16 ms·

People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness

214 points by allenleein 9y ago

pamqzl 9y ago
They don't want fairness either, they want "fairness". The difference between fairness and "fairness" is that "fairness" works out a little better for people like yourself than fairness does.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  > "fairness" works out a little better for people like yourself than fairness does. Because the CEO of a company fairly worked 100-300 times harder than the person on the packing line?
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    Maybe gp worked really hard on that comment; should you really criticize it?
keithpeter 9y ago
Interesting article, and Frankfurt's On Equality is on the reading list. I enjoyed On Bullshit after I got through the first section. Certainly in 'water cooler conversations' the feeling that someone else has got a promotion or higher salary without (visible) extra work is deeply resented, even though it has no direct effect on the participants. What I'm finding in UK at the moment is the lack of a linear response in terms of quality of life to income level. There is a definite 'knee' or threshold. Below that income you have problems, above that income things get easier quickly. As usual here, my impression is that it comes down to housing costs: we don't have rented accommodation that is small and cheap any more. You can't find somewhere 20% or 30% cheaper below a certain rent level. Not sure if that is the whole story but I think it is a factor.
- gambiting 9y ago
  >>As usual here, my impression is that it comes down to housing costs: we don't have rented accommodation that is small and cheap any more You can, it's always a question of how much you want to sacrifice for it. A friend of mine is renting a room in a 5-bedroom house for 350/month, all bills and council tax included. I pay about 950/month for a 3-bedroom house with a double driveway and a garden. To me, the reduction of utility is not worth the 600/month saving, but it's absolutely not a problem to find a house to rent for 500-600/month, you just have to move further away from the city. (unless, of course, you are talking about London - then this entire conversation falls apart)
  - maccard 9y ago
    that works for people living on their own, but people with families/children can't live in a room in a 5 bedroom house for 350/month. You also presumably can't go any lower than 350/month (which is the 20-30% cutoff the parent mentioned) - 300 quid a month might be nothing to someone who can afford a grand a month, but to someone whose income is 6-7 hundred a month, it's a massive chunk. There are also costs associated with living outside of a city. If I live 5 miles out of a city, and work in a city, I have to travel there and back every day. Depending on where you live, this can be very cheap or very expensive. Public transport as a method of commuting is also not suitable for many people (in particular the people who would be affected by low wages who work awkward shifts). The alternative I assume is car ownership, which is definitely not cheap, and if you are driving into a city is probably going to cost you more in parking than you'll save in rent.
    - chongli 9y ago
      but people with families/children can't live in a room in a 5 bedroom house for 350/month You can, and people do all the time. People live in slums with 7 kids in a corrugated sheet metal shack the size of a garden shed with sewage flowing past their front door. So then, what is the difference with a country like England? People are not allowed to live in such conditions. This is not the same thing as can't. We set minimum standards of living because we don't like the idea of people living in squalor. We rarely give a thought to the adverse consequences of such policies. A family that might have been able to afford a tiny apartment is instead forced into the street to fend for themselves.
dieterrams 9y ago
As interesting as Frankfurt can be, this semantic quibbling is unhelpful. When most of us progressive types speak out against "economic inequality", we are not saying we want everybody to have equal wealth. The concern is about rising inequality, of increasing wealth concentrated in an increasingly tiny percentage of the population, while millions struggle to get by, often one bad month away from financial ruin. And yes, of course we care about fairness. There is nothing insightful about presenting it in contradistinction to concerns about inequality, as though it's the thing we are "really" concerned about. Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable (unless you're John Rawls). Hence, we care about both.
- michaelscott 9y ago
  "Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable" I'd be really interested in an example of where this is the case. Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. Such a system naturally creates the inference that the man did something as an individual to acquire that wealth (and not necessarily in a zero sum manner). As pointed out in the article, the issue with rising inequality is not that the wealthy are getting wealthier necessarily, only that it comes at the expense of people who work just as hard or harder, but still struggle to get by from day to day. Since the perception is that more work leads to more reward in a fair system, the perception is also that this situation is unfair. Economic equality, however, is not necessary for such a situation to be fair. Flipped around, if the manual labourer who toils hard every day were paid more than the non-executive board member the situation would be perceived as fair, despite the fact that the two individuals would receive different compensation. I really can't see the difference between "fair" and "unequal" being a matter of "semantic quibbling".
  - dieterrams 9y ago
    > Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. I'm not sure how this is a response to what I wrote. I'm talking about the tolerability of outcomes for the UNwealthy, while you're talking about a rich person being intolerable? The semantic quibbling I'm referring to is the idea that when someone like Bernie Sanders rails about "economic inequality", they are implicitly advocating economic equality (which is incorrect, as I've stated in my original comment), and bouncing off that to present "fairness" as the real thing at issue.
anotheryou 9y ago
A contrary Idea: People need society to be unfair, not to blame thenselves for their lack of success. Especially in times of self-exploitation (or optimization) I find it an interesting perspective.
- archgoon 9y ago
  "I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." -Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
  - 2017Chump 9y ago
    Quote of an imaginary person suddenly changed everything.
  - realharo 9y ago
    Well, free will is an illusion and the world is pretty much deterministic on the large scale, so the concept of "deserving something" would itself not be fair to begin with.
    - anotheryou 9y ago
      But the illusion is trong enough and you could just reframe this problem avoiding the free-will problematic. Someone who puts all his energy in to getting somewhere should be able to get there (within the reasonable). No matter the underlying origin of his motives or circumstances. I still see your point though, but I'd say that's a further step: to acknowledge that nobody should be held responsible for himself. (EU-law is a bit further here than the US though, no retaliation by law like the death penalty)
  - sscproblematic 9y ago
    Carlson: No... it didn't. It's not fair! It's not fair! Sheridan: (knocks Carlson out) What can I say? Life's tough sometimes. P.S. in an earlier comment you asked for a link and my profile provides it.
pizza 9y ago
If people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work. That saidd... This is consistent with believing owning less wealth is better than owning more wealth. Then that justifies groups with less wealth as better than groups with more wealth because they earn less income without work. Which then means the gender gap, racial gap, poor social immobility, etc are thus preferable because they imply not getting as much undeserved income. Only the belief that income without work is a priori bad forces this conclusion. The idea "compensating individuals honestly for their work produces a sufficiently fair world" isn't consistent with wanting to produce a fairer world. [0] [0] http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/22/some-opponents-of-ubi-necessarily-believe-the-racial-wealth-gap-is-good/ http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/22/some-opponents-of-ubi-nece...
- protomyth 9y ago
  > If people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work. That logic doesn’t follow. Respecting something doesn’t always require despising it’s opposite. Plenty of hard workers hope for wealth earning with no work for themselves, check the local lottery.
  - pizza 9y ago
    I apologise that despise was a little harsh for what I was hurriedly trying to say but the very uncompressed idea is that IF the belief "a man's hard work alone determines my respect of them" is a fairly common justification of income from work AND income without work exists THEN people earning income without work goes very much against that belief that only hard work earns approval. The 'respect' part was intended to mean 'respect exclusively' like as might be exemplified in the particularly intense conviction some might have against 'lazy poor people living handouts', as well as the rich living off of capital gains. This black-and-white perspective belongs a fairly vocal minority. Although people who sanctify work do elevate it to a question of toil, why wouldn't gambling (of any kind) just be a really expensive (albeit fairly toil-free) side-gig? No matter how different their hopes are from what is statistically likely, nor compelling the possibility that the lottery ticket could actually be a kind of masquerading windfall, the thinking isn't "this is my investment vehicle" but more "if I 'try hard enough' [by buying enough to win] I will eventually succeed."
sengork 9y ago
In Australia this concept is widely recognised as 'fair go'.
mathgeek 9y ago
Something that came to mind in this article is that when children were concerned with fair distribution, it was with regard to two other people. When younger children were shown to be more willing to give themselves more while others got less, it was with regards to themselves. Makes me wonder how much self involvement affects these types of attitudes. It wouldn't be surprising, to me, if people are generally satisfied with inequality when they themselves are the ones with more.
protomyth 9y ago
It’s a pretty simple concept, people don’t like getting screwed by someone else, and equality of outcome is impossible. Frankly, most people don’t give a damn how much some actor / CEO / athlete makes if they can pay all their monthly bills and have some money to enjoy themselves. Envy really isn’t in the national character until our lives are sucking.
