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Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Inste

Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. Even if we somehow solve it, it would just be shuffling people up and down the ladder of an unfair system. Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes. Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.

miketery 9y ago
Can you expand on what you mean but real equality?
Rainymood 9y ago
>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? >Real equality means equality of outcomes. I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these choices have real consequences. I personally do not think it's fair to force the same outcome on some college kid that binge drinks and smokes weed all day versus some college kid that studies his bum off. Imagine what this does to incentives!? >Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications. Would you elaborate on this? I'll be honest here that I'm not too well-versed in this topic but I think it's interesting to talk about nonetheless. Full disclosure: I'm from the Netherlands where I feel there is quite some equal opportunity. Nearly every kid can go to a good primary school, high school, and any university if they try hard enough. There are little financial barriers as tuition is only 2.000/year. Contrast this to US universities if you do not have a scholarship, etc. However, the fact that everyone can go to the same university doesnt mean that everyone will end up exactly at the same place. People make choices and these choices have consequences.
- js8 9y ago
  > So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.
- minipci1321 9y ago
  This educational system you describe is great, no doubt, but are you sure it offers __equal opportunity__ to every kid? In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc. I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.
yorwba 9y ago
How do you propose to measure whether two outcomes are equal? Not everyone wants the same things. How many soccer games are equivalent to a guitar?
- Radim 9y ago
  When people talk about the equality of outcomes, I am always reminded of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. [0]: "THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal..." [0] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
sewer_bird 9y ago
Equality of outcome's implication is a culture engaging in an authoritarian and quixotic pursuit of perfect human misery. It is hard enough to ensure a specific outcome for yourself, let alone another, and even less so to make two people come out exactly the same. Equality of opportunity at least acknowledges that culture produces winners and losers.
- djrobstep 9y ago
  Dying in the gutter because you can't afford health insurance seems pretty miserable to me. Working at Walmart for minimum wage to make Sam Walton's useless children richer seems pretty miserable to me. There are many well proven ways to make people more equal, strong government welfare programs being one. They are very straightforward. Culture doesn't make people winners and losers, a brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism does.
  - ozy 9y ago
    You are saying one thing, but describing another. We want people to always have good opportunities to bootstrap themselves out of a terrible situation (your gutter and wallmart situations). But we don't want to remove all the rewards from turning time into value. "brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism" think you have a few opinions there that are deeply rooted in feelings ... When you are alone on an island, the world rewards you when you spend time changing things for the better (eg hunt for food). If in that situation you have the opportunity to trade you will be even better off. Things only go south when free markets also create a free labor market. Then the power of markets pushes strongly on those wages. Even if there is no evil intent by anyone, companies not ignoring this push will not be around for long ...
    - fudgepack99 9y ago
      You're pretty clueless as to the history of capitalism. From war is a racket: "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10] "War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23] "The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24] General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home. http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/ http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/... Blum: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137 http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137 US distribution of wealth https://imgur.com/a/FShfb https://imgur.com/a/FShfb http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html The Centre for Investigative Journalism http://www.tcij.org/ http://www.tcij.org/ Some history on US imperialism by us corporations. https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/ https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-histor...
eksemplar 9y ago
People aren’t equal. When we invest our resources in the wrong people out society suffers because of it. We’re extremely good at investing in the wrong people. Neither way is fair, but maybe we’d be better at being unfair if we invested in the right people to lead us.
- Aloha 9y ago
  We culturally have a problem with the inability to accurately judge, much less even tell parents what their children are capable of, or not capable of. In the end even with the best education, some people will grow up to be tow truck drivers, low skill factory workers, or service industry personal - its just how the split works out - not everyone is going to be super smart, some will be average, some will be below average, and some will give a wet bucket of sand a run for its money.
Aloha 9y ago
How do you ensure equal outcomes?
- arkona 9y ago
  Keeping everyone equally poor and miserable is an easy way to achieve this
  - njarboe 9y ago
    Only way?
  - tzahola 9y ago
    Communists have been consistently achieving this in the past 100 years, so at least we know it’s possible!
astr0n0m3r 9y ago
Why is equality of outcomes desirable? And how is it measurable? Or sustainable?
js8 9y ago
I agree with you. Equality of opportunity is equality in probability. But people have only one life, and if you have only one shot, then probability of it is somewhat a useless concept.
sidibe 9y ago
The best goal is to have a steadily increasing minimum outcome.

miketery 9y ago

Can you expand on what you mean but real equality?

