New post on Pieria, discussing why inequality could be ethically ‘wrong’:
What is inequality?
Inequality is a situation where certain people have access to things – places, goods, services – which others do not. Historically, inequalities have often been enforced by fiat, such as aristocracies and guilds, or perhaps based on group characteristics, such as apartheid or slavery. In capitalist societies, we typically use property rights to restrict peoples’ access to resources. A poor man who walks into a store and tries to take something without paying will be prevented from doing so by security or the police, while a rich man who pays will not. The same applies to private schools, expensive social clubs or fine works of art. Unless you have a sufficient number of vouchers (money), you are legally and socially restricted from access to the overwhelming majority of resources in society.
Justifying inequality therefore entails arguing why some deserve more of these vouchers, and hence greater access to places, to goods and services, to social opportunities, than others. Defenders of inequality typically rely on one of 3 ethical arguments: just deserts, voluntarism, and grow the pie. I will consider each of these arguments in turn.
As I said on twitter, the article was definitely influenced by Matt Bruenig, but for balance here’s me saying similar things quite a while ago. The point is that contemporary debate often has it backwards: it is asked why exactly we should reduce inequality, as if that is some sort of natural baseline. But if you accept that people are born equal (which most do, even if they don’t like to say it out loud), then the question is why some are more restricted from pieces of the world than others. Defenders of inequality sometimes proceed as if the 3 ethical arguments above override any other concerns.