apeiron said:
The only moral justification for tolerating social inequality that comes to mind is if there is equality of opportunity.
I believe this concept too is unsound. Assume that everyone suddenly gets equal opportunity. Such a state is only going to be ephemeral - at best. The recipients, being an omnifarious lot, will handle such opportunity with a wide variety of results. On the one extreme, some will make great progress with the opportunity. Others will squander it. What then ? Do we wave the magic wand again ? And again ? And of course, we haven’t even touched upon the vastly UNEQUAL opportunity that the planet itself can dish out at a moments notice, way beyond ANY human control. New Zealand ? Japan ? The best laid plans of mice and men ..
BUT, even if every recipient of this new found equality of opportunity used it similarly well and derived optimum benefit, it would still be of no ultimate benefit to anyone. You would simply be transferring them to a status somewhat higher than what they might be on at the moment, but still in similar competition relative to each other - and closing in on YOU. In fact, you would ultimately exacerbate their problems, by facilitating their populations to increase more than they would have otherwise done, had you not interfered.
Where is it written that we must take the third world and increase it’s comfort level by an amount of our choosing, whereas evolution, natural forces, (or God / the Great Pumpkin, or whatever be your predilection) decrees that it should be where it is at this moment ?
If life for people is to be set up as a competition to motivate their creative energy (and I have already argued that societies are naturally a balance of local competition~global cooperation)
I’m not sure of the point you are making here. Life is to be set up ? By who ? Who elevated you or I to the status of being setters up of life for other peoples ? Life sets itself up - and in an infinite variety of ways. If you came across an undiscovered island or country whose aboriginals lived in poverty and squalor (by our measure) but lived nonetheless, would you feel compelled to rush in and better their lot according to Western standards ?
then what there must be equality of is the chance to enter the race.
And there it is. They will enter some race if given the chance. What race ? The race sustainability ? The race to treading lightly upon the Earth ? Nah ! That’s what they must be doing already - and for millennia past, in order to have survived until now . More likely, the race they will enter will be that of personal gain by the stronger among them, at the expense of the weaker. The race to enter the glittering benefits and riches and consumerism of the West. The race to propagation of their race and proliferation of their culture and religion, into an already burgeoning global population, not without it’s share of existing conflicts.
So world inequality is "fair" if we are doing what we can to give real opportunity to everyone, and not creating mechanisms that hold them artificially back. (This would be the globally co-operative part of the deal).
Giving everyone the same opportunity is akin to giving no one opportunity. Think this through a few steps.
In an earlier post you said something about micro loans being part of the answer. A cute, feely goody concept - but have you or it’s proponents ever really thought this through ?
Take a million destitute, third world people. You want to help them. Micro loans - how many are you going to give them to ? A thousand ? Ten thousand ? What about the rest ? You have given a huge economic advantage to them by way of monetary leverage (look up monetarism) over the rest of them. Why did you discriminate against the other 990k ? You have disturbed the balance in their society, and you will soon have avarice, jealousy, revolt on your hands.
Oh, you didn’t ? You’re going to give equal opportunity to everyone ? A micro loan to each of the entire million ? I won’t even bother to continue with this part .. Surely you can see the absurdity of it.
Micro loans, my friend, become macro loans .. are a mere device to get a whole country addicted to the most toxic, addictive, enslaving substance on this Earth - it’s called DEBT. We are swimming in vast oceans of it. To create multiple millions more debt junkies ..
Nah ! .. I don’t think so !