- BLKNSLVR 9y ago
  > if they can pay all their monthly bills and have some money to enjoy themselves. Envy really isn’t in the national character until our lives are sucking. I know a few people that cry poor despite the fact they own a horse, or paid $2,000+ for a child's cubby house, or own a quad bike, or own a jetski. Low level envy, or "keeping up with the Jones'", is raising the level of what people feel entitled to as basics for "enjoying themselves".
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Those people have some mental problem. Anytime you combine busybodies with envy you get a bad combination. Not to be confused with people who just suck at managing their own finances because that is a whole different problem.
cs702 9y ago
Please link to original article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/people-dont-actually-want-equality/411784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/people-d...
genzoman 9y ago
IMO this is also built into the evangelical left's religion - if you don't succeed, you aren't the problem. It's a problem with the system. It's a pretty clever propaganda technique, I think. It reels in angsty teens easily enough, anyway.
- tim333 9y ago
  >built into the evangelical left's religion Sounds a bit straw man to me. Are there any actual human beings that have that position?
dahart 9y ago
I've never thought of "equality" as having identical sized piles of money, and I don't know anyone else who does, nor have I read anyone proposing such a thing, after a very modest amount of study in economics and inequality the US. The main goal in my mind is equal opportunity, not equal wealth. Equal opportunity may require a minimum amount of wealth, but need not limit the maximum nor require that people have similar amounts.
- nhaehnle 9y ago
  As an addendum, equal opportunity is necessary, but not sufficient for a just outcome (at least, according to what most reasonable people would agree to be just). You could have a theoretical society where everybody is taxed 10% of their income and that income is given to a randomly selected person each year. This society has absolutely equal opportunity, but it's also pretty unjust, because why should that one person suddenly be rich? Keep that in mind when discussing (more) equal outcomes vs. equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is insufficient.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    How do you define ‘just’? How can equal outcomes ever be attained? I played a lot of baseball, but there are only so many slots on the Yankees.
    - jakelazaroff 9y ago
      GP's lottery example was meant to show that even if equal opportunity is achieved, it's entirely possible to decouple compensation from work. One example of a proposed solution is a limit on the difference between the lowest and highest salaries in a company.
      - protomyth 9y ago
        By some random chance, that much like any form of luck, is well understood by most people. What value is this proposed solution and how is it ‘just’. Sounds a lot like people don’t understand the lessons of capping salespeople’s commissions.
kazinator 9y ago
If you value equality for its own sake, you're likely a computer scientist or mathematician.
tim333 9y ago
Monkeys want fairness too - I stuck up an amusing edit of Frans de Waal demoing that which got 400k views to my surprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8
karmakaze 9y ago
With all the discussion of meritocracy and how it doesn't actually exist, at most I can believe some people want fairness.
throw2016 9y ago
Since current systems do not provide anything resembling equality of opportunity and fairness a lot of the narrative is made up and propaganda. We must recognize the system for what it is and not what it claims to be. Children brought up in less privileged environments cannot compete with those born in privilege. Cherry picking exceptions by those in privilege to make a point is extraordinarily exploitative and self serving. Because exceptions usually cannot see any truth beyond their exceptionalism as a core value their narrative is often self-grandiose and are ripe picking for entrenched interests to pass off exception as rule. Just like blacks who did not have rights till 1965 and land and thus no opportunity to truly build generations of wealth cannot be expected to compete with their white counterparts who have had generations of wealth creating background. If you then claim wealth is not important for equal outcomes then the logical response is let's take it away. The ones lecturing loudest about equality are those who start a 100m race at 90m. For the privileged the world always seems fair. And others simply do not recognize all the things that had to come together to get them where they are. The elephant in the room is inheritance. And I am certain all the loud uncompromising advocates for the 'best should win' would not mind a systemic reset for children every generation so the truly best ones can shine irrespective of background, but of course not. We have never seen any initiative to make this so. This is the nod nod wink wink part of capitalism. We all allow and gloss over these cracks in our worldview.
0xbear 9y ago
Fairness is super subjective, so in reality people just want preferential treatment.
SZJX 9y ago
Well, in most cases those two simply cannot be separated though. If you have a hugely influential elite class they'll naturally skew the fairness of the society so that they keep their benefits the most.

