Against Equality

what we actually want is inequality

No one actually wants Equality—what we actually want is inequality. We just think we want Equality. Some pedant convinced us that Equality was a good idea, and we signed up. But we didn’t read the addenda or the bylaws.

We embrace our true desire for inequality in every field where performance matters: we demand that the best surgeons operate, the best mechanics fix our cars, the best athletes compete, and the best musicians make us dance.

Photo by Zalfa Imani on Unsplash

No one insists that 5’8” athletes fill NBA rosters. No one protests for random assignments of surgeons regardless of skill. We want excellence, which requires ecstatic inequality of outcomes.

Sure. Everyone wants a “level playing field” (or at least most everyone). And that means fair rules, equal access, and, yes, unequal achievements proportional to who can do what.

The principle of inequality is basic economics. Self-organizing systems produce gorgeous inequality while dramatically outperforming centrally planned systems that promise Equality. Self-organizing economies function when individuals make their own decisions, using local knowledge and channeling resources toward the people and things that work. The inequality that naturally emerges tells us that competence is emerging naturally.

Equality destroys information. No authority can aggregate the flow of information that prices illustrate naturally. Every historical attempt at institutionalized equality—Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela—has failed to achieve equality (political privilege replaces market success) and instituted poverty. East versus West Germany, North versus South Korea, pre- versus post-reform China—the pattern is consistent and the margins aren’t close.

The empirical evidence is in: the greatest poverty reductions in human history occurred in countries embracing market reforms and self-organizing systems. China alone lifted 800 million people out of poverty by abandoning central planning. Scandinavia abandoned it. The few remaining countries enforcing centralized control met the Equality of decline.

The trade-off is clear: inequality with competition and prosperity for all, or central planning for Equality with poverty for all. If we genuinely care about improving lives at the bottom of the income ranks, we should favor the system that makes those lives materially better, even if it creates unequal degrees of success. The alternative—preferring everyone equally poor over some wealthy and others comfortable—reflects envy, not compassion.