The Equality Unicorn

An oft-stated goal of progressive politics is “equality.” Equality is a nice word and a noble-sounding goal, especially in a nation and a world where institutionalized inequality has been the norm for decades and centuries, and both our president and New York City’s mayor-elect have made it a central theme. Yet “equality” can mean very different things to different people. Those of us with libertarian and individualist leanings will focus on equality of opportunity and fight against the barriers government has traditionally erected against equality, while modern progressives, to judge by the metrics they cite, focus more on equality of outcome. Wage inequality, income inequality and the like are the modern language of the liberal class warriors running our nation and some of our cities. Recognition of these various inequalities is coupled with three presumptions: that they are the result of bad societal forces such as bigotry and bias, that efforts should be made to eliminate them, and that those efforts must necessarily be legislative or regulatory in nature. In other words, modern progressive social policy seeks to institutionalize equality.

We shouldn’t be surprised that progressives seek to actively correct the supposed imbalances they perceive in society via legislation and regulation. After all, if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, it’s likely you’re going to treat every problem as a nail. If your world view doesn’t acknowledge market forces, or considers them in need of careful management and watchfulness, you’re not likely to simply undo the things that were done in the past that created inequalities (in other words, repeal discriminatory laws) and let things find a natural equilibrium. You’re also not likely to be satisfied with whatever natural equilibrium arises, especially if your ears are more attuned to the gripes of some constituencies than those of others. Thus we get policies like affirmative action, a raft of anti-discrimination laws, pushes for legislation mandating wage equality, and of course the eternal effort to forcibly redistribute wealth and income from those who have it to those who want it given to them.

The great underlying problem with this active effecting of equality is that the end-state is a myth, a chimera, a fantasy, a unicorn. Apart from the great difficulty in actually defining equality in quantitative and measurable terms – a necessity if one is to judge the efficacy of activism – there’s the simple truth that people are very different from each other, in makeup, in societal position, in ability, in motivation, and in desire. These are not only individual traits, many are variable over time. Attempting to effect equality of outcome in the face of this is a fool’s errand, and a particularly damaging one.

It is a simple truth that some people are born with advantages over others. This is not to be lamented, or considered as “unfair,” it is an eternal and irrefutable reality. Consider two boys that dedicate every waking moment to basketball, with the hope of playing in the NBA. The desire is there in both of them, and they both work very hard at it, pushing themselves to the best of their abilities. But, one boy grows to be six foot ten, the other grows to five foot five. The tall boy is also genetically athletic, with natural strength, balance and coordination, while the other boy must struggle to overcome a total lack of genetic athleticism, along with poor vision and a tendency to vertigo. Do we expect that both boys have an equal shot at making the NBA? Of course not. Can we institute rules that afford both boys an equal shot at making the NBA? Of course we can. But what would those rules accomplish? We could decide that the shorter boy’s effort should count as much as the taller boy’s (set aside the question of how we’d measure this), and mandate that they both be selected by NBA teams, perhaps in a blind lottery. Both boys would achieve their life’s ambition, but that achievement is diluted to meaninglessness. The product that is the NBA – competition at the highest level of athletic performance – is abandoned in favor of ensuring equal outcomes for the two boys, and the sense of achievement the boys would stand to gain is diluted away. We’d be punishing actual achievement and excellence, discriminating against one boy simply because he had inherent advantages over the other boy. We’d also be dooming the other boy to a career of mediocrity, disappointment and frustration, because even though he’s playing in the top league, and even in the case where the teams were assembled by lottery, some of the people he’s playing with and against will be better than he is. Because we desire to create equality, we do harm to both boys. We also do harm to the NBA itself – a product enjoyed by millions of consumers – people who want to see the game played at the highest level of achievement. Who do we help? We may believe we’re helping the shorter boy achieve his lifelong dream, but in reality we are mainly helping ourselves and stroking our own egos. The imposition of equal outcome dehumanizes and commoditizes the people we seek to help and subordinates others’ pursuit of achievement and excellence to our own self-gratification. And, the imposition of equal outcome necessarily degrades the quality of the end product created.

Now lets say that, through sheer force of will and determination, the shorter boy overcomes his disadvantages and makes it to the NBA. How much greater is his achievement? How much more fulfilling? How much more admiration will he receive from other players and from the consumers? How much more of a role model will he be? No one will question his achievement, no one will factor in any sort of forced equalization of outcome when they judge his success. As importantly, no NBA team would have to be told to give him a contract. Even if one general manager had a bigotry against short players, others would see advantage to hiring the best player to be had, irrelevant of height, those teams would benefit, and the bigoted manager’s team would suffer competitively. If society had, as a policy, equalization of outcome, the success the shorter boy achieved through his own efforts would be obscured and cheapened.

Of course, this is a stark and simplistic example but it easily extends and applies to other differences, physical, genetic, intellectual, etc. It applies to differences in goals and levels of motivation, differences that are both very hard to quantify and subject to rapid and sharp changes. It also informs us when considering demographic differences – differences that, no matter how much well-intentioned people try, will always exist. These are differences in “starting point,” and it’s an unavoidable reality that some will have an easier time achieving a particular level of success than others, simply by the fact that they have some sort of initial advantage. Some of these advantages, we can agree, are “unfair” in an uncontroversial sense of the term. Racism is the most obvious, but even in the case of racism we find that government has been and is part of the problem rather than the solution. Jim Crow laws were just that – laws. They represented the formalization and institutionalization of racism. After they were repealed, government swung the other way, enacting policies such as affirmative action that institutionalize discrimination of a different form. While the argument that the decades of barriers erected against minority individuals’ ability to achieve warranted recompense has some merit, one result of the “leg up” is to cast doubt on the success those individuals achieved. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has written extensively and persuasively on this subject, and makes a powerful case against affirmative action and other race-based preferences. Chief Justice John Roberts offered the correct prescription for getting past racial discrimination:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

In other words, repeal the laws that discriminate and replace them with… nothing. Stop pointing out that different people are different and people will stop noticing.

