Equality is not fair

A key role for any State and the global citizenry^[1] in ensuring our indefinite^[2] and civilised^[3] survival is to counter the forces of anarchy and revolution^[4] by removing their legitimate source of discontent: gross inequity. 

Inequity or unfairness can arise from social and economic inequality.  But acting to remove inequality can in itself be grossly unfair or inequitable.  We are not all equal^[5].  Enforced equality is unfair to those who are more able and more industrious, and in the long run it is harmful to the progress of society as a whole.  Progress is driven by the able minority^[6].  Excessively constraining that able minority either in its pursuit of excellence and success, or in its reaping of the fruits of success is counterproductive. 

Society is like a battery or a river.  It has to contain a potential gap for the current of innovation, reform, and effort to flow though it.  Level the drop between the high point and the low point, and the fresh fast moving stream becomes a lazy river with stagnant pools in which mosquitoes and parasites breed.  

Human beings also need mountains to climb and hurdles to overcome – hurdles of inequality and inequity; mountains of achievement and success. 

It is a question of degree.  Inequality and inequity need to be present, but they need to be contained, for without containment they will continue to grow.  The hurdles also need to be humanly surmountable. 

Without conscious and continuous intervention in a society's default social and economic processes^[7] the weeds of privilege and inequity will overrun our social garden, and will block the pathways through society's layers.  Society will become increasingly polarised between the haves and the have nots – between those who are connected to the centre of power^[8] and those who are marginalised. 

Take away a person’s realistic hope^[9] of significant self-advancement within their own lifetime, and you create a welfare freeloader^[10], an indolent bureaucrat, a vandal, a tax evader, an emigrant^[11], a criminal^[12], or a revolutionary^[13].  These are all people who feel excluded or denied, and who will work against the existing social order in one way or another. 

We need to maintain the potential for the vertical mobility of people.  An able person born into an underprivileged and disadvantaged background should have the realistic hope of reaching the society's power centre within their lifetime by pathways that are not illegal or unethical.  Any failure to do so ought to be a reflection on that person's inability or misfortune, and not a measure of the strength of the barriers to entry put up by vested interests. 

A State will, in part, fulfil this function by redistributing wealth^[14] in a society reducing the economic distance that has to be travelled from the bottom to the top rung; and by acting to remove or weaken the barriers to entry that, like weeds^[15], will crop up naturally wherever the gardener^[16] does not go.  But only up to a point.

Perhaps a factor of 10 is a big enough economic distance?  Is there any good reason why the CEO should earn more than ten times what their lowest paid fully employed worker earns?

Equity does not necessarily imply economic equality or equality of opportunity.  Economic and social inequality are absolutely necessary^[17] to a society’s long term well-being and survival, but so is equity, and for inequality to be equitable, that inequality needs to be humanly surmountable.