don’t like this reality. This includes many who are themselves using the opportunity of living in a historically wealthy society or wealthy family or are using their own abilities to become or remain wealthy. So they imagine (sometimes as their career) a myth that people are inherently equal and should over time become economically equal – it is practically always over time so they themselves don’t have to become equal to everybody else forthwith! It is a nice, comforting myth for such people and it does wonders for their political conscience!
So I shall now go into much greater detail concerning the equality mythology.
A) A DEVELOPING MYTHOLOGY
Adherents of the mythology of equality point to totemic events in History when people seemingly struggled for their ideal of equality between people. For instance they cite the revolt of slaves in ancient Rome led by Spartacus, the Spartacus rebellion (73 B.C.-71 B.C.). In similar vein they cite the English ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ in 1381 featuring the ‘radical’ priest, John Ball pronouncing the famous ditty ‘When Adam delved (dug the ground) and Eve span (made clothes), who was then the ‘gentleman’?’ Magna Carta in 1215 is also cited, although that was primarily intended to take rights from the King to the aristocracy rather than to the common man, let alone the common woman. The culmination of all this is seen as The French Revolution (1789) whose slogan was ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, though in the event it deprived people of liberty, was most unfraternal and did not lead to equality.
In truth in earlier times the vision of a better, more equal society was more often expressed in a myth of a past ‘Golden Age’. According to such myths in some mythical past age before the world degenerated into its present state, everybody lived happily and harmoniously with each other in some paradise. In those wonderful times nobody had to work much (if at all), everybody was ‘free’ and everybody had all the material wealth they wanted or needed. One such myth, among many similar myths in the world, was Man’s original existence in the Garden of Eden.
However over time the myths of a Golden Age (which people could not just recreate by their actions or political programmes) tended to be superseded by a mythology of human equality. Unlike the Golden Age myths, it was believed to be possible that by human actions and political leadership a society based upon the principle of equality could be created. This change probably was facilitated by the change from a static society wherein neither technology nor the established order (consisting generally of King, nobility and the lower orders) ever seemed to change significantly from lifetime to lifetime to societies whose nature began to change. True, previously the personages of the king and nobility changed from time to time but the technology and way of life for ordinary people in such societies remained practically static, as did the structure of society. Then, slowly at first, starting with Agriculture (with developments such as labour shortages after The Black Death and yield improvements from crop rotations) and then with increasing pace from The Industrial Revolution, things did begin to change significantly for ordinary people even within a single lifetime. As changes, technological changes, were occurring, structural political change began to appear more possible. So the dream of some Golden Age which there was no practical way to recreate (within an entrenched static society) began to give way to the notion that political change was indeed possible and a different society in which people would be equal could indeed be created. A nice idea for some, and thinkers soon became attracted to it, especially as it seemed very virtuous and people were virtue-signalling even in advocating it. What has however not generally been seen, least of all by the ‘unintelligent intelligentsia’ is that a future age of human equality is in reality just as mythical as the notion that in the past there was some Golden Age. In reality human nature will not permit a harmonious, equal or even egalitarian society. The people who have ability or status or some wealth in society will simply not adhere to it nor put up with it and that is the plain truth! Communist countries have proved that. Even in its less extreme form, in more seriously social democratic countries with high rates of tax, the wealthy have either cheated the system or taken their talent elsewhere!
Of course impracticality has never been allowed to get in the way of, let alone stop the ‘unintelligent intelligentsia’, including their leading theorists from pursuing attractive and nowadays virtue-signalling notions. A good example is in a much quoted and wrongly venerated passage in the Preamble to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776- ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident….that all men are created equal’. That is about as fallacious as one can get:
i) It is not a truth – it is a falsehood
ii) It is not self-evident – indeed the actual evidence shows that people are unequal in their characteristics and in their natural abilities
iii) Men are not ‘created’ – they have parents and develop or grow by natural processes in a womb!
iv) People are not equal – they are unequal at birth in terms of family, background and location of birth (a rich country or a poor country) and are unequal in their abilities.
Considering that some of America’s Founding Fathers who were signatories to that document were slave owners and just about all of them were wealthy and politically privileged, it is amazing how unquestioningly they and others accepted and indeed venerated such drivel!
Drivel though it is, it is certainly a paradigm and practically universally respected (and unquestioned) expression of the Equality Myth, a myth that was to develop even further over time.
Originally in America and elsewhere the predominant view of equality was not so much that people were created equal but with equal rights – egalitarians then were mainly just seeking equality of opportunity. Even leaders in Communist countries have not actually believed that people were created equal but that it required a certain talented and committed class of leaders and commissars to lead people eventually into equality. Indeed when I was young the predominant talk of even the political Left was not of absolute equality, but of creating a meritocratic ‘equality of opportunity’ within society. Though I don’t agree with an absolute ‘equality of opportunity’ for people because it clashes with human nature, in particular the natural instincts of parents to look after their children, I do believe in ‘opportunity’. I believe it is very much in the interests of society as a whole that those who are most talented have the opportunity to better themselves and society by using their talents to the maximum possible extent. Certainly aspiring to create equality of opportunity, though somewhat impractical, is far less damaging and much less pie-in-the-sky and much less in conflict with actual or even possible reality than aspiring to pure equality is.
Furthermore relatively recently in the West the goal of equality of opportunity has morphed into the much more damaging goal of equality for all. Some of this has probably arisen because ‘equality’ is nowadays seen less as a purely economic matter than it once was. Equality tends nowadays to be seen primarily as a social issue with secondary economic consequences rather than as a primarily economic issue. Nowadays there are any number of groups, such as racial groups (like black people pronouncing ‘Black Lives Matter’), feminists, homosexual groups, disability groups and others. They complain about prejudice and social inequality against them they say they suffer and then they complain secondarily or consequently of economic inequality. So absolute equality, equality of outcome seems more appropriate to them than mere equality of opportunity. Indeed they often demand not just opportunity but material help to create more opportunity for themselves. In calling for equality, let alone general equality, they are (such as with many disabled groups and even women in relation to their physical strength and other abilities) often overlooking the practical unreality of their achieving ‘equality’. Nevertheless as ‘equality’ seems virtuous to them, and a great way of virtue-signalling to those people who want to appear virtuous, they are not going to want practicality to get in their way. Yet in reality practicality unavoidably does get in the way.
