2 ms·
The fetish for equity is about looking for hidden mechanisms of artificial aristocracy, such as biases embedded in language, culture, and institutional structur
by api 3y ago
The fetish for equity is about looking for hidden mechanisms of artificial aristocracy, such as biases embedded in language, culture, and institutional structure.
I agree that some go overboard with it to the point of being ridiculous and often self defeating, but the fundamental idea that society is riddled with bias and hidden mechanisms of privilege is kind of obviously true.
Nobody really believes that everyone is equal in all measures of ability. That’s a straw man. It would imply that everyone is identical.
Many including myself are skeptical of attempts to tie this to categories like race or culture in broad ways. I also think that ability is very multidimensional and am skeptical of any attempt to flatten that into things like IQ. Fitness in evolution in nature has millions or billions of dimensions.
- zozbot234 3y agoLooking for hidden mechanisms of power is all well and good, but an excessive focus on equality can also be misleading. In many ways, our contemporary societies are suffering from a clear overproduction of aspiring elites each of whom is "fairly" and "equally" competing for a fixed pie of increasingly tyrannical rule over others, in a way that's detrimental to everyone and precipitates a breakdown in social trust and cohesion. A 'natural' aristocracy is inherently less dependent on achieving a position of power, so overproduction is inherently mitigated. It's not clear that the privilege conferred by a seemingly "equal" mechanism of strenuous competition is any less objectionable than the overtly unequal privileges of wealth or birth that Jefferson rightly objected to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]