If we list one word that dominates the realm of political and social activism today, it is equality. Across the world, the goal is equality, be it between classes, castes, religions, races, or sexes. The differential quantum of economic means and freedom that different groups hold across the world are then ascribed to the possible dominance of certain groups over the other groups. To a substantial degree, the theory of domination by conquest or by the framing of societal rules, laws, customs, and traditions leading to differential progress of different groups does hold true. However, is the goal of equality realistically achievable? This is something that either crusaders for equality fail to give a thought to, or they bear a baseless conviction about how achievable this goal is.
When the debate on equality is held, the people who recommend the achievement of equality as an ideal make a distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. The suggestion that is made is that what they are striving for is to achieve a state where there is equality of opportunity for every individual regardless of their race, religion, sex, and perhaps also, nationality. In this article, I will argue that for equality of opportunity can only be sustained through the equality of outcome, and that, neither of the two is realizable and sustainable. This will be purely an argument on a philosophical level, considering the logical progression of events on varying time-scales, and hence, I do not offer any illustrative examples to buttress my point. However, if a reader chooses to make an observation of the real world with open eyes and more importantly, an open mind, they may come to identify with the line of argument that I seek to present here.
How is inequality measured?
I begin my argument by saying that the current state of inequality in itself is measured by equality of outcome. For example, when one presents the theory of gender pay-gap or the fact that there are fewer women than men in the corporate workforce and in particular in the upper echelons of management, they are measuring inequality not by whether on a collective level, the two genders had unequal opportunities, but by the fact that the two genders have had unequal outcomes. The unequal outcomes are then sought to be explained by suggesting that there were necessarily unequal opportunities. Same is the case when one mentions statistics that demonstrate inequality of income levels and wealth, employment, standard of living, etc. among different segments of the population. Whether the inequality of opportunities did or does exist, and whether unequal opportunities and unequal outcomes have a cause-effect relationship, is something that can be argued for and against, but this is one example to suggest how inequality is detected on the basis of outcomes and not opportunities.
How would things pan out if there is equality of opportunity?
My next point is, suppose on a hypothetical level, we do achieve a state of equality of opportunity, then such a state will not be sustainable. For this, let us assume that there are two persons (could be two men, or two women, or a man and a woman, or could belong to any of the other recently theorized genders) who wish to make an endeavor (could be any endeavor, but for the sake of relevance to the latter part of this article, we can assume it to be an economic endeavor) of a similar nature, and begin to attempt the endeavor in the state of equality of opportunity.
As we move ahead in time, there will necessarily be unequal outcomes achieved by the two persons. This is because, while both the persons had the equality of opportunity at the beginning of the endeavor, on a practical level, no two persons would possess the exact same level of capability to excel in the particular endeavor, they will not possess the equality in terms of determination, perseverance, and motivation, and they will naturally work for a different time duration based on these differential levels of determination and motivation and their variation in productivity levels will be different at different times. Given the fact that there are so many variables that determine the outcomes achieved by the two persons, it is natural that the two persons will achieve unequal outcomes at any point of time.
Of course, the difference in outcomes may not always continue to be in favor of one person over the other. The difference in cumulative outcome as we proceed in time will increase, decrease, be zero, might reverse. However, for the most part, the outcomes will be unequal, in favor of one of the two persons.
Now let us broaden our time-frames, and add some more real-life factors. Two persons, will at different points of time in their lives, enhance their proficiency in performing the endeavor on the basis of their experience, at different rates, as the pace of learning varies for different individuals. The two persons will marry, again at different stages. They will have spouses of different natures, capabilities, and desires. They will themselves have differential aspirations in their own lives. They will have children at different points of time in their lives, and the number of children they have will be different.
Now if we assume that the children of the two persons wish to engage in a similar endeavor (this endeavor might be the same as that of their parents or could be a different one, but it would be the same for the children), they will no longer have the equality of opportunity. The number of variables that determine the outcomes that the children achieve will increase – depending on the outcomes achieved by their parents, they will have a differential quality of schooling, at different levels, will be raised in different neighborhoods, have differential exposure during their formative years. Thus, the outcomes that the second generations in the two families will be in most likelihood, be different. Even the outcomes achieved between the second-generation members of the same family will vary. Thus, as we progress in time, we will see that equality of opportunity in progressive generations in the two families becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
In fact, my argument is, equality of opportunity will end in the first generation itself, or rather, if we do manage to achieve a state of equality of opportunity, the state of equality of opportunity will be lost at the very instant at which it is achieved. After all, all humankind once did begin from a state of equality of opportunity, and along the millennia, we have reached here, to a state of inequality. What will then be the guarantee, that if we do succeed in rebooting this process – something which is not just monumental, but a nearly impossible, impractical task – the future generations will not find themselves where our generation does currently – in a state of inequality, considering the fact that the natural tendency is for individual members of species to be unequal, and as demonstrated above, have unequal outcomes and therefore, increasingly unequal opportunities?
