Posted on by Gotamist

Equality – outcome or access

It is a prevalent view in some quarters that equality is good.  In particular, equality of outcome. And a lot of energy is expended on reducing inequality.  And the measures are generally some statistic out of a CDF of income over the population. Such as the Gini coefficient or “the top 1% of the population makes X% of the money” etc.

One of the necessary conditions of a growing and innovating economy is inequality and the opportunity to make more money than others, a lot more money even.  So, the SJW program of trying to eliminate inequality entirely is actually an obstacle to growth.  

Does that mean there can be no social justice along when there is growth? No. Just that equality is a poor way to measure social justice.  In particular, most people can agree that equal opportunity or equal access is, in fact, a strong form of social justice.  Of course, this can instantly be attacked by those with a socialist bent as merely a smokescreen for injustice.  “There is never equal access” and “How does one know it’s there, anyway?”

The way to know the presence of equal access is by measuring actual outcomes. There will always be inequality, but if we find that when we slice the population along dimensions of various immutable characteristics – race, gender, location of birth etc, these buckets don’t show a difference, that is actually a fantastic result.   That is statistical equality instead of strong form equality (homogeneity).  To use a metaphor that the left actually loves in the context of immigration – we’d love to see a salad bowl (different parts of the big bowl look alike though different square inches may look different) rather than a smoothie which actually has forced complete equality.

One of the dimensions on which NOT to slice the population is something like deciles of income.  There will invariably be difference in even the fairest societies. To stick with the salad analogy, that would be creating a curve where all the spinach pieces are one side, followed by the cherry tomatoes, followed by the apple chunks etc.  Obviously, different parts of this curve will look very different even though the salad was well mixed in its original state.  If you use such a curve, the only solution is the smoothie.  And that will kill the economy – a topic for another day.

Posted on by Gotamist

Why majorities go with the right and minorities with the left..

As a general statement, of course, not individuals. Before writing, let me cite some examples. In some societies, some demographic divisions are also political fault lines. For example, in the US, race is a factor. In India, religion is (and a note for casual Western pundits – no, it’s not caste).

And one finds the phenomenon that the economic right (similar policies across countries) are aligned with the majority while the economic left is aligned with the minorities. Locally, this might be mistaken for the a certain religion being aligned with the right. But adherents of the same religion, where in a minority, tend to go with the left.

The reason fundamentally lies in approaches to growth vs. inequality. Minorities have a real historical experience of having power and wealth captured away from them and the entire society’s growth is less of a concern to them than reducing how much they lag behind. Leftism, with its promise of equality is an attractive proposition. Lack of growth is not a real threat if you actually believe that the country’s GDP growth is going to mean nothing to you.

The majority, on the other hand, would like the country to grow economically. Both because they have greater confidence that this will translate to their personal gain and because they might not as personally take much issue with minorities being left behind. Growth first, is the main call and the demands of leftists and minorities are seen as annoying or even the very thing that is holding the country back from greatness.

There you have it!