3 ms·

This is something I genuinely am curious about: how do you get equality of opportunity without first getting equality of outcome in a system where money opens d

This is something I genuinely am curious about: how do you get equality of opportunity without first getting equality of outcome in a system where money opens doors and inheritance exists? Just-freed black people started with nothing when white slave owners had farms to pass onto their children. If (I think it is) obvious that wealth provides more opportunity, there’s no way for black people to ever have equal opportunity as the original white population. (Edit: this isn’t to say I agree with equal outcome. I think there’s a lot of nonsense stuff in that sphere. But I’ve never myself been able to answer how to consider how to make equality of opportunity happen if we started from an unequal space and inheritance exists which persists inequality.)

tomp 5y ago
This is wrong on so many levels but I don't blame you as it's the false narrative that's most pervasive in most media. First of all, "starts with nothing" isn't specific to black population. Many (most?) immigrants also start with nothing, yet often outperform locals (including whites) (the important question that almost noone is asking, is why?). Among those are Nigerians, so clearly "because they're not black" isn't the correct answer. Your question already contains the "correct" (IMO) answer, which is: help poor people. To the extent that poverty correlates to being black (or any other categorical characteristic), both solutions are equivalent, except that mine is (1) non-discriminatory (e.g. it helps white homeless people as well), (2) self-correcting (when "racial equality of outcome" is reached and poverty is no longer correlated with skin color, my solution will continue to do "good"), and (3) non-wasteful (why would society spend any amount of resources helping e.g. Obama's daughters, who are by "inheritance" (of political connections) some of the most privileged people on this planet?). Edit: I might have been too focused on the "race" part of your comment. If you're wondering about inherited inequality in general, well, yeah, that's one of the paradoxes of meritocracy & similar concepts, e.g. assortative mating - the end (stable) state is a society ruled by the (hereditary) "intelligent" class. But I think that's unlikely to happen naturally because there seems to be quite a lot of genetic variation in intelligence (and other traits our society treats as "superior", e.g. height, beauty, etc.); if anything, that's more likely to happen because of genetic manipulation/embryo selection, which doesn't exactly require a meritocratic society...
angelzen 5y ago
There is no such thing as equality of outcome. There will always be hierarchies. We can shift the core currency from $$$ to political favor or even ritualized victimhood, but we can't eliminate hierarchies. Remember the Soviet nomenklatura: > Members of the so-called nomenklatura , numbering perhaps a million, have special holiday retreats, access to special medical facilities and--most resented by ordinary Russians--access to special stores that sell imported and Soviet-made goods that are simply not available in the regular stores. Many also have cars and chauffeurs. > As a practical matter, the privileges are hereditary, since children of the elite have an inside track on admission to the top universities--graduation from which guarantees them good jobs and a place on the nomenklatura list. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-17-me-22368-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-17-me-22368-... Furthermore, 'inequality of outcome' is often times a good thing. We all want a good plumber, a good surgeon, a good baker, a good teacher, a good farmer, a good engineer, either as a service provider or a colleague. Having an 'equality of outcome' system where randoms are promoted to 'good plumber' by fiat in practice makes plumbing dysfunctional. See the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which leaves open some hard problems: * Competency leaning hierarchies, vs. power leaning hierarchies. * Low gini hierarchies vs. high gini hierarchies. * Low skill societies vs high skill societies. * Skill acquisition. Help broad swaths of the population acquire proficiency in useful $skill. Note that in practice equality of outcome systems have been successful only in flattening hierarchies by essentially bulldozing them into the ground, bringing everyone down (other than the new hierarchy leaders) into material, spiritual and skill poverty.
iammisc 5y ago
Hold on hold on. This comment presupposes that blacks have ways been disadvantaged. That's not true at all. Before the civil rights movement of the 60s, black incomes were increasing at a faster rate than whites and were on track to surpass the white income. Blacks even had more kids born within wedlock. The ghettoization of the African American community is a recent development. For most of the post bellum period, African Americans were on a swift upward trajectory. They were much like Asians today, who also often started with nothing in this country (due to currency export restrictions) and whose education achievement and incomes surpass whites... Indeed poor black immigrants to this country do extremely well also. All this is detailed extensively in the vision of the anointed by Thomas sowell (an accomplished black man from this era)

