Equality: What It Means and Why It Matters

Protests throughout Eastern Europe have erupted recently on massive waves of frustrations with the ruling governments. There is a far right revival that pushes the so-called sovereign ideology. There is also push back from those who believe in a transnational European project and in democracy. However, all these groups of people feel that the system is broken, that the elites have captured all the power and all the wealth, and that inequalities have become unbearable. Almost everyone feels, that they are no longer treated with respect, as equals, by those in power.

When we say that we want equality, what do we mean? Same pay for everyone? Same caloric intake? Same size of house? Same amount of electricity consumed every day? Same amount of household waste? Same amount of political power, or influence, or fame?

Intuitively, many of us feel that equality is not the natural order of any species. Some are stronger than others, some have blue eyes, some have curly hair, some are talented at music, some enjoy routine and mathematics. These are not choices. This is the lottery of birth. Yet the political left keeps pushing for equality, which annoys the heck out of the freedom-loving meritocratic capitalists.

Let us ask ourselves 6 questions:

What if we aimed for equality as a moral principle based on the consequences it produces? Maverick economist, millionaire, and former trader Gary Stevenson talks a lot about wealth inequality and how we must fix it. He points out correctly that economic inequalities are so high today because governments have allowed the rich to get away with hoarding wealth. Philosopher Michael Sandel points out that there are three aspects of equality: one is economic, a second is political, and a third is about social relations – about dignity, status, and respect. If we thought in terms of consequences, it is obvious that a society based on equality creates better results for everyone, both on the left and on the right political spectrum. So yes, we must tax wealth not work, but do it in such a way that dignity, status, and respect are also recognized.

The second question is: What if we aimed for equality as a moral principle in itself? Let us say, we did not know that equality produced good results. Let us say, we should have equality because it is the right thing to do. Nature does create us with differences, but nature does not pick winners and losers, nature does not make moral judgments. Since life is a genetic lottery, since privilege is all about luck, being born in the right country, at the right time, to the right parents, we should guide ourselves by principles that recognize this randomness of life. We could recognize that we are equal players in this game of randomness. This is the most inclusive moral position we could have because it is recognizing humans are a form of life, among a vast diversity of many other species.

The third question is: What if we considered equality as survival maximizer? We are living through the Sixth Mass Extinction of species. That’s fact. There have been five major extinctions in the past, all caused by natural events, over the span of millions of years. Humans have started the sixth extinction in the span of a few centuries, and vastly accelerated during my life. Let us be clear: we will never be able to control nature. It’s too complex. It has too many interconnecting parts. It’s also about physics. In order to fully control a system, you need another system that is more complex, to do the job. This is why we cannot assume we live in a simulation, like in The Matrix. The world is real and we are affecting it. Equality with fair and just boundaries for everyone, can be our best chance at stopping the sixth mass extinction and keeping Earth habitable for the future.

Fourth question is: What if we considered equality an expression of cooperation? Many researchers have shown how humans are the most cooperative species. We became the dominant species because we were able to cooperate: from planning agriculture across seasons, building structures over decades, and even waging war against each other. Equality can be the idea that described a behaviour and a culture that we recognized as good and desirable. If we dropped the violence and we kept the cooperation, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, the belonging, we would advance as species without the suffering and destruction that we have caused against each other until now.

Fifth question: What if equality would be the way to recognize a set of desirable values? I hope we all agree that respect and dignity are better than arrogance and hate. The impulse to feel above others, to climb the hierarchy of status, to be recognized and rewarded may originate from a quest for survival. As a civilization, we have evolved past that. We have the technology to cure illness and to travel to space. Our values have evolved past survival-of-the-fittest primitive thinking. Equality advances creation over destruction. Equality opens the range of the human experience, that is not just about happiness, but it is also about sadness and melancholy, it’s about feeling alive, and be given equal chance to thrive. Real equal chance, not the mockery that is promised by capitalism.