It is an essential doctrine of rationality (but a doctrine which most people don’t want to accept) that any (even unattractive) relevant reality must override any, even any virtue-signalling, unrealistic fantasy! Life must be lived in the real world. Politics should accordingly accommodate actual human nature rather than base itself on the make-believe, virtue-signalling notions that some people like to mouth! Because that is not happening and make-believe is taken seriously, we are being damaged by mythologies. Among those mythologies one of the most damaging and yet perhaps the most manifestly idiotic is the mythology of human equality.
B) THE EQUALITY INDUSTRY
In relatively recent times the theoretical mythology of human equality has been much fortified by ‘the equality industry’. That has created a self-interested, often well paid vested interest group of people who are living quite privileged (unequal) lives as professionals within a new equality industry.
The most obvious and most longstanding group in ‘the equality industry’ are politicians, originally leftist politicians but now increasingly even centrist and many supposedly right-wing politicians. The brutal truth is a lot of this has to do with the inherent nature of democracy. Within a democracy to be successful one has to win over the votes of the majority (or big minority) of people within that democracy. Within most societies because there are a relatively small number of very wealthy people, with incomes and wealth far beyond the average income or wealth within that society, the majority of people are relatively poor in terms of that society. True, in Western countries even the poor are mostly much wealthier and materially better off than the vast majority of people on our planet as a whole. That explains why no Western politician I know of, even fervent Socialists or left-wingers, stands for election on the proposal that there should be complete equality throughout the world. That would result in not only the rich but also the poor within their country becoming much poorer. A promise to make the majority, indeed just about everybody in the country poor is a sure-fire way not to get elected. So unsurprisingly, no politician in the West, however left-wing he may be, is promising that even though that is the natural and logical result of believing in equality among people! Rather they have worked out it is a convenient way to get elected to say that they want the relatively poor within their own society (however rich those ‘poor’ may be in global terms) to become wealthier by a more equal division of wealth in their own society at the expense of the very wealthy. (In actual fact their equality message doesn’t always work, as especially nowadays the poor have often given up on ever getting wealthier from politicians and prefer to vote on social or nationalistic messages that seem better or more realistic to them). Furthermore if ‘egalitarian’ politicians can spin out their redistributive message for years and years, rather than achieve it by just winning a solitary election they can get themselves elected time and time again. Then they can make a very nice, profitable career out of politics in addition to gaining prestige as an elected virtue-signaller. Am I being cynical here? Only insofar as most of them are probably too dim either to see the reality of their political stance within a global perspective or to be consistent in their political so-called principles! Of course in the days when only the landed class had the vote, there was no political sense for politicians in advocating policies that would make the poor who didn’t vote less poor at the expense of the wealthy who did vote! So then there were practically no elected socialist politicians.
At one time (generally before The Second World War) there were very few people apart from some politicians and possibly a few journalists making a living in ‘the equality industry’. Now there are very many people and the equality industry is really booming! For a start, in the old days politicians had little if any staff (a secretary possibly, though only possibly, but no more). Now they have plenty of hangers-on ranging from publicly paid for staff to professional campaign workers and whatnot. Even better paid than those are the professional political advisers within government, all with a vested interest in promoting the same message (a ‘local or national, not global, equality’ message in the case of centrist and left-wing politicians).
However it is no longer just some politicians and their hangers-on who are making a good living out of the equality industry. Seizing upon the virtue-signalling aspect of equality, many charities and charity workers have also got in on the act, not to mention think-tanks, equality and diversity officers and non-governmental organisations. For a start virtue-signalling is a good way of raising money – the virtue in it entices people to give money. That makes the donors think of themselves as virtuous and helps salve their conscience for being relatively rich. Indeed they can then claim to be putting some money where their virtue-signalling mouth is, even if they are keeping hold of the vast majority of their wealth, so as to live very extravagantly by Third World standards! Receiving such donations also enables the charity’s staff to live comfortably or at least relatively comfortably while devoting their working life to their virtue-signalling message. How good or virtuous can one get even if one is peddling a doctrine of equality that is unrealistic twaddle? At least it is ‘virtuous’ unrealistic twaddle. So it is win-win for everybody in this virtue-signalling world, both donors and charity workers. They are all giving to or working for a cause that may be unrealistic, or indeed inefficient, but seems very virtuous! Of course there are some charities (such as animal welfare charities) that are virtue-signalling to their adherents but their virtue-signalling may not entail any message of equality. A charity that wasn’t in the business of virtue-signalling would hardly prosper. Yet as equality has become an ever more virtue-signalling message, charities have increasingly been using ‘equality’ to get their funds and motivate their professional staff. Indeed, as well as charities, institutes and think tanks have been getting in on this act.
Even Universities need to raise funds and have been increasingly using the language of equality and projects concerning equality to boost their ability to raise funds and boost their prestige. So they too are increasingly jumping on the equality bandwagon. So too are broadcasters and media outlets.
Furthermore ever more parts of the public sector and organisations funded by the public sector are onto the virtue-signalling ‘equality’ gravy train. There are commissions and commissars to further racial equality, economic equality, disability equality, gender equality, sexual equality, age equality etc;. You name it, more and more people are employed, often at high salaries, to campaign for or enforce at public expense equality measures. Indeed in response to publicly funded equality officers, the larger private companies are often now employing people to monitor or ensure compliance with equality objectives for this, that or the other ‘equality’ interest group!