tomp 5y ago

This is wrong on so many levels but I don't blame you as it's the false narrative that's most pervasive in most media. First of all, "starts with nothing" isn't specific to black population. Many (most?) immigrants also start with nothing, yet often outperform locals (including whites) (the important question that almost noone is asking, is why?). Among those are Nigerians, so clearly "because they're not black" isn't the correct answer. Your question already contains the "correct" (IMO) answer, which is: help poor people. To the extent that poverty correlates to being black (or any other categorical characteristic), both solutions are equivalent, except that mine is (1) non-discriminatory (e.g. it helps white homeless people as well), (2) self-correcting (when "racial equality of outcome" is reached and poverty is no longer correlated with skin color, my solution will continue to do "good"), and (3) non-wasteful (why would society spend any amount of resources helping e.g. Obama's daughters, who are by "inheritance" (of political connections) some of the most privileged people on this planet?). Edit: I might have been too focused on the "race" part of your comment. If you're wondering about inherited inequality in general, well, yeah, that's one of the paradoxes of meritocracy & similar concepts, e.g. assortative mating - the end (stable) state is a society ruled by the (hereditary) "intelligent" class. But I think that's unlikely to happen naturally because there seems to be quite a lot of genetic variation in intelligence (and other traits our society treats as "superior", e.g. height, beauty, etc.); if anything, that's more likely to happen because of genetic manipulation/embryo selection, which doesn't exactly require a meritocratic society...

angelzen 5y ago

There is no such thing as equality of outcome. There will always be hierarchies. We can shift the core currency from $$$ to political favor or even ritualized victimhood, but we can't eliminate hierarchies. Remember the Soviet nomenklatura: > Members of the so-called nomenklatura , numbering perhaps a million, have special holiday retreats, access to special medical facilities and--most resented by ordinary Russians--access to special stores that sell imported and Soviet-made goods that are simply not available in the regular stores. Many also have cars and chauffeurs. > As a practical matter, the privileges are hereditary, since children of the elite have an inside track on admission to the top universities--graduation from which guarantees them good jobs and a place on the nomenklatura list. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-17-me-22368-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-03-17-me-22368-... Furthermore, 'inequality of outcome' is often times a good thing. We all want a good plumber, a good surgeon, a good baker, a good teacher, a good farmer, a good engineer, either as a service provider or a colleague. Having an 'equality of outcome' system where randoms are promoted to 'good plumber' by fiat in practice makes plumbing dysfunctional. See the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which leaves open some hard problems: * Competency leaning hierarchies, vs. power leaning hierarchies. * Low gini hierarchies vs. high gini hierarchies. * Low skill societies vs high skill societies. * Skill acquisition. Help broad swaths of the population acquire proficiency in useful $skill. Note that in practice equality of outcome systems have been successful only in flattening hierarchies by essentially bulldozing them into the ground, bringing everyone down (other than the new hierarchy leaders) into material, spiritual and skill poverty.

iammisc 5y ago

Hold on hold on. This comment presupposes that blacks have ways been disadvantaged. That's not true at all. Before the civil rights movement of the 60s, black incomes were increasing at a faster rate than whites and were on track to surpass the white income. Blacks even had more kids born within wedlock. The ghettoization of the African American community is a recent development. For most of the post bellum period, African Americans were on a swift upward trajectory. They were much like Asians today, who also often started with nothing in this country (due to currency export restrictions) and whose education achievement and incomes surpass whites... Indeed poor black immigrants to this country do extremely well also. All this is detailed extensively in the vision of the anointed by Thomas sowell (an accomplished black man from this era)