Sixth question: What if equality is the path to sufficiency and wellbeing, and increased quality of life for everyone? We have been trying to play the game of capitalism for quite some time now. We have been trying really hard to increase the quality of life for everyone. The results is mediocre, at best. We invented medication, but we don’t share it with the poor. We invented the internet, but not everyone has it. We have super fast air travel, but it pollutes the air. We have industrial agriculture, but it destroys land. We eradicated some poverty on paper, but with a very low bar. Capitalism is all advertising: telling us only the good bits, often lying about them, and hiding the bad parts. Equality cuts through this bundle of lies. Equality reminds us of our commonalities: our genetic makeup, our dependence on nature, our depended on each other, our desire to continue living.

Those were the 6 questions. While we sit on them, let us consider a few more ideas.

What do the new soft fascists, the new right wing sovereigntists, the blame-the-immigrant leaders propose? They do not promote equality and cooperation. They want isolation, not regionalism. They want hierarchical pyramids of power, not participatory democracy. They want to replace the old elites with the new elites. They ask for austerity, special privileges for capital owners, destruction of enemies, conquest of land by force.

In their scheme, wealth accumulation is the only desirable value. Not wealth accumulation for everyone, but only for those who deserve it. We are back to meritocracy! Michael Sandel argues that even if we had perfect meritocracy, even if everyone had perfect equal conditions to start in life, is that a world we would like to live in? Meritocracy is about exclusion, meritocracy punishes. Meritocracy says: “The problem is that you didn’t improve yourself in the way we told you to.” (Sandel in Equality: What It Means and Why It Matters). There is a difference between the competence of a highly qualified surgeon and the merit we assign to a celebrity who causes more harm than good to society.

Let us also remember that the wealth of many humans, especially in the rich countries has been made with colonialism, theft of land, theft of cheap labour, theft of cheap resources. All this will forcing the poor countries to borrow money from the rich countries for their development. Poor countries spend little on public services, and a lot on debt payments. 52 countries – 44 % of the world’s population – spend more on interest than on either education or health. This is deeply unfair and immoral. Capitalism maintains inequality, capitalism maintains privilege of the rich, keeps the poor in debt, never allows true development of the poor, this is why equality matters, this is why capitalism must be phased out and replaced with an egalitarian Economy for Life.

Many economists point out that wealth inequality is a problem. Yes, but... equality requires boundaries not just of minimum standards of living, but also of maximum standards of living. Society also must exist within the boundaries of Earth, in order to survive. It’s not enough to tax the super rich, but the lifestyles of everyone must remain compatible with the capacity of the planet to sustain all humans, regardless of population size. Society needs both sufficiency and wellbeing.

The game we have been playing is a win-lose game. Poverty remains unchanged since 1990 according to Oxfam. The super rich have elicited only negative attitudes: envy, hatred, mimetic ambition, sycophantic admiration, psychopathic admiration. So, when some people say that every billionaire is a policy failure, I would argue that all super rich are policy failures. Super rich means having roughly a net wealth of $5 million or more.

I go on to say, along the lines of Thomas Piketty, that we cannot achieve wellbeing without equality that has narrow bands of distribution. For example, a 1 to 5 ratio in terms of income, meaning the highest income is five times the lowest, a maximum wealth limit of about 5-10 million dollars, a maximum limit on the material and ecological footprint per person regardless where they live. If you want to imagine how that lifestyle would look like, check out the 2000 watt society.

We must also push hard for the phasing out of the profit motive from economic activity. Healthcare and education are enormously important for satisfying the needs of humans, and they work very well outside the logic of the profit motive. Not only that access to both must be guaranteed equally for everyone, at no cost, they should expand much more. When we give services only to those we can afford to pay, we create social distance, we create separation, we encourage isolation and exclusion. Privileged access to anything always creates resentment and division. When we put everything up for sale, it diminishes the meaning of goods and services, like making a comparison between a beautiful landscape and the parking lot of a shopping mall.

If everything I said has not convinced you yet, I welcome you to ask yourself by what principles are you guiding your life. Imagine if your principles would be adopted by everyone on Earth. Would that make your life better? Would that make everyone else’s life better? Or if you want a question with fancy words: are you a utilitarian, a libertarian, a hard believer in meritocracy?

If you are asking, So if we phase out capitalism, what would you put it its place? I would put in its place what I call the Economy for Life, which is an economic system based on equality, sufficiency and wellbeing that is serving human needs without the profit motive.