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In this example, you would need to show how the expectation that not everyone will get an A causes some folk to not do their assignments and get failing grades. If you do not grade on the curve, everyone has a chance of getting an A if they do their homework, no? So why do some fail to do their homework?
Speaking of grading on the curve - I NEVER did that precisely because it artificially introduces inequality by definition, even in the absence of real one. However, it was the students who often demanded it - evidently hoping that it would give them a better grade for less work. That is to say, they knew that the grading on the curve requires that some will get As or Bs even if they do crappy work - they figured that have a better chance under that system. What a bunch of lazy fools - they would rather forfeit the chance of everyone getting a good grade for their lazy desire to barely pass with the minimum effort and fuck the rest.
When I was teaching an intro to sociology I had students play a team game. I forgot the exact rules, but the idea was that the team that won the first round had an increasingly greater chance of winning subsequent rounds, unless other people on other teams got together and changed the rules to more equitable ones. The latter, however, did not happen. Instead, folk on the losing team either tried to join the winning team or altogether lost interest in playing the game.
Welcome to individualistic America where those who are screwed up worship the hand that screws them up in the vain hope that one day they may be owners of that screwing hand. That is the secret that makes the US capitalism going, and going, and going. People, not capital, are their own worst enemies by giving the capital power to screw them up and doing so to get a little bit ahead of the others.
Wojtek