I believe a lot of this disconnect is between people who view equality as equality of opportunity and those who believe that equality is actually the equality of outcome.
It's not long, maybe 15 minutes, and worth pondering deeply, and repeatedly.
If everyone were given equal opportunity to achieve good outcomes for themselves, the only way we could end up with inequality of outcomes is if people choose to have worse outcomes than others. But why would anyone ever choose bad outcomes?
People try to explain this by saying some people are "lazy" or "impulsive" and thus make suboptimal choices, but does this really make sense? If a significant portion of society is consistently making suboptimal choices, are there societal changes we could make to convince more people to make better choices?
If we think there are societal changes we could make that lead more people to make better choices, then can we really say those people had "equal opportunity" to make those choices before the change?
And if we think there aren't any societal changes we could make that lead people to better choices, then what we are saying is that there is inevitably some portion of people who will not achieve good outcomes within our system. And if that's true, is it really a good system for humanity as it exists?
Because what they want doesn't correlate with what's in demand at that point in time?
I mean, someone might want to study English Literature at degree level, then find a job based on those skills. However, if those skills weren't in demand at that point (because everyone wanted people with STEM degrees or programmers or what not), then their outcome would likely be worse than someone who studied computer science.
Did both of these people have equal opportunities? Sure, they could have both gone into one field or another (assuming a theoretical situation where their intelligence was roughly equal and the degrees cost about the same). But they didn't, and their outcomes weren't equal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and one choice wasn't necessarily 'suboptimal' either.
And how about a few others?
Someone going to one city over another is a choice, and the consequences could be very different based on that choice. That doesn't mean there necesarily wasn't equality of opportunity.
Same for things like what job you choose (assuming they're 'equal' on a technical level), who your friends are, what hobbies you have, etc. You can probably think of thousands of examples where people are making choices that lead to inequal outcomes, simply because either the market demand is different, attitudes are different or random factors in the world are different between them.
Choices don't necessarily have to be 'suboptimal' to have different outcomes.
It's easy to say their unequal outcomes are "not necessarily a bad thing" when you're a STEM graduate living in San Francisco on a $200k, not quite so reassuring when you're an English Lit graduate struggling to make a living as a barista.
And when you look at that massive difference in outcomes and say "well you chose skills that aren't in demand" then what you are saying is "you made the wrong choice if you wanted a good life".
EDIT: Or alternatively, to finish the analogy, you're saying "some people just inevitably want to study English Lit even though our society doesn't value it, guess it sucks to be them!".
But hey, if you need another few, what if:
You have two jobs to choose from, both make you happy and both pay the same. The outcome won't be identical in both cases, since you'll meet different people, work in a different location and do different work.
Or how about the obvious extreme between a job that pays well and nothing? Let's assume everything ends up on basic income and that works out. Fair enough.
But now assume one of those people wants to become an entrepreneur and sets up a startup that ends up becoming a billion dollar corporation while the other one sits at home and watches Netflix all day.
Their opportunities may be the same, but the outcomes won't be. Is that a bad thing? I doubt many people would say it is, especially given how both have enough to live on and both are enjoying their life doing what they want to do.
Or heck, how about another example? Imagine two people are looking for a romantic partner at the same time. They may have the same opportunities (in terms of access to the other gender, wealth, location, etc) but simply by genetics (aka one potentially being more attractive than the other) or interests (more attractive people from one gender might have one interest and not another) they won't have equal outcomes.
You will never get 'equality of outcome', simply because a system that aims for that would be ridiculously unfair, completely non market based and likely verging on a dystopia.
My argument is not equality of outcome is better, but that the dichotomy is not that coherent. If people truly have equal opportunity to choose good outcomes they will do so.
If they do not, they are either being influenced by society towards bad outcomes, in which case we should consider changing society, or they are influenced by innate aspects of themselves towards bad outcomes, in which case our society is structured in a way that privileges certain innate traits.
>That doesn't feel too meritocratic...
Well honestly, I'm not as sold on the idea of "meritocracy" as most people here. I think the idea that some people "deserve" worse lives than others is pretty distasteful.
When people say different outcomes are necessary to motivate people and produce better outcomes overall, I can at least understand that argument. I don't personally agree: I think in reality most people are far more motivated by a sense of purpose and achievement than material wealth (beyond essentials). But the argument does at least have the goal of producing the best outcomes.
But when people start to elevate this inequality to morality, and say that "inequality is good" and that some people "deserve" worse lives because they have less "merit", I think that framing discards the goal of achieving the best outcomes, and I find that misguided and self-serving at best, and evil at worst.