The Search for Equality

Everyone believes in equality, but no one agrees on what it means to be equal.

In some sense it’s all about semantics. We think we know what the word “equal” means, and yet we constantly get the issue confused.

Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcomes. In fact, in a fair race, it is impossible to have equal outcomes. Competition means unequal outcomes.

Those who want equal outcomes really want proportional representation at the finish line. But then, why run the race if the outcome is, in some way, fixed in advance.

The only way to guarantee equal or proportional outcomes is to rig the game.

People get confused about equal because they think it means “same.”

Men and women have equal rights, but that does not mean that they are the same. 

Equal rights does not mean equal status, equal prestige, equal respect, equal authority or equal responsibility.

Being equal to a task does not mean that everyone who has the same equal rights as you is also equal to the task.

In other contexts, equal means having equal value.

The value of a sculpture by Donatello might be equal to that of a painting by Vermeer, but that does not mean that the two artworks are the same or identical. Nor does it preclude your like the one a lot more than the other.

Or better, build the same house in Bel Air and Akron and you will find that their prices are radically unequal.

Value is determined by the marketplace. It is not fixed or graven in stone.

All Americans have an equal number of votes in each election. They have an equal right to express their views in the public square or the blogosphere. They do not have a right to an equal audience share.

Despite what feminists think, Americans do not have a right to receive equal pay, even when they have the same job title. No two individuals do the same work with equal efficiency. Two robots, maybe. Two humans, never.

Two truck drivers do not necessarily do the same job. The same applies to two dentists and two secretaries. 

Normally, the free market decides who gets what. Those who do not trust the marketplace, because it offends their sense of equality, would rather have trial lawyers and government apparatchiks decide.

But, ask yourself, what is more likely to be fair, a free and open marketplace or a bunch of government officials who are not motivated by what is best for your company?

In principle, if your company compensates people unfairly it will lose out in competition with other companies that compensate people more fairly.

But, what happens when the marketplace seems to break down and one group of people garners earnings that seem vastly out of proportion to those of everyone else?

Strangely, those who attack such inequities never single out the rock stars and sports heroes whose income is the most grossly disproportionate to their contribution to society.

No one is protesting Taylor Swift’s income or Dwayne Wade’s. Those who attack income inequality save their fire for corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers, and rogue traders.

The argument for income equality or even fairness disguises a fundamental distrust of a marketplace based on the profit motive. The critics of the market want a new quasi-socialist state where bureaucrats decide.

If their interest were otherwise their movement would have been called, Occupy Beverly Hills, not Occupy Wall Street.

Of course, the bureaucrats will decide on the basis of a specious ideal of equality, not on the basis of what is best for the business.

Similarly, we all agree that everyone should have an equal right to own property. With the exception of the few unrepentant Bolsheviks no one believes that everyone should have an equal amount of property.

Of course, the marketplace is imperfect. It is simply the best instrument that has yet to be devised for distributing goods and services, for allocating resources and for rewarding those who contribute to society.

Besides, there’s more to life than money. And, there is more to markets than money.

Many government executives could make far more money in the private sector. Using their own free will they have decided to  trade income for prestige, authority, and, yes, power.

Some individuals prefer to spend more time with their children. Thus they tend to earn less and to rise to the top less often. 

They are exercising a free choice, based on an exercise of moral responsibility. Do you want to quantify the satisfaction gained by taking one’s parental responsibilities seriously?

Should the government take that joy away from them in order to distribute it equally to other parents who work longer hours?

What about those who prefer to spend more time lolling around the pool and less time working? Is it unfair to discriminate against them when it comes time for promotion?

If some people choose to work less, it is certainly not the government’s job to ensure that they will receive the same compensation and the same career opportunities as those who spend more time on the job.

In many cases women choose to spend more time with their children and less time on the job. This produces gender disparity in the workplace. Feminists use the fact to recruit new cult followers. They argue that if there more men than women in high executive positions, this can only mean that women are being subjected to discrimination.

If men and women are equal, the unreason goes, they should be paid equally, be promoted equally and be equally represented in the executive suite and corporate boards.

For people who do not know how to think, it makes perfectly good sense. For the rest of us, it sets an unrealistic, nearly impossible standard. Compare reality against an imaginary perfection and reality will always fall short.

In truth, as many studies have noted, when you factor in lifestyle choices men and women are being rewarded fairly.

I have posted about this topic before. In this week’s issue of The Economist, the columnist who writes as Schumpeter reviews the issues again.

Trying to help cure the “angst” that arises when feminists see instances of unequal representation at the top of corporate hierarchies, Schumpeter writes:

Several factors hold women back at work. Too few study science, engineering, computing or maths. Too few push hard for promotion. Some old-fashioned sexism persists, even in hip, liberal industries. But the biggest obstacle (at least in most rich countries) is children. However organised you are, it is hard to combine family responsibilities with the ultra-long working hours and the “anytime, anywhere” culture of senior corporate jobs. A McKinsey study in 2010 found that both women and men agreed: it is tough for women to climb the corporate ladder with teeth clamped around their ankles. Another McKinsey study in 2007 revealed that 54% of the senior women executives surveyed were childless compared with 29% of the men (and a third were single, nearly double the proportion of partnerless men).

Some companies are adjusting themselves in order to satisfy the feminist yearning for perfect sameness, but they will be competing against companies that have a different corporate ethos.

Here, again, the marketplace will decide.

In Schumpeter’s words:

For most big jobs, there is no avoiding mad hours and lots of travel. Customers do not care about your daughter’s flute recital. Putting women in the C-suite is important for firms, but not as important as making profits; for without profits a company will die. So bosses should try hard to accommodate their employees’ family responsibilities, but only in ways that do not harm the bottom line.