So the whole inherently nonsensical and certainly other-worldly notion of equality has mushroomed into a huge number of professional interest groups to peddle their particular brand of equality! This is just madness, madness and a waste of resources that our ancestors managed to live easier, less pressured and less bureaucratic lives without!
C) PEOPLE IN PRACTICE GENERALLY WANT INEQUALITY
Far from aiming for equality, most people, driven by human nature (reflecting animal nature where, especially among males the instinctive aim in life is for dominance in their group, not equality), mostly in their lives pursue inequality. Most people (including myself) would like more wealth for themselves. They favour prosperity for their family. Most naturally support their race or tribe over other people.
This is all natural and rather instinctive. People want to better themselves, make life more materially comfortable for themselves and they support those closest to them, their family and their extended family, and their tribe or race over others.
It is also part of the natural ethos, probably a necessary part of the ethos of society that if one works harder and performs better one will get further and probably become wealthier in life. It is conveyed in schools that if one works harder or better one will get better marks and then better examination grades. That will mean one will advance further in the education system with better qualifications which will probably pave the way to getting a better job with more pay. In the world of work, it is supposed if one works harder or more efficiently, one is more likely to get promoted to a better job and more pay. This all helps people to believe (although they probably instinctively believe it anyhow) that if they work harder or perform better it is fair and deserving that they should achieve more success in life and become wealthier. This ethos and this belief is necessary to motivate people to take the world of education and the world of work seriously, and so make the spheres of education and employment function effectively.
This is the reality with paid work – in practice most people want as much money as they can readily get out of work, and never mind other people and never mind any notions of equality. People such as doctors or even university teachers (educators) who are already paid unequally much more than other people in their society want and argue and agitate for even more pay. If their annual percentage increase in pay is lower than some other people’s (even if their actual pay is far higher), they will still dispute and agitate for yet more pay. For instance recently (in 2021)British consultant doctors (most of whom would claim, if interested in politics, to be left-wing) who were already getting about four times British average pay went on strike to the detriment of the sick because they were demanding a lot more pay.
Politicians in wealthy Western countries campaign for and often enact minimum rates of pay in their country that are far higher than even good or very good rates of pay in poor countries elsewhere. They claim and argue that such (globally high) minimum rates of pay are actually ‘fair’ rather than suggesting that employers instead of paying their workers more should contribute to a global equal pay fund! That would be truly egalitarian rather than inegalitarian but next to nobody in Western countries would vote for politicians seriously advocating such egalitarianism. What practically everybody, be they wealthy or poor really wants is not equality but just more wealth for themselves!
Even people who have little prospect of making huge amounts of money themselves desire a lot of money. They would like to inherit money. (Who has turned down a big inheritance? Indeed lawyers make a lot of money from people self-interestedly disputing wills). Furthermore lotteries with big headline prizes that make people wealthy overnight are very popular and in general the bigger the top prize the more popular the lottery. Most of the population in many countries do such lotteries because most people would like to become very rich, very unequally rich and even if that cannot be done through their own abilities, then no matter if it happens by good luck or sheer chance! People may speak approvingly of equality but in reality it is human nature for practically everybody to really want and be motivated by personal huge inequality!
The individual desire for inequality for most people extends from themselves to their family. They conceive, bring up and get to know and become attached to their own children. This is a natural and a necessary instinct for the preservation of mammalian species, including humans. So favouring one’s children, unequally favouring one’s children (nepotism) who when very young are helpless (and cannot survive on their own) is not merely inegalitarian but instinctive and essential for mammal survival. Naturally even when children grow up, most people usually continue to favour, even nepotistically favour, their own family and children. Furthermore people want to hand over not merely the knowledge they have acquired to their children (which they tend to do in bringing them up while young) but also the possessions and wealth they have acquired when they die. People not only want when alive to acquire and use money to help their children to give them a good (albeit unequal) start in life but they also usually want to pass on their belongings when they die. This rather increases inequalities in society because obviously wealthy people will not only have provided a better environment and better opportunities for their children when young but they will also be passing on more wealth to their children when they die. This is very unequal but both parents and children want this to happen. Obviously many people have very little to pass on to their children. Yet even those who have just a little (which may well be sentimental family possessions, rather than valuable possessions) normally want this to happen. After all passing on what one can to one’s children is part of the motivation most people have for doing what they can to succeed in life, just as helping one’s own children is important to most people while they live.
Next, beyond their immediate family most people favour their extended family and beyond that most people favour their tribe, race or country. So in terms of equality it must be emphasised that in practice most people don’t believe in an equality between races or nations or indeed religions but favour, often hugely favour their own particular group which they usually believe to be unequally superior.
Not only do people want to advance their own wealth, their own family and their own group unequally at the expense of others but in their everyday lives they experience, believe in and support an unequal rather than an equal world.
For instance people while growing up go to school. At school it soon becomes very evident to them and everybody else that people do not have equal but unequal abilities. Some children are better at reading, better at spelling, better at writing than others and this does not even always correspond with who works hardest. Then there are tests in class and some children regularly do better than others in those tests. Then comes secondary or senior school where some children naturally have more aptitude for and understanding of Science and Mathematics than others and some children have a natural aptitude for languages which others lack. It is all very unequal with people having very unequal natural abilities (often compounded by doing an unequal amount of school work). Everybody in school knows that, the teachers, the children and even (mostly) the parents. This is all usually confirmed by examinations. People also, far from lamenting this inequality, think what is best is those who are unequally good and get the top marks. Nobody thinks getting an average five marks out of ten is better than an outstanding ten out of ten in a Mathematics test. So inequality of ability is noticed by everybody and generally much admired with the most able being most admired.
This approval and support for inequality is true in other normal aspects of life. People hanker after the best quality food, be it bread, cakes, meat or whatever. Most people don’t much want (even if they must settle for) lower quality products nor even if they can do better do they want average quality foodstuffs.
