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WillowOne's Positions

Equality of outcome

My Positions

  1. Enforced equality of outcome harms individuals and society.
  2. An inequitable outcome can be, but is not always, an indicator of bias.
  3. Maximising individual freedom and autonomy, while safeguarding Equality of opportunity, is the best way to produce outcomes that maximise well-being.

Notes

  1. Mandating equal outcomes undermines individual agency, ignores merit and context, and typically leads to inefficiency and resentment. It treats people as means to a statistical end rather than as individuals. To make outcomes equal, one must either hold back those who would do better or artificially advance those who would do worse, and in practice one must do both. The result is that effort and ability cease to matter, and the people who notice first are the ones with the most of each.
  2. Disparities can arise from many factors, including choice, ability, interest, culture, and circumstance. The fact that a group is over- or under-represented in some occupation tells us nothing, on its own, about why. Nurses are overwhelmingly women and bricklayers overwhelmingly men, and the explanation is not primarily discrimination in either case. While inequity can signal systemic bias, it should be assessed case by case, by looking for the actual barrier, not assumed universally.
  3. The assumption that every disparity is caused by discrimination is itself a hypothesis, and it is one that can be tested. Where it is tested and fails, as it often does, policies built on it do not help the people they were meant to help; they help whoever happens to fall into the favoured category, and they harm whoever happens to fall outside it. See Colourblind social policy.
  4. The historical experiments in enforced equality of outcome (Communism) produced neither equality nor good outcomes. They produced a new inequality, between those who administered the system and those who were administered, and a general levelling-down.
  5. None of this is an argument for ignoring outcomes entirely. Gross inequality of outcome, especially where it compounds across generations, erodes equality of opportunity (see Wealth and Luck) and should be moderated through progressive taxation and a floor beneath which no one falls. The aim is to keep the game fair and playable, not to fix its score.

Also see