I have always maintained that equality (as conceived by egalitarianism) is a contradiction in terms.
In order to make the unequal "equal," you have to treat them unequally. To achieve "equality," you must practice and institute inequality.
So, the whole project starts with a misnomer as deceptive as the demagogic concept it denotes.
The fundamental idea is that - pardon the trite phrase - "some people are more equal than others," more specifically: some deserve to be privileged, i.e. to be treated unequally (by virtue of transient acts and durable status) so as to achieve an advantage over those not thus favoured.
The notion of equality endorses and depends on the "rule of the stronger," which is in complete opposition to any meaningful concept of justice.
For if justice is to be distinguished from privilege, the rules obtaining must be of general applicability, as opposed to being criteria for treating some individuals preferentially.
Egalitarian "equality" is simply a ruse, an excuse for the powerful to say to the powerless: "my interests matter, yours don't. You are just a means to my ends."
The Grail of Equality (1/11)
by P.T. Bauer
Why, in free and open societies such as those of Western countries, are some people better off than others - not necessarily wiser, nicer, happier or more virtuous, but better off?
The precise causes of differences in income and wealth are complex and various, and people will always disagree on how they apply to particular societies, groups or individuals.
But in substance such differences result from people's widely differing aptitudes and motivations, and also to some extent from chance circumstances.
Some people are gifted, hard-working, ambitious and enterprising, or had far-sighted parents, and they are therefore more likely to become well-off.
In an open and free society, political action which deliberately aimed to minimize, or even remove, economic differences (i.e. differences in income and wealth) would entail such extensive coercion that the society would cease to be open and free.
The successful pursuit of the unholy grail of economic equality would exchange the promised reduction or removal of differences in income and wealth for much greater actual inequality of power between rulers and subjects.
This is an underlying contradiction in egalitarianism in open societies.
Continued in The Grail of Equality (2/11)
From a piece of the same title in P.T. Bauer's Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion
