Instead, we should be dismantling the ladder. Real equality means equality of outcomes.
Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
There are many well proven ways to make people more equal, strong government welfare programs being one. They are very straightforward.
Culture doesn't make people winners and losers, a brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism does.
We want people to always have good opportunities to bootstrap themselves out of a terrible situation (your gutter and wallmart situations). But we don't want to remove all the rewards from turning time into value.
"brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism" think you have a few opinions there that are deeply rooted in feelings ...
When you are alone on an island, the world rewards you when you spend time changing things for the better (eg hunt for food). If in that situation you have the opportunity to trade you will be even better off.
Things only go south when free markets also create a free labor market. Then the power of markets pushes strongly on those wages. Even if there is no evil intent by anyone, companies not ignoring this push will not be around for long ...
From war is a racket:
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/...
Blum:
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137
US distribution of wealth
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
The Centre for Investigative Journalism
Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.
https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-histor...
You add a whole different perspective, but one that is fully compatible on top of what I said, nobody is denying that part of capitalism. Powerful people, no matter what system, can do horrible things without regard for the victims ... and under capitalism companies can become powerful too.
So hear it from national security advisor of the united states. If you are the non fraction of the 1% you are the enemy, aka spying is aimed at politically controlling your perception because they know your brain doesn't see the world as it is. See the science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Every citizen called a "global menace" here by Zbig:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Government does not work for you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFxtNgOeiI
Book:
http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
Privacy video
I do not see how invoking 'authoritarian capitalism' serves as a refutation that cultures of human beings creates winners and losers.
The distinction to make here is that Equality of Outcome requires everyone to have the same outcome. Feeling as you must do, surely you would prefer a reduction in inequality, not mandatory equality?
What? So you are in favor of other people (read: rich white people with parents that have money) having more opportunities than people that were born poor due to mere chance?
>Real equality means equality of outcomes.
I completely disagree. Real equality does NOT mean equality of outcomes. People have opportunities. People have choices. People make choices and these choices have real consequences. I personally do not think it's fair to force the same outcome on some college kid that binge drinks and smokes weed all day versus some college kid that studies his bum off. Imagine what this does to incentives!?
>Most people who talk about "equal opportunity" do so because they want to avoid talking about real equality and its implications.
Would you elaborate on this? I'll be honest here that I'm not too well-versed in this topic but I think it's interesting to talk about nonetheless.
Full disclosure: I'm from the Netherlands where I feel there is quite some equal opportunity. Nearly every kid can go to a good primary school, high school, and any university if they try hard enough. There are little financial barriers as tuition is only 2.000/year. Contrast this to US universities if you do not have a scholarship, etc.
However, the fact that everyone can go to the same university doesnt mean that everyone will end up exactly at the same place. People make choices and these choices have consequences.
He explicitly wrote that no, he favors equality of outcomes.
In my opinion, according to family history, background etc (roughly boiling down to the income history in past 1-2-3 generations), kids won't be able to extract the same possibilities from the same conditions offered to each one: studies will be harder for some more than for others, simply because of the background, logistics etc, which will require not only working harder from someone who already does, but doing something they might not even know about: aiming higher, not compromising where others would be allowed to, having more confidence than an average kid their age, etc.
I don't really know how to solve this (I think this part incumbs to family, but is that equal opportunity still?). The best thing about the system you describe that they carefully detect and extract the "nuggets" we sometimes get here. But I should thinks all educational systems nowadays do that more or less well.
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal..."
[0] https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
We’re extremely good at investing in the wrong people.
Neither way is fair, but maybe we’d be better at being unfair if we invested in the right people to lead us.
In the end even with the best education, some people will grow up to be tow truck drivers, low skill factory workers, or service industry personal - its just how the split works out - not everyone is going to be super smart, some will be average, some will be below average, and some will give a wet bucket of sand a run for its money.