Unfortunately, rather than extricating itself from labeling and discrimination, government has become a tool for all sorts of “positive” forms of discrimination, even for differences that have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. While racism and bigotry are attitudes that harm and degrade society, not all inherent differences between people qualify for such labels. For example, no matter how much shorter people organize and agitate, making a case against height discrimination cheapens the very real and very harmful adversity that racial and ethnic minorities have endured over the decades. Yet there are advocacy groups out there for shorter people, and at least one state has legislation that prohibits discrimination based on height.

Consider, now, differences in individuals that aren’t as “starting point” or inherent, such as weight and appearance. We are in control of our weight, and we have a fair bit of control over our appearance. Some, of course, do have better starting points – they’ve got a better genetic mix and/or were raised in households or ran in peer groups where such were prioritized, but it remains that most people are well in control of their outward appearance. It is also an inescapable truth that appearance matters – that how we present ourselves to others and the world has an effect on how others judge us. An attorney with a crazy mop of unkempt hair, a giant beer gut, coffee and ketchup stains on his shirt and tie, and a cheap, ill-fitting suit will have to work that much harder to convince clients, judges and juries of his competence and the strength of his position than one who is fit, groomed and well-dressed, even if he is smarter and even if his position is more supported. Should there be government action to protect the slovenly from this sort of “packaging” discrimination?

Similar lines of thought exist for various other disparities, including “silver spoons.” Some people win the birth lottery, i.e. are born into wealthy/successful families. Those families have access to the best schools, can provide all sorts of advantages in education, social access and the like, and can and often do place their children at the top of the economic ladder. Social engineers loudly decry this “unfairness,” and advocate for punitive estate taxes to keep parents from making their kids’ lives too easy. Yet what does that ultimately accomplish? The people who created the wealth figured out how to do so, and in taking that wealth away from them for redistribution to others who aren’t as skilled at wealth creation adversely impacts society’s wealth as a whole. And, if the message from society and government is that one’s efforts to provide the best for one’s family will be thwarted, why should one bother?

Here some will argue that there are many smart kids who don’t get the opportunities to leverage their smarts because of social inequalities. They may be born to uncaring parents, or perhaps they’re stuck in a lousy school district, or a failing city, or in a crime-ridden neighborhood, and so forth. Many of these inequalities, ironically, are due to government. Being “stuck” in a lousy school is the direct result of a system that mandates “if you live here, your kids go to school there” without choice, competition or alternatives. A society that pushes welfare and sends a message that one is entitled to the fruits of others labors fosters abdication of personal responsibility. Failing cities and high-crime neighborhoods are overwhelmingly failures of government, and before government looks to get involved in more aspects of our lives, it should address its own failures in those areas it’s already involved.

A lesson lost on the social engineers in this regard is that socioeconomic status is not static. People can and do move up the ladder all the time. In fact, it’s one element of what we call the American Dream. A big motivation for moving up that ladder is wanting a better life for one’s children than he or she had. In striving to move up the ladder, people create wealth and society prospers. Kill that motivation off by legislating equality – tell parents that their efforts to put their kids higher up the ladder will be “balanced away” because it isn’t good for society – and the reason to work hard, to sacrifice, to take risks in an effort to do better, goes away.

There are other starting point disparities. For example, some people are simply smarter than others, and no amount of forced equalization will change that fact. It also applies to demographic differences, and here is where progressives get most aggressive in their equalization. Yet half a century or more of forced equalization and over-compensation hasn’t brought about equal outcomes. Why? Because equal outcomes are impossible to impose from without, impossible because there is no way to measure, systematize, and equalize different life goals, levels of motivation, interests, fears and desires. Without factoring those unmeasurable intangibles into the equation, any “equal outcome” system will be inaccurate and thus unfair. Moreso, those attributes are highly variable even within individuals, and in attempting to measure and balance them, we are certain to change them (I offer a nod to Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle).

Thus we come back to the only sort of equality that government CAN strive to provide – equality of opportunity. Opportunity is equivalent to an open field, one without any sort of man-made barriers, fenceposts, lanes, and such. Unrestricted and unhindered, all can set out across that field in pursuit of whatever is important to them. Some may start out better equipped than others, some may have more natural ability to traverse that field than others, some may be luckier than others in their journeys (guessing right on which direction to travel), and so forth, some may have better skills or better insight regarding the journey, and some may be more motivated than others and thus push harder. We, as individuals, can look to help those who may be less well equipped than we happen to be – and it will often be the case that in doing so we benefit ourselves and our own journeys. There is reason to cooperate in our journeys, and there is both motivation and benefit to compete. Individually and as a whole, free cooperation and free competition make for better outcomes.

We, as a society, could also mandate that those who are better equipped, in whatever fashion, have some of their advantage taken from them to be given to others, or that those who have greater ability have barriers erected so that others can “keep up,” or that pathways and guideposts be put in place for some but not others, but in doing so we’d do harm to many and net harm to society as a whole. And, as many decades and many trillions of dollars have proven, that “equality” end state remains unachieved.