214 points by allenleein 9y ago

They don't want fairness either, they want "fairness". The difference between fairness and "fairness" is that "fairness" works out a little better for people like yourself than fairness does.

jimktrains2 9y ago
> "fairness" works out a little better for people like yourself than fairness does. Because the CEO of a company fairly worked 100-300 times harder than the person on the packing line?
- jpttsn 9y ago
  Maybe gp worked really hard on that comment; should you really criticize it?

keithpeter 9y ago

Interesting article, and Frankfurt's On Equality is on the reading list. I enjoyed On Bullshit after I got through the first section. Certainly in 'water cooler conversations' the feeling that someone else has got a promotion or higher salary without (visible) extra work is deeply resented, even though it has no direct effect on the participants. What I'm finding in UK at the moment is the lack of a linear response in terms of quality of life to income level. There is a definite 'knee' or threshold. Below that income you have problems, above that income things get easier quickly. As usual here, my impression is that it comes down to housing costs: we don't have rented accommodation that is small and cheap any more. You can't find somewhere 20% or 30% cheaper below a certain rent level. Not sure if that is the whole story but I think it is a factor.

gambiting 9y ago
>>As usual here, my impression is that it comes down to housing costs: we don't have rented accommodation that is small and cheap any more You can, it's always a question of how much you want to sacrifice for it. A friend of mine is renting a room in a 5-bedroom house for 350/month, all bills and council tax included. I pay about 950/month for a 3-bedroom house with a double driveway and a garden. To me, the reduction of utility is not worth the 600/month saving, but it's absolutely not a problem to find a house to rent for 500-600/month, you just have to move further away from the city. (unless, of course, you are talking about London - then this entire conversation falls apart)
- maccard 9y ago
  that works for people living on their own, but people with families/children can't live in a room in a 5 bedroom house for 350/month. You also presumably can't go any lower than 350/month (which is the 20-30% cutoff the parent mentioned) - 300 quid a month might be nothing to someone who can afford a grand a month, but to someone whose income is 6-7 hundred a month, it's a massive chunk. There are also costs associated with living outside of a city. If I live 5 miles out of a city, and work in a city, I have to travel there and back every day. Depending on where you live, this can be very cheap or very expensive. Public transport as a method of commuting is also not suitable for many people (in particular the people who would be affected by low wages who work awkward shifts). The alternative I assume is car ownership, which is definitely not cheap, and if you are driving into a city is probably going to cost you more in parking than you'll save in rent.
  - chongli 9y ago
    but people with families/children can't live in a room in a 5 bedroom house for 350/month You can, and people do all the time. People live in slums with 7 kids in a corrugated sheet metal shack the size of a garden shed with sewage flowing past their front door. So then, what is the difference with a country like England? People are not allowed to live in such conditions. This is not the same thing as can't. We set minimum standards of living because we don't like the idea of people living in squalor. We rarely give a thought to the adverse consequences of such policies. A family that might have been able to afford a tiny apartment is instead forced into the street to fend for themselves.

dieterrams 9y ago

As interesting as Frankfurt can be, this semantic quibbling is unhelpful. When most of us progressive types speak out against "economic inequality", we are not saying we want everybody to have equal wealth. The concern is about rising inequality, of increasing wealth concentrated in an increasingly tiny percentage of the population, while millions struggle to get by, often one bad month away from financial ruin. And yes, of course we care about fairness. There is nothing insightful about presenting it in contradistinction to concerns about inequality, as though it's the thing we are "really" concerned about. Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable (unless you're John Rawls). Hence, we care about both.

michaelscott 9y ago
"Fairness alone does not guarantee a society where the outcome for the unwealthy is tolerable" I'd be really interested in an example of where this is the case. Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. Such a system naturally creates the inference that the man did something as an individual to acquire that wealth (and not necessarily in a zero sum manner). As pointed out in the article, the issue with rising inequality is not that the wealthy are getting wealthier necessarily, only that it comes at the expense of people who work just as hard or harder, but still struggle to get by from day to day. Since the perception is that more work leads to more reward in a fair system, the perception is also that this situation is unfair. Economic equality, however, is not necessary for such a situation to be fair. Flipped around, if the manual labourer who toils hard every day were paid more than the non-executive board member the situation would be perceived as fair, despite the fact that the two individuals would receive different compensation. I really can't see the difference between "fair" and "unequal" being a matter of "semantic quibbling".
- dieterrams 9y ago
  > Personally, I can't conceive of a situation where, in a perfectly fair system, the man with the most money is utterly intolerable. I'm not sure how this is a response to what I wrote. I'm talking about the tolerability of outcomes for the UNwealthy, while you're talking about a rich person being intolerable? The semantic quibbling I'm referring to is the idea that when someone like Bernie Sanders rails about "economic inequality", they are implicitly advocating economic equality (which is incorrect, as I've stated in my original comment), and bouncing off that to present "fairness" as the real thing at issue.

anotheryou 9y ago

A contrary Idea: People need society to be unfair, not to blame thenselves for their lack of success. Especially in times of self-exploitation (or optimization) I find it an interesting perspective.

archgoon 9y ago
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." -Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
- 2017Chump 9y ago
  Quote of an imaginary person suddenly changed everything.
- realharo 9y ago
  Well, free will is an illusion and the world is pretty much deterministic on the large scale, so the concept of "deserving something" would itself not be fair to begin with.
  - anotheryou 9y ago
    But the illusion is trong enough and you could just reframe this problem avoiding the free-will problematic. Someone who puts all his energy in to getting somewhere should be able to get there (within the reasonable). No matter the underlying origin of his motives or circumstances. I still see your point though, but I'd say that's a further step: to acknowledge that nobody should be held responsible for himself. (EU-law is a bit further here than the US though, no retaliation by law like the death penalty)
- sscproblematic 9y ago
  Carlson: No... it didn't. It's not fair! It's not fair! Sheridan: (knocks Carlson out) What can I say? Life's tough sometimes. P.S. in an earlier comment you asked for a link and my profile provides it.

pizza 9y ago

If people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work. That saidd... This is consistent with believing owning less wealth is better than owning more wealth. Then that justifies groups with less wealth as better than groups with more wealth because they earn less income without work. Which then means the gender gap, racial gap, poor social immobility, etc are thus preferable because they imply not getting as much undeserved income. Only the belief that income without work is a priori bad forces this conclusion. The idea "compensating individuals honestly for their work produces a sufficiently fair world" isn't consistent with wanting to produce a fairer world. [0] [0] http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/22/some-opponents-of-ubi-necessarily-believe-the-racial-wealth-gap-is-good/ http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07/22/some-opponents-of-ubi-nece...

protomyth 9y ago
> If people respect pay for work, then they despise the opposite, including wealth earning income for no work. That logic doesn’t follow. Respecting something doesn’t always require despising it’s opposite. Plenty of hard workers hope for wealth earning with no work for themselves, check the local lottery.
- pizza 9y ago
  I apologise that despise was a little harsh for what I was hurriedly trying to say but the very uncompressed idea is that IF the belief "a man's hard work alone determines my respect of them" is a fairly common justification of income from work AND income without work exists THEN people earning income without work goes very much against that belief that only hard work earns approval. The 'respect' part was intended to mean 'respect exclusively' like as might be exemplified in the particularly intense conviction some might have against 'lazy poor people living handouts', as well as the rich living off of capital gains. This black-and-white perspective belongs a fairly vocal minority. Although people who sanctify work do elevate it to a question of toil, why wouldn't gambling (of any kind) just be a really expensive (albeit fairly toil-free) side-gig? No matter how different their hopes are from what is statistically likely, nor compelling the possibility that the lottery ticket could actually be a kind of masquerading windfall, the thinking isn't "this is my investment vehicle" but more "if I 'try hard enough' [by buying enough to win] I will eventually succeed."

sengork 9y ago

In Australia this concept is widely recognised as 'fair go'.

mathgeek 9y ago

Something that came to mind in this article is that when children were concerned with fair distribution, it was with regard to two other people. When younger children were shown to be more willing to give themselves more while others got less, it was with regards to themselves. Makes me wonder how much self involvement affects these types of attitudes. It wouldn't be surprising, to me, if people are generally satisfied with inequality when they themselves are the ones with more.

protomyth 9y ago

It’s a pretty simple concept, people don’t like getting screwed by someone else, and equality of outcome is impossible. Frankly, most people don’t give a damn how much some actor / CEO / athlete makes if they can pay all their monthly bills and have some money to enjoy themselves. Envy really isn’t in the national character until our lives are sucking.