Rainymood 9y ago

>Equality of opportunity is a terrible concept. What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? >Real equality means equality of outcomes. I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these choices have real consequences. I personally do not think it's fair to force the same outcome on some college kid that binge drinks and smokes weed all day versus some college kid that studies his bum off. Imagine what this does to incentives!? >Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications. Would you elaborate on this? I'll be honest here that I'm not too well-versed in this topic but I think it's interesting to talk about nonetheless. Full disclosure: I'm from the Netherlands where I feel there is quite some equal opportunity. Nearly every kid can go to a good primary school, high school, and any university if they try hard enough. There are little financial barriers as tuition is only 2.000/year. Contrast this to US universities if you do not have a scholarship, etc. However, the fact that everyone can go to the same university doesnt mean that everyone will end up exactly at the same place. People make choices and these choices have consequences.

js8 9y ago
> So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance? He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.
minipci1321 9y ago
This educational system you describe is great, no doubt, but are you sure it offers __equal opportunity__ to every kid? In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc. I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.

yorwba 9y ago

How do you propose to measure whether two outcomes are equal? Not everyone wants the same things. How many soccer games are equivalent to a guitar?

Radim 9y ago
When people talk about the equality of outcomes, I am always reminded of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. [0]: "THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal..." [0] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...

sewer_bird 9y ago

Equality of outcome's implication is a culture engaging in an authoritarian and quixotic pursuit of perfect human misery. It is hard enough to ensure a specific outcome for yourself, let alone another, and even less so to make two people come out exactly the same. Equality of opportunity at least acknowledges that culture produces winners and losers.

djrobstep 9y ago
Dying in the gutter because you can't afford health insurance seems pretty miserable to me. Working at Walmart for minimum wage to make Sam Walton's useless children richer seems pretty miserable to me. There are many well proven ways to make people more equal, strong government welfare programs being one. They are very straightforward. Culture doesn't make people winners and losers, a brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism does.
- ozy 9y ago
  You are saying one thing, but describing another. We want people to always have good opportunities to bootstrap themselves out of a terrible situation (your gutter and wallmart situations). But we don't want to remove all the rewards from turning time into value. "brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism" think you have a few opinions there that are deeply rooted in feelings ... When you are alone on an island, the world rewards you when you spend time changing things for the better (eg hunt for food). If in that situation you have the opportunity to trade you will be even better off. Things only go south when free markets also create a free labor market. Then the power of markets pushes strongly on those wages. Even if there is no evil intent by anyone, companies not ignoring this push will not be around for long ...
  - fudgepack99 9y ago
    You're pretty clueless as to the history of capitalism. From war is a racket: "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10] "War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23] "The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24] General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home. http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/ http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/... Blum: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137 http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137 US distribution of wealth https://imgur.com/a/FShfb https://imgur.com/a/FShfb http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html The Centre for Investigative Journalism http://www.tcij.org/ http://www.tcij.org/ Some history on US imperialism by us corporations. https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/ https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-histor...

eksemplar 9y ago

People aren’t equal. When we invest our resources in the wrong people out society suffers because of it. We’re extremely good at investing in the wrong people. Neither way is fair, but maybe we’d be better at being unfair if we invested in the right people to lead us.

Aloha 9y ago
We culturally have a problem with the inability to accurately judge, much less even tell parents what their children are capable of, or not capable of. In the end even with the best education, some people will grow up to be tow truck drivers, low skill factory workers, or service industry personal - its just how the split works out - not everyone is going to be super smart, some will be average, some will be below average, and some will give a wet bucket of sand a run for its money.

Aloha 9y ago

How do you ensure equal outcomes?

arkona 9y ago
Keeping everyone equally poor and miserable is an easy way to achieve this
- njarboe 9y ago
  Only way?
- tzahola 9y ago
  Communists have been consistently achieving this in the past 100 years, so at least we know it’s possible!

astr0n0m3r 9y ago

Why is equality of outcomes desirable? And how is it measurable? Or sustainable?

js8 9y ago

I agree with you. Equality of opportunity is equality in probability. But people have only one life, and if you have only one shot, then probability of it is somewhat a useless concept.

sidibe 9y ago

The best goal is to have a steadily increasing minimum outcome.