Yet perhaps most noticeable of all, this is very applicable to sport. Nobody doubts that some players, say in a football team are much better than others. Nobody doubts that in almost all sports men are naturally better than women and indeed some countries (and some races) are better than others. People also become partisan in favour of certain teams and indeed certain players. Often people’s partisanship for teams (other of course than their national team) is not very rational nor objectively understandable but it regularly happens! When people favour a team, just as when they play themselves, far from believing in equality and equal ability between people, they fervently want their favoured team to win and indeed to become Champions. They usually also believe their team can win and in due course become champions and if they do not do so, it is not because their inegalitarian belief in winning is wrong but because their Manager, or certain players are not skilful enough and should be replaced by better ones. In today’s world they also very much believe it is foolish in a sport such as professional football not to pay huge sums of money to attract and keep the best players they want. Nobody is naive or foolish enough to believe the best players will play for a team if they don’t get massive amounts of money in pay. No true football fan thinks his team should resist such demands for colossal and unequal amounts of pay for good players in the interests of equality in the world. What some football fans may not understand is that the inegalitarian principles upon which football teams are run and football success is founded are broadly applicable for the same reasons as in football not just to football but also to the economy and to society as a whole.
So in everyday life not only do people live amidst natural inequality but they also understand the basis of inequality in life and support inequality rather than equality where it actually matters to them.
D) A REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM OF EQUALITY
Let us analyse in more detail what ‘real equality’ would mean for people in terms of income.
It starts off as the difference between ‘median’ income and ‘average’ income per ‘working person’ in a country. Median income is the point in income where half the working population get more than that amount and half the working population get less than that amount. It is lower than ‘average’ income because some people, particularly those relative few on extraordinarily high incomes (like national politicians, lawyers, doctors, some businessmen and top footballers) get much more money than the vast majority of people and that is averaged out over the whole population. The result is that in general in Western countries average incomes are about 20% higher than median incomes. That is the amount (before tax, less after) the average worker would gain if all the workers in the country got equal pay. It would work out at about 10,000 U.S. dollars per person (a bit more in the U.S.A.) per year with about a third of workers actually losing income and even the low paid (usually on a minimum wage) would only get, after tax, about 20,000 U.S. dollars extra per person. Maybe the average and low paid workers would lead slightly more comfortable lives if they got that extra income but it would not create much happiness, nor much reduce social problems, nor launch anybody into paradise nor even be all that transformative of their lives – and that is before one comes to the qualifications why even such extra money would not in fact be forthcoming.
First of all there are pensioners, the sick and the unemployed who should be considered. If they too, as leftists would surely like, were also to benefit from income equality the level of average income would be much reduced, probably halving the average benefit to around 5,000 U.S. dollars per person. Of course if the average level of income worldwide rather than just nationwide (we are all people after all whatever country we live in, be it rich or poor) virtually all Western people, including those on low, minimum wage incomes and even most unemployed people would actually be losing money and be much worse off from egalitarianism! However even overlooking the consequences from global rather than national egalitarianism, if everybody got the same income for doing their job, most people would be looking to do the minimum in the easiest, least onerous and least responsible jobs. Who then would train for years to do the more difficult or more skilled jobs? Who would want all the extra bother of running their own business or even managing a business they don’t own? Who would bother to do a job well if he could get no extra money and have no prospects of promotion to a better paid job and if the worst that could happen is being sacked and then getting an easier equally paid job? The result would be (as happened in Communist countries where incomes were more equal but far from equal and almost everybody ‘worked’ in effect for the state rather than for themselves) is that the economy would go into a steep decline and living standards would collapse. Technology wouldn’t advance (except maybe as eventual imports) as there would be no rich buyers for new or better but more expensive products. So the result would be that everybody, even the poor would be worse off as a result of there being no financial incentives and consequently little enterprise.
Indeed even if equalisation of incomes could work, nobody would then have a high, let alone a luxurious standard of living and everybody would still be struggling for money (as most do now). However in practice because of the removal of financial incentives practically nobody would do the more difficult or unsocial jobs and everybody’s standard of living would be enormously reduced. That is a reductio ad absurdum (a reduction into absurdity) of Socialism, left-wing politics and egalitarianism.
Even a substantial reduction in the difference between median and average incomes, drastically reducing incentives (as happened in Communist countries) would have a very negative and detrimental effect on the living standards of practically everybody.
E) A VERY VISIBLE MYTH
Because of people’s everyday and practical life experiences, the mythical nature of the equality myth is far more easily seen and understood by ordinary people than are most other political myths. Most other political myths require some additional abstract theoretical understanding to appreciate their mythical quality but the equality myth can readily be unravelled just by observation of everyday life. Perhaps among myths, only the myth of transgenderism that men can be women or women can be men just by self-identification is even more easily unravelled through observation and common sense. Most people just know that men cannot give birth to children and men are generally more muscular, taller and stronger than women and quite rightly won’t be told otherwise, even by the unintelligent intelligentsia!
So though egalitarians try arousing jealousy among their society’s poor, and try their luck at appealing to virtue-signalling of the not so poor, few people genuinely believe in real equality rather than inequality. What is more the comprehensive discrepancies between their advocacy of equality and the actualities of the real world make it easy to demonstrate logically if not emotionally that egalitarians are talking nonsense!
One can start with the fact that the majority of Western advocates of equality are most certainly not practising the theory they are preaching! The loudest Western advocates of equality or more equality are not merely living in wealthy countries with a commensurately and unequally high standard of living but are themselves among the wealthier members of those societies, taking unequally high salaries. This applies to equality preaching full time politicians, journalists, celebrities and university academics. They usually live in wealthier neighbourhoods and usually own property (many people don’t have the wealth of owning property). They are certainly not giving away to the poor all their income and wealth beyond the average income of their country, let alone the world. Yet despite their personal lives they are incessantly preaching equality or more equality without even any semblance of shame about it. What hypocrites! Indeed how easy it is to show they are hypocrites in making a good living with relatively high pay for preaching what even they themselves are unwilling to practice. No wonder it is mainly the ‘unintelligent intelligentsia’ who either condone such rank hypocrisy or even fail to see that it is indeed blatant hypocrisy.
