Equality is not a thing I ever care to have a society optimized for.
If you give me a planet, I don't care that everyone else has a galaxy. Simply optimize for the leading edge and the rest will get dragged along.
If you give me a planet, I don't care that everyone else has a galaxy. Simply optimize for the leading edge and the rest will get dragged along.
I don't care if I make a dollar and you make a billion if one dollar will provide for my entire life, and if that life is pleasant in an absolute sense.
Equality is a false god.
I've experienced this phenomenon very prominently in the life sciences industry where short term precarious contracts are handed out to lower income lab workers. Recently it has become more obvious as all of management has moved to remotely monitoring and dictating the worker's day to day activities while becoming increasingly out of touch with the realities of the people doing the actual work. This is real and also representative.
When there is a culture of respect and dignity of all members of a society sharing similar goals, this sort of thing doesn't happen. Exploitation isn't expedited. Wages and equality are a form of that respect.
It's not a false god when it performs a function of cultural cohesiveness, you could argue that is what a god does..
Final note: Keeping you're livestock healthy doesn't alleviate them from being livestock.
Empirically, it has not led to happy people.
My priors on the outcomes likely if I am to go along with a top-line optimizer are high that he will make out like a bandit, I will make out like a bandit's brother's mechanic, and low that he will eat me.
Merely empirically, optimizing for happiness of the bottom quartile, I should never choose the guy who claims to be an equality-optimizer. America is prosperous and peaceful and a veritable font of innovation. Her poorest are wealthy. Her hungriest are satiated. It's working. I'm going to double down. And double down again. It's going to keep working.