The subject line of the e-mail made clear that my expectations for what would follow need not be particularly high.
“The problem with liberals…” is all it said.
In my experience, nothing good ever proceeds from an introduction like this, typically because the person who leads with such a quip almost never knows anything about liberals, or leftists, or progressives or whatever demons they see themselves fighting.
They haven’t read our books, they rarely listen to our media (I mean actual left media, not CNN or The New York Times or whatever they think constitutes leftism), and they rarely took classes where they were forced to grapple with liberal or left ideas or the people who adhere to them.
Instead, they rely on caricatures of the left offered up by Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson or Sean Hannity, or even worse on Reddit threads or in 4chan memes by people who marinate daily in the politics of personal grievance: grievance against feminists, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ folk, and all the others they feel have victimized them. And this they do, even as they (and Peterson to be sure, the avatar of revanchist masculinity) regularly lecture the above-mentioned groups to stop crying about their victimization.
Hypocrisy, thy name is the “intellectual dark web.”
But in any event, and despite my trepidation, I read on, curious as to whether this would be just another example of absurd straw man argumentation and name-calling. Sadly, we’re living in an age where folks on the right genuinely believe calling someone a snowflake or “libtard” is tantamount to making a point.
Reading further into the missive, I must say I was both pleasantly surprised and yet, still horrified, by its contents.
I was pleased because its author at least sought to make a cogent and somewhat philosophical point. Yet, I was also disturbed because despite his relative intellectual sophistication, he still misunderstood some fundamental things about how the world works and about the philosophical premises undergirding both the left and even the right — his own side, and the one for which he was going into electronic battle.
So what was the problem with liberals, in his mind?
Simple, he said: “You believe in equal results, while we conservatives believe in equal opportunity.”
Ugh.
You know the argument, right? The left believes, supposedly, that everyone should have equal incomes and wealth, and that inequalities of any kind should not be tolerated, as all are evidence of injustice.
On the other hand, the right supports everyone having an equal opportunity to get ahead, but unlike the left, understands that inequalities in outcomes merely reflect different levels of talent, initiative, determination, or better and worse choices made by individuals. As such, trying to eradicate them is to tilt not only against windmills but against nature itself.
That this is a common perception of the differences between right and left is undoubtedly the case. But neither the assumption about what the left believes nor what the right believes is accurate.
. . .
Those of us on the left do not actually believe that everyone should (or even could) be equal in every way, nor that they should all have exactly the same amount of “stuff,” or identical life outcomes.
And the right doesn’t really believe in equal opportunity: at least not in any sense that proves meaningful.
If anything, the right believes in an abstract and formal notion of equal opportunity that focuses on merely allowing all to “run the race” of life, and whatever happens, happens. Meanwhile, the left embraces a more robust understanding of the concept. In that version, we consider the underlying social structures that often prevent true equity of access, and insist that we address these before the race can be regarded as remotely fair.
Whether one agrees with the former or latter version of equal opportunity is up to the individual, and high-minded arguments can be made for either one. But we should at least be clear that both sides are arguing over the same thing — equal opportunity — but defining it in fundamentally different ways.
To the right, equal opportunity means that individuals are free to pursue their goals and interests, free from government interference (unless those involve controlling their reproduction or marrying someone of the same sex), and whatever outcomes obtain in a free marketplace are to be considered valid. So long as the state doesn’t interfere with the market, or with personal choices, the outcomes are thought to be just, by definition.
But such a limited understanding of equal opportunity is, to the left, intrinsically problematic. To us, equal opportunity to run the race of life means very little if some are running with a substantial wind at their backs while others face hurdles and obstacles that are no fault of their own. In such a situation as that, talk of a genuinely free marketplace is absurd, little more than a fable without lived substance.
If some people have huge advantages and others disadvantages due to the status affixed to them at birth, it is the obligation of the society (and yes, this means the state, since the state has long participated in the sedimentation of those inequities) to establish policies and procedures whereby ascriptive characteristics bear less weight as to the outcomes people enjoy. Those policies won’t eradicate all disparities, but should, in a just society, flatten them out to a large degree.
Ultimately to those of us on the left, the questions are these:
First, is equal opportunity even possible absent a certain rough equality of condition?
Second, just because individuals differ in talents, ambition, and life goals — and thus, certain inequalities of outcome between individuals will naturally occur in any free society — to what extent should society tolerate vast differences between socially-defined groups, especially when group membership has been the basis for either mistreatment or elevation of the group’s members?
And third, even if we accept inequalities of outcome between individuals when it comes to things like the size of one’s home, the car one drives, or other luxury items, might we still insist that the necessities of life like basic food, shelter, and medicine be guaranteed as a matter of moral entitlement and human right, rather than treated as commodities to be gained (or not) in the market?
. . .
Looking at the first of these, it seems self-evident that for equal opportunity to have any practical meaning, a rough equity of condition has to obtain. If individuals face ingrained disadvantages requiring them to leap multiple hurdles as they race down the track of life, while others are free of such obstacles — and indeed have the functional equivalent of a warp speed button on their shoes — to believe that they enjoy equal opportunity is to believe in unicorns and pixie dust.
Only by balancing out the conditions under which people are operating might equal opportunity have meaning outside the realm of philosophical abstraction. Although no balancing is perfect — and the regulatory requirements to ensure such perfection would be neither practical nor desirable in terms of the society they would create — some efforts to level the playing field are both practically and morally required.
And in certain realms of life, we know this to be true. Take the NFL draft as one obvious example.
Each year at draft time, it is understood that barring some last-minute wrangling and strategic trading, the number one draft pick from college is going to go to whichever team had the shittiest record the previous year. We do not let the Super Bowl champions pick first as a reward for having won it all last season. Under market logic that is precisely what we would do — reward the winners and punish the losers — but when it comes to professional sports, it is not the approach we take. Why?
Because it is understood that making competitions more equal — not perfect, but better than they would otherwise be — is the only rational and remotely fair approach. By giving the worst team the first round choice, and by giving struggling teams more higher round picks overall, the league hopes to balance talent a bit, making it possible for former cellar-dwelling franchises to have a shot next season, or at least a few seasons down the line.
And this actually does work. Teams that were inconsistent or mediocre for a long time (like the Patriots before the Brady and Belichick years, or the Colts before the Manning era) became stronger, and teams that were once dynasties (like the 49ers) have been up and down in recent years.
Without a balancing of opportunity, the disparities of one year would merely accumulate the next and the next and the next. And so with football, we issue a corrective. But sadly, in society as a whole, we don’t. We do the opposite. We hand out the next bag of goodies to the folks who won the last bag, further cementing their head start without regard for either how they obtained it or the costs of its perpetuation.
. . .
Looking at the second point above: That individuals differ in terms of talents and ambition and effort is doubtless true. Some people are just better at certain things than others, and some work harder for their goals (whatever those may be) than others. But this fact cannot explain why certain socially-defined groups lag behind others, as with racial disparities for instance.
Unless one begins with the fundamentally racist notion that certain racial groups are superior or inferior to others, then the kinds of inequities we see between say, whites on the one hand and blacks on the other, have to be understood as the fault of social structures and a history of unequal opportunity. To the extent those historical processes and current structures have brought about group inequities, and to the extent those processes and structures were concretized by state policies, the state bears some moral responsibility for addressing them.
So, if the state prevented African Americans from accessing wealth via discrimination in lending and land ownership, as it was handing out free land to whites with the Homestead Act, and subsidizing white homeownership with FHA loans denied to people of color, then to act as if today’s wealth disparities are naturally occurring and unworthy of rectification is to accept the state-sponsored head start afforded whites.
It is to say that injustice cannot be rectified once it brings about a maldistribution of resources, and that the original distortion of the market on behalf of whites, the rich, men, or whomever else, should just be accepted, because to correct it would require intervening in the market and we can’t have that! It is equivalent to allowing the team with the five-lap head start in the race to keep it and use it to their never-ending advantage, even though the head start was obtained not because of superior effort or talent, but because the race was rigged.
. . .
And finally, as to the third point: Why should the normalcy of inequality require us to accept the kind of disparities that leave some without access to even the necessities of life, like food, shelter, and medical care? Big screen TVs, stereo systems, Caribbean cruises, and Teslas are one thing, and lacking access to them will not render one any less capable of exercising autonomous choices in life. But not having enough to eat, or affordable health care or a safe place to live will, and renders the concept of equal opportunity a cruel joke.
How is someone who is unable to get treatment for a chronic medical condition (or preventative care to avoid that condition in the first place) supposed to have equal opportunity with someone who can see a specialist whenever they choose because they have the money to do so?
How is the person living in a dilapidated, roach-infested apartment, or on the street, or in a shelter supposed to enjoy equal opportunity with those who go to bed warm in winter and cool in summer in their own homes?
How is the family that has to skip meals to stretch their meager budgets (or so they can pay the light bill this month) supposed to have equal opportunity with those whose bellies are full and nutritional needs met? To ask the questions is to answer them.
. . .