BLKNSLVR 9y ago
> if they can pay all their monthly bills and have some money to enjoy themselves. Envy really isn’t in the national character until our lives are sucking. I know a few people that cry poor despite the fact they own a horse, or paid $2,000+ for a child's cubby house, or own a quad bike, or own a jetski. Low level envy, or "keeping up with the Jones'", is raising the level of what people feel entitled to as basics for "enjoying themselves".
- protomyth 9y ago
  Those people have some mental problem. Anytime you combine busybodies with envy you get a bad combination. Not to be confused with people who just suck at managing their own finances because that is a whole different problem.

cs702 9y ago

Please link to original article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/people-dont-actually-want-equality/411784/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/people-d...

genzoman 9y ago

IMO this is also built into the evangelical left's religion - if you don't succeed, you aren't the problem. It's a problem with the system. It's a pretty clever propaganda technique, I think. It reels in angsty teens easily enough, anyway.

tim333 9y ago
>built into the evangelical left's religion Sounds a bit straw man to me. Are there any actual human beings that have that position?

dahart 9y ago

I've never thought of "equality" as having identical sized piles of money, and I don't know anyone else who does, nor have I read anyone proposing such a thing, after a very modest amount of study in economics and inequality the US. The main goal in my mind is equal opportunity, not equal wealth. Equal opportunity may require a minimum amount of wealth, but need not limit the maximum nor require that people have similar amounts.

nhaehnle 9y ago
As an addendum, equal opportunity is necessary, but not sufficient for a just outcome (at least, according to what most reasonable people would agree to be just). You could have a theoretical society where everybody is taxed 10% of their income and that income is given to a randomly selected person each year. This society has absolutely equal opportunity, but it's also pretty unjust, because why should that one person suddenly be rich? Keep that in mind when discussing (more) equal outcomes vs. equal opportunity. Equal opportunity is insufficient.
- protomyth 9y ago
  How do you define ‘just’? How can equal outcomes ever be attained? I played a lot of baseball, but there are only so many slots on the Yankees.
  - jakelazaroff 9y ago
    GP's lottery example was meant to show that even if equal opportunity is achieved, it's entirely possible to decouple compensation from work. One example of a proposed solution is a limit on the difference between the lowest and highest salaries in a company.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      By some random chance, that much like any form of luck, is well understood by most people. What value is this proposed solution and how is it ‘just’. Sounds a lot like people don’t understand the lessons of capping salespeople’s commissions.

kazinator 9y ago

If you value equality for its own sake, you're likely a computer scientist or mathematician.

tim333 9y ago

Monkeys want fairness too - I stuck up an amusing edit of Frans de Waal demoing that which got 400k views to my surprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8

karmakaze 9y ago

With all the discussion of meritocracy and how it doesn't actually exist, at most I can believe some people want fairness.

throw2016 9y ago

Since current systems do not provide anything resembling equality of opportunity and fairness a lot of the narrative is made up and propaganda. We must recognize the system for what it is and not what it claims to be. Children brought up in less privileged environments cannot compete with those born in privilege. Cherry picking exceptions by those in privilege to make a point is extraordinarily exploitative and self serving. Because exceptions usually cannot see any truth beyond their exceptionalism as a core value their narrative is often self-grandiose and are ripe picking for entrenched interests to pass off exception as rule. Just like blacks who did not have rights till 1965 and land and thus no opportunity to truly build generations of wealth cannot be expected to compete with their white counterparts who have had generations of wealth creating background. If you then claim wealth is not important for equal outcomes then the logical response is let's take it away. The ones lecturing loudest about equality are those who start a 100m race at 90m. For the privileged the world always seems fair. And others simply do not recognize all the things that had to come together to get them where they are. The elephant in the room is inheritance. And I am certain all the loud uncompromising advocates for the 'best should win' would not mind a systemic reset for children every generation so the truly best ones can shine irrespective of background, but of course not. We have never seen any initiative to make this so. This is the nod nod wink wink part of capitalism. We all allow and gloss over these cracks in our worldview.

0xbear 9y ago

Fairness is super subjective, so in reality people just want preferential treatment.

SZJX 9y ago

Well, in most cases those two simply cannot be separated though. If you have a hugely influential elite class they'll naturally skew the fairness of the society so that they keep their benefits the most.