One notable example of idiotic academia in this respect was John Rawls (1921-2002). John Rawls developed such a huge reputation in academia that he came to be considered the foremost political philosopher of his age, particularly for his novel argument against inequality and for equality which might be deemed imaginative but is certainly within the realm of cloud cuckoo land. He imagined that people could choose in advance without knowing whether they would be rich or poor (a ‘veil of ignorance’) either to have equal income for everybody or could take a very small chance of being very rich but with an overwhelming chance of being very poor (reflecting most people in our society being poor relative to the very rich). He supposed most people would then choose to live equally and forego a minimal chance of being very rich because of the strong likelihood they would end up very poor (though I have already pointed out the relatively small difference between actual average incomes and median incomes which Rawls is here distorting). The main fallacy is that if Rawls’ egalitarian society existed (even apart from its ignoring differences in natural ability between people), nobody would have incentive or motivation to do much or any work and so (like East European countries when formerly Communist) such a society would not function effectively and everybody would end up even poorer than in a society where some people are very wealthy and inequality is rampant! However such total detachment from the real world as to amount to pure idiocy is very alluring to the mainly pseudo-intellectual world of academia and so Rawls by reputation remains a giant in the mainly crazy world of academia! So I am not exactly impressed by academia, at least in ‘the humanities’.
However apart from observing the behaviour of left-wing politicians and considering their own attitudes and life-experiences in the world, people can easily see that Nature itself in its lottery is unequal, very unequal in the hands it has dealt different people. For a start there is a natural inequality in life expectancies between people. For instance on average in most societies women actually live several years longer than men. Then there are natural health, often severe inequalities in health between people. Disability can be a very severe inequality, indeed often a much more severe inequality than wealth inequality. The difference in living and lifestyle between a blind person and a sighted person is probably greater and more fundamental than the difference in lifestyle between a poor person and a rich person.
Then there are the natural and noticeable inequalities between people in temperament and talent. People (as observed in section c) grow up noticing some people are naturally better endowed with academic or mental talents than others. Some people are physically stronger or better coordinated physically than others. Indeed some people are just better talkers than others or otherwise better at dealing with or handling other people. We are simply not naturally all alike, least of all in natural ability. Indeed up to a point we normally consider it a good thing in life that there is variety and people are different to each other.
Indeed most ordinary people see that those who can do better than others not only want to be unequally paid more than others but really should even theoretically be paid more than others. If a doctor saves lives through his skill, be it natural or acquired, most people would agree he is worthy of much more money than the person whose job it is to deliver your mail. That is surely very clearly apparent. People also see that top sportsmen not only want more money than others but also that there is a huge demand for their services and so naturally go somewhere where they will be very well paid and therefore in practice they must be very well paid. Nor do the vast majority of people have any objection if it is the team they support that is paying them that huge amount of money, provided of course they perform well for their team! So people see (at least in some ways) that egalitarianism is impractical and the world functions in practice through being thoroughly inegalitarian. Even left-wing theorists don’t challenge this in relation to medical doctors or sport. It is their selective advocacy of egalitarianism, based perhaps on their political ambition or on fantasising about a make-believe (rather than a real) world and their consequent appeal to human jealousy or virtue-signalling that is causing problems in politics. Yet the answer to that is a doctrine of consistency, a doctrine of consistency that is made visible to people. There needs to be a consistency between what people say and what those people themselves do. As sportsmen and doctors want (unequally want) what material reward they can get, why shouldn’t the manager, the landowner, the factory worker or the man in the street in the West want that too? There needs to be a consistency in accepting that it is natural and reasonable for everybody to want to get and even succeed in getting in material terms what they can in life. One may debate whether it is all fair but it is all certainly reasonable and a practicality of the real world.
So just observe as one so easily can the way the world really works and bin all notions of human equality. That of course does not prevent pity or giving charity to the poor but it does mean one is not going to hand over nor should one hand over most of one’s money or wealth to those poorer than oneself whatever egalitarians may say.
F) LEGITIMATE REASONS FOR INEQUALITY
Not only is vast inequality the way of the world, the natural way of the world, as I have demonstrated, but there are also many valid and legitimate reasons why the human world must be based upon inequalities.
I list seven main reasons why in any rational system of society and politics inequality even if it seems emotionally unattractive is essential to the proper running of human society. The reasons are:
i) There Is A Natural Inequality That Needs To Be Beneficially Harnessed
People are neither born nor develop equally in either physical or mental abilities or potential. Furthermore society is advanced primarily through the successes of the most able people. For this reason, while one may humanely say that all people matter, the most able matter by far the most in terms of the successful running and advancement (especially technologically) of society. For instance Thomas Edison (1847-1931), the inventor of so much, advanced his society and indeed the world singlehandedly probably more than all the millions of poor people in his contemporary America combined. Though exceptionally few people can contribute anywhere near as much as Thomas Edison to the world, the rich, such as great industrialists who find markets for their products and organise industry contribute massively more to society than most people. Those people who can make things happen often need the incentive of the prospect of wealth to actually make things happen. Even people of more modest ability but considerable skill, like doctors, should be motivated to make the utmost effort. As Adam Smith noted even tradesmen need incentives (personal gain) to carry out their trade which they do beneficially to society as a whole by arranging the supply of goods. Harnessing the abilities of people, including most vitally the most able people, requires allowing them and their families to have unequal wealth and indeed unequal opportunities. Indeed the wealth of such deserving parents must to motivate them be allowed to be transferred during their lifetime and upon their death to their nearest and dearest which may include their undeserving and possibly not very talented children. That secondary inequality, stretching down generations, is part of the price, the worthwhile price, of making society prosper (and sometimes even advance).
Inequality is nature’s way. Evolution is largely about little inequalities which help the unequally better adapted to prosper and survive and may cause the less well adapted to become overwhelmed and eventually die out.
Naturally people, especially enterprising people, try to better themselves and society benefits from some people bettering themselves. This is very unequal but it is very necessary to the wellbeing of a society that people do their best because they can see the prospect of bettering themselves.
ii) Human Motivation Needs Incentive Which Requires Inequality
Incentive is mainly financial incentive, though superior and unequal status in society is also an incentive for some. Financial incentive requires the prospect that some people can become unequally better off than others, even to a massive extent.
Without incentive, like it or not, most people would actually do little or nothing. After all why should anybody work hard or even work at all at some employment (which he probably does not like) if his neighbours can get as much money in social benefits while doing nothing? Or even why should a person work hard if some slouch who does virtually nothing in an easier and less responsible job gets the same or even much the same money? Of course any such hard worker would probably sooner or later, probably sooner, realise he is a mug to work hard if he can get the same money for doing nothing or practically nothing. That is what happened in Communist countries (and as they have found you cannot intimidate people much into working well – only incentivising or motivating people can make them work efficiently) which is a reason why they failed. To a considerable extent that lack of incentive is what occurs in the public sector which is much of the reason why the public sector inherently fails. Even in schools if virtually everybody is going to get to University, nobody much would bother to work to ensure that they progress to University and standards would plummet.
So without material incentives to get people to work reasonably hard and efficiently, society would collapse into failure. (The baker without financial incentive would in Adam Smith’s example lie in bed instead of supplying bread and society would be without bread and considerably hungrier and worse off as a result. Worse still if lack of incentive was universal, people would most likely starve, as actually happened extensively in the Communist U.S.S.R. and Communist China.)
Yet significant material or money incentives necessarily mean some people are unequally wealthier and better off than other people. That is inevitable.
So inequality is necessary because of human nature, a nature which means people (somewhat like animals) need the prospect of material rewards to motivate them to work well. That may be ugly but it is rational and a valid reason for inequality.
iii) Competition Motivates People Best But Requires Inequality
Most people, especially most successful people, are naturally competitive animals. It is competition that generally brings out the best, including the greatest inventiveness in people.
For instance competitiveness is necessary for success in sports. Good sportsmen raise their performance levels in competitions to beat their opponents. Competition occurs not just in sport but in most activities. Schools compete to get better examination results than nearby schools and that process raises efforts by teachers as well as pupils and thereby academic standards in schools. It is often said the U.S.A. was spurred on to send men on a mission to the Moon and successfully land there as early as 1969 because there was intense competition from the Soviet Union to do so first. Indeed when the Americans won that competition, the Soviets were so dejected that they completely abandoned their project to land men on the Moon. Such is the effect of competition.
In the above examples the competition is mainly for dominance and prestige but usually in modern societies the competition is for money as the reward for competitive success. At the very least extra money and wealth is an important element in competition. This is especially so in business. Businesses aim to compete and win in competition with local competitors by supplying a better service to customers than others. They engage in that competition to better supply or serve the public because the prospect, the inegalitarian prospect, is that they will get more money or wealth if they succeed – otherwise they would think, why bother? Indeed why bother to be in business at all unless one is going to make more money and become richer than from not being in that business?
So successfully serving the public by providing customers with a better service than others in the market place from which people in that society generally benefit requires an unequal distribution of wealth in that society. Competition is good in driving up customer service and standards but it usually necessarily requires an inegalitarian society to work effectively.
iv) Inequality Creates A Necessary Market At The Top
Not everybody is in a position to buy luxury goods. It is mainly the rich and in some cases only the rich who can. Yet, particularly in the case of new inventions, many innovative products can only start off in the luxury market. Innovative products such as cars, refrigerators and televisions usually cost a lot of money to research and develop and in the beginning when the market for them is small and uncertain, they cost a lot to manufacture. So their only market is either government (who are not much interested in novel consumer products) or wealthy people who can afford the price of buying them.
So if there were no wealthy people around to sell the very expensive first cars or first televisions to, they would probably never have been developed in the first place as there would be nobody who could afford to buy them. Inevitably with most products, once they have been sold to and used by some rich people and proved their worth, then there is more demand for them. That extra demand in addition to the expertise gained in their initial production facilitates cheaper production costs which makes them more affordable and so saleable to middle income people and even in the end to relatively poor people. That has happened with cars, refrigerators video-cameras and televisions and much else besides among the products that have helped us live a better life. (Even in the pre-industrial age great works of art or even literature were funded by rich patrons – otherwise many would not have been produced!)
So the wealthy, especially the very wealthy, through the buying power of their wealth have contributed enormously by providing a market for the innovative or exceptional products that nobody else could afford to buy. In most cases if there were no wealthy people that would have meant that such products or items would never have come into existence and the whole world would have been worse off as a result.
So great inequality and great wealth provide a vital market (and the only market) for products that have benefited the world but would not otherwise have come into existence. That too is a genuine and valid reason for inequality of wealth in the world.
v) Wealth Is A Paradigm Example
A lot of people may envy the wealthy and their lifestyle but it is also something many people would like to aspire to. Even individual items like cars or televisions have provided some motivation for others who want to afford them. Even if one cannot realistically get all that the rich have, at least many more people by seeing what they have can try to get some of what they have and reach some of the standards the wealthy have set. People can see that wealth is real and may be attainable, not just an abstract dream. This can be motivational in encouraging others to succeed or even just live to a better standard. So not only is it better for some, relatively few people to be wealthy than for nobody to be wealthy, but also the wealth of some is very useful in encouraging others to become successful.
vi) Inequality Cannot Be Removed
There are some, indeed many, inequalities that just cannot be removed. Therefore we have to live in an inegalitarian society. This in my view is not on the whole a bad thing. Therefore one might be wise to acknowledge the reality and make the best of it, the best of an inegalitarian society.
