Equality of Opportunity Is A Noble Pursuit

One of the biggest objections people have to the idea of a fair society is that it often gets confused with the idea that everyone should be equal. 

However, people who champion fairness in society rarely expect total and unilateral equality (Marxists are a notable exception to this rule and moreover, an oddity in intellectual curiosity.... but that's an entirely different blog post altogether), Where was I... oh yes... fairness.  

Champions of fairness in society are really gunning for a concept referred to as 'equal opportunity'. These terms are easy to muddle up in theoretical conversations (and social media bun fights) but they are actually two very different beasts. It's akin to asking Boris Johnson and Michael Johnson to race over 200m and expecting a tie simply because they both have 'Johnson' in their names. 

So, what is the difference?

I will use an analogy to try and share my understanding of this... My children, Amélie and Sebby, will be my actors in the scenario... and I will make the analogy fairly extreme to help make the point I am making obvious... BUT I do also recognize that life and society are not this simple... this is, after all, just a bit of fun :-)

The Scenario:

Imagine Amélie and Sebby are both about to go strawberry picking with their mother and Amélie states a very bold goal of picking 50 strawberries. Amélie really likes strawberries and she knows that 50 will be enough for her needs over the coming week. Sebby doesn't really set a goal as he seems more interested in hunting for worms.

After an hour of picking strawberries, Amélie and Sebby are with their mother washing their produce and counting up their respective spoils. Amélie has, in fact, exceeded her target of 50 and picked 65. Sebby, on the other hand, only picked 5 strawberries. Sebby also ate the entirety of his produce whilst he was picking them.... he does however also have four worms, two spiders, and a couple of vaguely interesting looking rocks.

In the case of Equal Outcome:

When we are aiming for 'equality of outcome', Amélie and Sebby's mother (analogous to the state) would promptly take 30 of Amélie's strawberries and gives them to Seb (accounting for the 5 he ate already). In return, Amélie got two worms, a spider and a rock. Amélie hates worms and spiders and is also now 20 short of her stated weekly requirement for Strawberries. She is ambivalent about the rock. 

Seb, on the other hand, has 4 times as many strawberries, as compared to his original level of 'production', and interestingly only half the amount of bugs and rocks that he produced. *We will come back to this one...  

Problems...

In this scenario, it is highly likely (and understandable to most) that Amélie is going to be unhappy with her mother for enforcing this transaction and even a little resentful toward her brother. Moreover, it is highly likely that this 'transaction' will not provide Sebby with the motivation needed to up his strawberry picking game. 

Furthermore, it may even be the case that Sebby actually placed a much higher value the bugs and rocks that he collected and didn't want to exchange them for strawberries at all (or at least wanted more from this exchange than he got). *I said I would come back to this, didn't I :-)

Tough, mum decides the utility of the produce in this scenario; she also decides the exchange rate and enforces the transaction. 

This invariably ends in tears and sometimes fighting... (true story of my children and if you need examples of this in society, take a look at the Soviet Union - particularly their Gulag agency)

In the case of Equal Opportunity:

In the example just discussed, the question has to be asked, why did Sebby produce so poorly? In this analogy, the answer is simply because he is four years old and doesn't have the level of understanding, motivation or physical stamina that Amélie does (as she is nearly seven years old). It may also be -as discussed above- that Sebby simply doesn't value strawberries as much as Amélie does but let's try and address the aforementioned scenario first... 

So, in this scenario, did both Sebby and Amélie have an equal opportunity to produce Strawberries? the answer is probably 'no' in this overly simplistic microcosm of an example. So how could we account for this...

Let's imagine that Seb's Mum helped him a little by reminding him to focus on picking strawberries when he got distracted by bugs and rocks. Let's also say that she carried the basket for him and occasionally lifted him to higher branches in order to get to the big juicy Strawberries. Essentially let's say that Seb's Mum compensated as best she could for natural and obvious disadvantages Seb has at this stage of his development. Let's also assume that because of this arrangement, Amélie's production is impacted a little because of Sebby's increased capability (adding the element of competition).

Benefits...So, in this example, Amélie still produces a lot of strawberries (let's say 50 - 15 less than before bit still on target) but Sebby this time around has upped his output to 20. Seb still has less than Amélie but he has more than he would have got without the help of his Mum. 

Moreover, Amélie gets to keep her lot of 50 and whilst Seb has to make do with his 20, he now has the motivation and understanding on how to be more productive. In this instance though, neither child is angry with Mum and everyone is motivated to do better next time.

Capitalism and Socialism working together:

Taking the above example of Equal Opportunity - you could develop this example further to show the effects of competition driving more innovative ways of harvesting strawberries... you could even introduce the element of a strawberry tax in order to sustain the efforts of 'mum' whilst more evenly distributing the wealth of strawberries (should Sebby's need be greater than 20), etc, etc. Effectively, this is modeling the effects of Capitalism and Socialism working together in order to generate wealth and fairness in a democratic society. There are tons of other cool analogies out there on the internet that help model these arguably very complex scenarios, and most are much more entertaining than my mundane attempt... go find them ;-)

Conclusion:

Equality of Outcome and Equality of Opportunity are not the same thing and frankly any sane or rational person that can see the obvious differences and distributions of skill sets across the human population would never champion Equality of Outcome. 

Equality of Opportunity is a noble and worthwhile pursuit, Equality of Outcome is the pursuit of a totalitarian madness...