This is stupid. The fact that you are not responsible for your poverty is neither relevant nor irrelevant. What is relevant is that you are poor and the fact of your poverty affects how you think, how you view the world, and how you make decisions in the world.
> And our responsibility to you has nothing to do with that history either.
Of course it does. That history has shaped the "you" the we have a responsibility toward.
> Indeed, the idea of equality of opportunity, if it were taken seriously, would
make all the histories of victimization and subsequent demands for compensation
irrelevant, just as -- again, if it were taken seriously -- it would make the
histories of accumulation irrelevant.
Huh? Double huh? How can the history of accumulation be irrelevant since the ethical framework that accompanied this accumulation favored certain people over others, bringing about consequences which bore further consequences. With apologies to Buddy DeSylva, wishing will not make it so.
> Rich children are no more responsible for their advantages than poor ones are
for their disadvantages.
So? The focus should be on the fact of the advantage/disadvantage and what consequences flow from them.
> The whole point of the commitment to equal opportunity is to make sure not only that
people have a right to property but that they have a fair chance to earn that property.
How about people having the right to property outright? That a certain level of living is a right just for being a person?
> Only if everybody has a chance to get rich can they people who don't get rich, the people
who stay poor, be said to deserve their poverty.
No one deserves their poverty.
> And only if everybody has a chance to get rich can the people who do succeed be said to
deserve their wealth.
Define chance and to determine if these chances ae equal as well as the equality status of individuals to take advantage of these chances.
> It's often said -- both in defense and in criticism -- that equality of opportunity
is the weakest form of egalitarianism.
The only one worth working toward that produces real change.
> And it's obviously true that a world in which everyone was required to finish the race
at the same time would be a very different from a world in which everyone was required
to start it at the same time.
Wouldn't it be loverly? (But why do I feel he is scared shitless of such a world?)
> To justify equality of outcome, we have to think that there should be no reward for hard
work or ability.
No. That is more stupidity.
> Whereas in fact what most of us think is that there should be some such reward.
Indeed, we defend equality of opportunity precisely because we believe that if
people don't begin with equal opportunities to succeed, hard work and ability won't
be rewarded.
But some people beacuse of wealth can take advantage of the "equal opportunities" and without much hard work do as well as or better than those who work hard. And some people can work very hard and not do nearly as well. Working hard is not an equalizer.
> If, for example, my wealth enables my daughter to be tracked from birth
into an elite college while your daughter is tracked from birth into a
community college or no college at all, my wealth (and my education and all
the other things we generally use to measure socioeconomic status) is doing
at least part of the job that my daughter's hard work and ability ought to
be doing.
At least part?!?!?! How about a huge amount?
> So our commitment to equal opportunity requires us to refuse equality of
economic outcome because that doesn't reward hard work and ability)
That is illogical. You refuse equality of outcome since to acknowledge it reduces the power of unearned privileges. If a person actually believed in hard work, she should renouce unearned privileges.
> . . . and it also requires us to refuse generational transfers of economic
inequality -- for the very same reason (it doesn't reward hard work and ability).
More illogic. You can defend generational transfers of economic inequality (if you want to do such a thing) on the basis that the advantages did not originate with the generation under examination (going back to the belief that a person is not responsible for her advantages or disadvantages. The sleaziness starts in drawing an equivalency between a person not being responsible for her poverty and a person not being responsible for her advantages).
> When the point is put that way, we can also see that the commitment to
equality of opportunity is not really a weak form of the commitment to
equality of outcome; rather, it's a commitment to something altogether
different, to the importance of hard work and ability.
It is exactly the opposite.
> "The real contradiction is between our support for equal opporutnity and
our support for all the things that make our opporutnities unequal. So it
won't work just to convince people that they're acting against their own
economic interests. The point must be to convince them that they're acting
injustly."
How about convincing them that they have an obligation to in support of the opportunities of others?
Brian