Because people are different there will always be physical inequalities among people, indeed sometimes extreme physical inequalities, such as the inequality between blindness and sightedness. As with most animals that live in groups there will always be differences in ‘dominance’ between people. Indeed because human societies are now very large there will be vast differences and inequalities in social and political power between people. Such inequalities will never and probably can never be removed.
Yet even inequalities of wealth cannot be removed. Where profiteering is illegal, there will probably always be a black market where enterprising people can become wealthy, albeit illegally. Nor it seems has there been a large human society (including in Communist countries) where those who run the society have not acquired not only an unequal degree of prestige and power but also considerable wealth and material privileges compared to the common, ordinary people. It seems to be an iron law of human society that those who run any society are or thereby become privileged and wealthy. That means even those professing to create an egalitarian society (the leaders and their henchmen who facilitate that leadership) always end up having inegalitarian wealth and material privileges!
Furthermore there is not only a primary inequality of wealth making successful individuals wealthy but there is inevitably also a secondary and persistent inequality of wealth that prevents even ‘equality of opportunity ‘ in societies. That secondary inequality of wealth arises because most of the wealthy insist not only on achieving wealth for themselves but also on providing wealth and opportunities for their children and family. Not only do they provide the best education and the best social connections (as well as social know-how and confidence) for their children while they are alive so that they can ‘get on in the world’ but they also provide the best material inheritance for their children when they die. So not only do the rich benefit from a primary inequality but they also confer a secondary inequality upon their families. That is the nature of families, families that are essential to human life. Before Westerners criticise that too much they would do well to remember that much the same applies in the case of countries. Countries such as Britain and France became wealthy partly from creating and exploiting empires but that wealth has not all disappeared when the imperial generations died. It has been bequeathed to succeeding generations in those countries to help those countries to continue to be wealthy. That principle is even more applicable to countries such as the United States that became wealthy from early industrialisation and technological developments. The wealth people gained from economic success then (along with their technologies and know-how) has been bequeathed to the subsequent generations of their countrymen to help keep them wealthy. We do truly live in an inegalitarian world where the wealthy pass their wealth and their accumulated success on from generation to generation.
vii) Human Society Is Most Dependent On The Strong And The Unequally Clever
Of course everybody in society should matter and should enjoy personal freedom. Yet it is an unavoidable fact that all human advance, most importantly technological advances, has arisen from the brilliance of a tiny, tiny minority of people. That brilliance needs to be encouraged by the prospect of wealth and prestige (such as Nobel Prizes) because societies benefit so very much from the insights of those very few. Sometimes such people (notably many inventors during The Industrial Revolution) have not got their just deserts but they should have the possibility and prospect of very unequal wealth to encourage them.
On a more mundane (though widespread) but vital level for every society, societies rely overwhelmingly for their wellbeing on their most able people. People are by nature inherently unequal in their abilities and potential. So not everybody can be a skilful doctor who may save many lives or a talented businessman who may employ and so provide the livelihood for very many people as well as the services or products that numerous customers want to buy. If they are not well (and unequally) rewarded most of those people will either settle for an easier life and not bother at all or go to another country where they can get more money. So inequality of income is necessary to encourage and develop the contribution of people who have the unusual ability to benefit society most. While weak and average people should matter, it is the clever and the strong who are the ones who are most vital and most beneficial to human societies and so matter most!
So not only is inequality a natural phenomenon in human societies but there are also many valid reasons why overall inequality is indeed a beneficial and good thing for humanity as a whole.
G) Reasons For Tempering Inequality
Although, as I have stated, it is senseless, indeed counter-productive and therefore irrational to attempt to eliminate or hugely decrease ‘inequality’ in human society, there are reasons, especially in large modern societies, to offer some protection to the most vulnerable. As far as I can see there are three significant reasons for doing this.
For a start though substantial inequalities between people may seem apparent to most people I suspect that just as we think that foxes are foxes and all foxes are much the same, outsiders like foxes would probably suppose that humans are humans and all humans are much the same. So the inequalities between people (though important within human societies) are not that fundamental. Even more important there is usually a vast amount of overlap in abilities between people. For instance men may in general be stronger or taller than women but some women are stronger or taller than some men. In a school class some students are better at studying foreign languages than others. However some students who are better at foreign languages may be worse at studying sciences than some of their fellow students whom they surpass at languages. Furthermore the situation is fluid as on one day some students may perform better than certain others in a test but on another day the comparative performances may be reversed. Perhaps most important of all, even if on average men are more able than women or white people are more intelligent than black people (as for instance I.Q. tests indicate), there is a great deal of individual overlap and the natural average inequalities are quite small. Therefore emphasis upon inequality (as distinct from letting such inequalities as there are play out naturally) is just likely to lead to counter-productive trouble or strife.
Second, it is in the overall interests of society at large to maximise the utilisation of talent. It may well be that some of the people who appear least capable either physically or even academically have a great deal they can contribute. For instance many of the actual inventors in The Industrial Revolution were uneducated and poor. Many people who become wealthy come from impoverished backgrounds, as indeed have some national leaders. Though the children of the wealthy have more opportunities and are more likely to grow up to become wealthy and leaders, it is crucial to the welfare of society that even the most disadvantaged are able by their own efforts to better themselves. There must be opportunity and incentive for them too. It is disadvantageous to society if it is run by and for the benefit of a closed hierarchy that outsiders cannot break into.
Third and finally, inasmuch as society can reasonably afford to keep its weakest members such as the sick, the disabled and the elderly, alive it should do so. Not only may anybody fall, temporarily or permanently, upon hard times but it is reassuring, and importantly promotes harmony (rather than strife) within a society if society sustains the lives of the disadvantaged within it. Harmony is important to a society. Harmony is served by helping to keep the weak alive but harmony certainly is not served by donating to the weak (at the expense of the strong) the same standard of living as those who either work long and hard for their living or otherwise by their abilities contribute most to society.