How things pan out in the real-world due to the non-attainment of the equality of opportunity
Here, I invoke Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. As per Darwin’s theory, the fittest members of a species will place themselves at an advantage in terms of survival and propagation. The greatest gift that humankind could have given itself and its not-so-fittest individuals is the gift of civilization. In a civilization, there occurs a distribution of work as per individual/group ‘characteristics’ (‘characteristics’ here and hereinafter in the article will mean, a function of various variables, some of which had been mentioned earlier). And thus, we end up with the primitive version of what is today massively denigrated – a caste system. Note that on an individual level, ‘characteristics’, in the sense of the word used above, will also be dependent on variables such as motivation and aspiration, which will be both quantitatively and qualitatively different. And thus, in a primitive version of the caste system, there will be substantial inter-caste movement, depending on the choice of responsibilities that individuals make a choice of undertaking. However, as we progress in generations, different groups and sub-groups of people with similar characteristics will choose or at least tend to aggregate together, for the sake of collaboration.
As this phenomenon of flocking together of similar people continues, we add one more variable that will influence a lot of other variables that form what we had called earlier, ‘characteristics’ – and that variable is social conditioning. The influence of social conditioning will again, tend to grow stronger over time, and then, increasingly, successive generations will choose to make endeavors that are in line with those of the previous generations. And from this will be born, different customs, traditions, and rituals, some of which would be specific to specific population groups and some will be common to groups.
We thus have moved gradually towards a caste-system where the nature of endeavors different individuals engage in will depend on the family/geography/caste that they are born in. It is, therefore, natural to see, that across different civilizations in the world, there did exist a version of caste-system (a socioeconomic class-hierarchy) which would have progressed to different degrees, depending on the level of maturity of the civilization. While across the world, any mention of caste-system brings a sense of disgust to most people, but a caste-system is one way of gaming Darwin’s Theory.
As per Darwin’s Theory, the fittest of a species will survive and reciprocate, the corollary to which would be, that the not-so-fittest will die. The caste-system provides a hedge against the natural fate that would befall on the not-so-fittest members of humankind in the absence of civilization.
Along the way, we have missed one important variable that forms a part of the term ‘characteristics’ as we have defined above – innovation. Every individual is natural endowed with different levels of innovative instinct, which is further nurtured in different ways as an individual grows, depending on some other variables that form the individual’s ‘characteristics’, such as the type, level, and quality of education received, the family environment, the social conditioning, etc. With the right combination of individual ‘characteristics’, an individual person would be able to discover/invent better methods, techniques, practices, and equipment for endeavors, thereby equipping himself or herself with the means to generate outcomes at disproportionately higher rates. The desire to innovate is dependent on a very natural human trait – greed. It is greed that drives ambition, and differential greed will fuel ambition differently on an individual level, thus affecting the degree of innovation. Thus, even within a caste, or any social sub-group, we will have individuals who belong to different classes, both economic and social.
However, individual and group ‘characteristics’ have one more variable, which is another natural trait in most humans – and that is called envy. When a certain group of people manage to innovate to a level where the socioeconomic gulf between different classes increases beyond levels palatable to the not-so-innovative persons, the envy factor will kick in. The prevalence of envy among within masses in the civilization will result in a disruption of law and order, resulting in an increase in crime rate.
In addition, across history and civilizations, we will see the emergence of such individuals, both through intrinsic factors or by extrinsic support from rival civilizations, who could manage to channel their personal greed and envy in innovative ways so as to emerge as such thought-leaders that could marry the envy of a sufficiently large number of people with what is called in psychological terminology as Persecution Complex. It is such individuals, who end up being leaders of rebellions within a civilization, by dangling the carrot of equality of outcome before the masses and by marketing such equality of outcome as a necessary consequence of equality of opportunity, with the latter said to be denied by the innovative classes, which during a rebellion end up being classified as unfairly privileged.
Such rebellions, however, are won or lost on the back of differential individual and collective muscle-power and weapon-power, between the rebels and the guardians of the civilization. And then again, Darwin’s Theory applies, except here, the determination of which group – the rebels and the guardians of the civilization – is the fittest, occurs at a more primitive level. The group can exact maximal attrition in terms of body-count over the other prevails.
Conclusion
This article attempted to give a broad overview of how civilizations flourish, decay, die, or reboot themselves on broad historical time-frames. Within the normally assumed limitations of an article, I have attempted to present a case for my original argument, which I now mention in a condensed form here as follows – Equality of Opportunity cannot be sustained because Equality of Outcome cannot be guaranteed.