In response to all this, conservatives typically respond with something about how egalitarianism crushes the spirit of innovation and risk-taking so critical to a dynamic and modern society. But this is perhaps the most ridiculous premise of right-wing and/or libertarian economic thought.
Whereas conservatives argue too much equality creates disincentives to hard work — since after all, why would people put forth maximum effort without the possibility of great reward (and greater than that afforded to others who worked less hard) — the fact is, incentives really don’t work that way, at least not for most people.
To begin, such a position takes a very dim view of human agency, ultimately suggesting that no one would do much of anything unless they could get filthy rich, and not just rich but much richer than others. It is to suggest that doctors don’t want to make people well or heal the sick because healing is something they are called to do, but instead because it allows them to have a really nice house and things that others don’t. It suggests that inventors don’t create things to make the world a better place, or because of some inherent creative energy, but because patents can bring forth big paydays. It is to insist that musicians and vocalists and painters and writers and other artists do not create their art out of an intrinsic desire and need to tell their truth but to cash in royalties and have better vacations than the rest of us.
While there are no doubt people motivated by money — stock traders, bankers and mercenaries come to mind (and please pardon the redundancy there) — surely we don’t accept the idea that in the absence of great payoffs most of us wouldn’t get out of bed, do we?
Most people take pride in their work for its own sake, and often labor at jobs that don’t necessarily pay that much, but which they love (teaching, caring for kids or the elderly, nursing, etc.). The idea that allowing great inequalities is necessary to incentivize their efforts, and those of most people, seems not just fanciful but insulting.
Not to mention, even if financial motivation is significant for many, this still begs the question whether this motivation is natural and instinctual or conditioned by a capitalist culture that has inculcated great wealth as a virtue.
In short, conservatives may be right that greater equity would slightly stunt the work effort of those persons deeply bought into predatory, materialistic values, but one strains to figure out why this would necessarily be a bad thing. Perhaps we could do well with more nurses, teachers, farmers, elder care workers and artists, and fewer day traders and money manipulators, after all.
Additionally, even if we allow that complete flattening of inequalities might disincentivize hard work in some ways, is that a reason to allow the degree of inequality that we see at present?
Does the American work ethic genuinely hinge on whether 30 people are allowed to be as wealthy as the bottom half of the nation? Is the spirit of risk-taking dependent upon the top one-tenth of one percent possessing as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent?
Reasonable inequities owing to talent and effort might be entirely acceptable, but anyone believing that such disparities as these flow from natural inequalities of ability is too cultishly devoted to right-wing market logic to be taken seriously in this debate. The share of wealth captured by the wealthiest one percent of Americans has more than doubled since the 1970s, but only a fool would believe that the wealthiest 2.5 to 3 million people doubled their work effort in that period or intellectually evolved in such a manner as to justly capture all that extra stuff.
And finally, getting back to the point about ensuring that basic needs are met, less inequity (especially when it comes to necessities like food, shelter, and medicine) would likely spark a net increase in productivity and work effort.
Think about it. Currently, in a society where basic needs are up for grabs in the market, someone who is poor or struggling won’t likely feel much freedom to leave a crappy job, or perhaps try and start up their own business, or relocate for greater opportunities. Why? Because if taking the initiative doesn’t pay off — if they fail — the cost could be homelessness, illness or death for themselves or their families. They can’t take risks because the costs of failure are too high. On the other hand, with basic needs met they could take a shot at something better, exercise self-determination and autonomy, and strive for something greater than their current situation.
. . .
Ultimately, the only way to make equal opportunity more than a philosophical abstraction — and interestingly the only way to make markets work even remotely as advertised — is to flatten out vast inequalities, especially regarding the necessities of life and between socially-defined groups as with race and ethnicity. To rationalize these inequalities, as the right does, in the name of freedom, is to reify a mere dictionary concept of liberty, rather than the more substantive, encyclopedic meaning of it so critical to social cohesion and well-being.
The left is not arguing for the eradication of all disparities, but the right is most assuredly arguing for their perpetuation and even permanence. They believe the current hierarchies to be just and proper, and worthy of protection. And if you agree with them then, by all means, cast your lot accordingly.
If, on the other hand, you find yourself displeased with the ways in which elites have managed national or world affairs — and surely if you are not among that one-tenth of one percent that increasingly owns all there is to possess — you might want to reconsider your loyalties, your votes and the ideological premises you take for granted.
I’m an antiracism educator/author. I Facebook & tweet @timjacobwise, podcast at Speak Out With Tim Wise & post bonus content at patreon.com/speakoutwithtimwise
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with permission from the author.
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