The main means of mitigating inequality are first by providing some welfare (such as food, shelter and medical care) to those who are most disadvantaged and secondly by ensuring everybody has the same legal rights and legal (as contrasted to material) opportunities. To utilise an old Conservative concept (it may have been used by Winston Churchill) it is important that there should be both a safety net and a ladder of opportunity for everybody. This does not mean equality between people or even anything near that. It does not even mean equal opportunity for everybody because people being what they are, it is essential to the present functioning of society that the children of the privileged and of the wealthy have more opportunity than others. However some degree of welfare and some opportunity for all is important both for the harmony and for the advancement of human societies. That is not too hard to achieve and indeed historically has been done at least to an extent in most societies for many centuries. That is rational. What is irrational, unnatural and very destructive of society is an ideologically motivated attempt to force equality or near equality upon society.
H) A BETTER, REALISTIC AND RATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON EQUALITY AND INEQUALITY
Accurate and detailed, yet relatively simple observation reveals that inequality is natural and normal in the world. Living animals, especially humans, have variety or diversity and are unequal in their abilities. Furthermore inequality cannot be eradicated and attempts to eradicate (or much reduce) inequality cause massive trouble. Seeking equality destroys incentive and thereby motivation to be active and causes strife between those who have some wealth and those who have no real wealth (and also between those in society who are physically normal and those who are not physically normal). History, especially the history of Communist societies shows this. Furthermore and most importantly, inequality (such as people operating through lucrative and equality destroying black markets) can only be eliminated, as was tried in all Communist societies, by means of force, repression and terroristic violence or severe punishments by the equality enforcing state. That is far more repressive of people and human freedom than ever inequality is likely to be and so should be absolutely unacceptable. So personal human freedom can only be adequately achieved within an unequal society!
Inequalities are also generally advantageous to societies in making them dynamic through motivated dynamic people and in helping them advance technologically and indeed culturally. Yet inequalities can have some undesirable side effects. Racial and other inequalities can lead to strife between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ among humans which is potentially destructive to all. Inequalities may also leave some people in such extreme poverty that they have to struggle (even sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain their lives. The political skill is to find a viable way of accommodating the realities and indeed the advantages of inequalities in society while mitigating somewhat its worst side effects.
I submit one must accept that not only natural society but also any sensible society must accommodate and incorporate great inequalities. That is the price of incentivising and so motivating people, most importantly the most able members of society, to make great efforts to succeed. That is essential to society. It means people and rational politicians need to accept certain inegalitarian features in society that are both natural and helpful. These include a precept that there should be no limit to the wealth any person may acquire through legitimate or properly lawful activity. Furthermore there should be a right for people to pass on wealth to their family or others during their lifetime or upon death. People should have the ability to inherit money. That too is essential to incentive. There should also be no racial nor class background quotas for advancement, such as entry into University or the professions – it should simply be that the best candidates at the time get the advancement, i.e. no ‘positive’ discrimination. There should be a willingness to accept differences in average abilities or backgrounds between races or classes may lead to fewer people from some backgrounds getting some of the top jobs based on ability. It is important for society that the most able people advance furthest (as tends to happen naturally in business, but not so much in employment) so as to maximise wealth and minimise wasteful practices in society. That means there should neither be any exclusions based on one’s background nor any special favours based merely on a person’s background.
The mitigations to temper the worst effects of a natural inegalitarian society should be that everybody should have equal rights and equal responsibilities under the public laws of society. What private individuals do in their own homes or businesses is another matter, very personal to them. Second, there should also be if it can be afforded (and it can be afforded by modern societies, endowed with modern technology) a relatively minimalist form of welfare for those not otherwise reasonably able to cope. Above all, there should be the opportunity for talented people to rise in society and acquire considerable wealth in so doing, whatever their background may be. Thereby society may potentially benefit from the efforts of practically all members of society who have significant real ability.
So what I am advocating is a rational policy instead of an irrational drive for more or even mythical ‘equality’. I advocate an unequal (inegalitarian) society with legal protections and minimalist welfare for all and I emphasise there should be the opportunity for talented people to rise and better themselves within their society, whatever their background may be.
I) WE SHOULD RECOGNISE REALITY AND BENEFIT FROM FOLLOWING THE GRAIN OF HUMAN NATURE
So in essence what I am saying is that governance needs in terms of being rational and achieving the best results for people to be realistic. ‘Recognise reality’, human reality is my plea.
That reality is that though people may virtue-signal about equality, human beings are actually unequal and the true wish of most individual people is to surpass others in skill, even luck, maybe power and above all in income and wealth. That is generally why people study in school and University for good qualifications and usually why people are willing to work in demanding, skilled or risky jobs. That ambition, common to many people, cannot be stopped without curtailing personal freedom, individual freedom within society in a repressive totalitarian way. That historically has always happened in Communist countries supposedly dedicated to economic wealth equality. Living within an unequal society accords with the grain of human nature and as it results in an overall benefit to society and to most individual people, political theorists should support it rather than attempt to run against or overcome this aspect of human nature. So people’s individual instincts towards personal inequality can and should be harnessed for the ultimate benefit of practically everybody in society in terms not only of civilisation (maybe producing great cultural works) and technological comfort but most especially in enhancing the living standards of most people, albeit in an unequal, inegalitarian society.
Like it or not, that is the reality of human behaviour. It is crucial to rational politics and rational governance that that is accommodated which can only be done within an inegalitarian society that does not limit personal economic ambition. That may not merely be realistic but also that may sound right-wing. It is right wing. Rational politics is necessarily right wing. I, as a rationalist am proud to be right wing!
Geoffrey H L Berg