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Category Archives: Equality

Pornography, Respect, and Censorship

03 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Censorship, Equality, Liberty

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Brendan Watts, Censorship, Eugene Volokh, First Amendment, Gail Dines, Gender Egalitariansim, Jodie L. Baera, Journal of Sex Research, Non-egalitarianism, Pornography, Prurient Interests, Radical Feminism, Sexual Aggression, Taylor Kohuta, Women-Hating Ideology

CensorCartoonMPMag14

A study in The Journal of Sex Research reinforces the libertarian view that pornography “artists”, purveyors and users should be left alone, free to engage in their private activities without censorship or harassment by the state. The study is entitled “Is Pornography Really about ‘Making Hate to Women’? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample“. It can be downloaded free-of-charge at the link. Here’s the abstract:

“According to radical feminist theory, pornography serves to further the subordination of women by training its users, males and females alike, to view women as little more than sex objects over whom men should have complete control. Composite variables from the General Social Survey were used to test the hypothesis that pornography users would hold attitudes that were more supportive of gender nonegalitarianism than nonusers of pornography. Results did not support hypotheses derived from radical feminist theory. Pornography users held more egalitarian attitudes—toward women in positions of power, toward women working outside the home, and toward abortion—than nonusers of pornography. Further, pornography users and pornography nonusers did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward the traditional family and in their self-identification as feminist. The results of this study suggest that pornography use may not be associated with gender nonegalitarian attitudes in a manner that is consistent with radical feminist theory.“

The study did not deal with child pornography in any way. The study focused strictly on attitudes toward women among porn users in general, attitudes that are clearly relevant to divergent opinions regarding the need for activist social policy with respect to adult pornography:

“Some clinicians, researchers, and social commentators have adopted the view that pornography can improve sexual functioning by providing frank sexual information, reducing shame and anxiety associated with sex, and invigorating libido (… citations). In contrast, others have cautioned that the use of such materials can be associated with risky sexual behavior, poor mental health and well-being, degraded relationship functioning, and, of course, sexual aggression (… citations).“

The authors, Taylor Kohuta, Jodie L. Baera and Brendan Watts, quote feminist Gail Dines as an example of the rhetoric used by porn prohibitionists:

“Porn is the most succinct and crisp deliverer of a woman-hating ideology. While we have other places that encode such an ideology, nowhere does it quite as well as porn, as this delivers messages to men’s brain via the penis—a very powerful method.“

The paper includes a lengthy review of previous research on pornography, sexual attitudes, and “non-egalitarian” attitudes toward women. Earlier research was generally based on small samples or those confined to limited demographic segments, but support for the radical feminist view was inconsistent at best.

Kohuta, et al, attempt to extend earlier work with a large sample of males and females (porn is viewed by both genders) from the General Social Survey (GSS), described in detail at the link, and a more thorough set of attitudinal measures. The five measures are listed in the abstract quoted above. In none of the five cases did the use of pornography correspond to “less egalitarian views” toward women, and in three cases it corresponded to more egalitarian views, though I’d quibble with the abortion measure, which might not be meaningful in that context.

The findings are robust to gender and run contrary to the assertions of radical feminists and other moralistic busybodies: pornography does not encourage “woman hatred” or attitudes that might lead to aggressive behavior toward women, nor is viewership of porn consistent with a predisposition toward those attitudes:

“Of the five high-powered statistical tests conducted in this study, a total of three tests indicated that individuals who had viewed a pornographic film in the past year held more egalitarian attitudes than those who had not—a pattern of results that directly contradicts the predictions generated from radical feminist theory. Of the remaining two tests, neither was statistically significant. Taken together, the results of this study fail to support the view that pornography is an efficient deliverer of ‘women-hating ideology’.

Instead of demonstrating strong associations between pornography use and support of nonegalitarianism, if anything the current findings actually suggest weak associations in the opposite direction. Compared to nonusers, participants who reported viewing a pornographic film in the previous year also reported more positive attitudes toward women in positions of power, less negative attitudes toward women in the workforce, and less negative attitudes toward abortion…. “

The authors make a strong value judgment by assuming that a favorable attitude toward abortion represents a more egalitarian attitude toward women. They rationalize this treatment by noting that radical feminists consider “reproductive autonomy” to be a critical test of gender equality. However, abortion is not always a decision made solely by the woman. Furthermore, porn viewers of either gender, and participants in recreational sex, are likely to find the idea of a pregnancy something of a buzz kill, so the attitude maybe one of convenience. More fundamentally, abortion involves the rights of a human fetus versus the right of the parent(s) to terminate the pregnancy. If one’s ethical convictions are such that the fetus’ rights are paramount, it may not reflect a non-egalitarian attitude toward women.

I find the other four attitudinal measures used in the study unobjectionable. Identification as a “feminist” might mean different things to different people, but it nearly always means a generally strong support for women’s rights. In any case, those four tests indicate no association between porn use and an attitude favoring an inferior role for women in society.

Pornography use was defined by Kohuta, et al by whether the subject admitted to viewing any X-rated film over the past year. There was no distinction between different types of porn, such as depictions of sadomasochism, violent sex, or nonconsensual sex. Therefore, the study does not address whether a taste for these forms is associated with less egalitarian attitudes toward women. Whether viewership of porn or violent forms of porn is associated with acts of aggression against women is much harder to establish. However, as a general question, the attitudes found to be associated with porn in this study suggest that users are unlikely to be inclined toward nonconsensual sex or aggression toward women.

Porn viewers obviously find the subject matter entertaining; it may appeal to their fantasies and might serve as a prelude to sex. Whether those are “prurient” interests is a subjective matter. Porn viewing is a private activity that shouldn’t matter to anyone else. Whether they admit it or not, most adults have had at least a peak at porn, perhaps unintentionally. It might have offended them, but they know how to avoid it; if they have children they should know how to utilize parental controls. I’m skeptical that it hurts anyone. Those who like it even a little bit should be able to enjoy it privately.

In 2012, Eugene Volokh wrote a practical criticism of an idea in the Republican Party platform that “current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced”, as well as an earlier Bush Administration effort to crack down on porn. He concluded that such policies could have three possible outcomes:

“1) The crackdown on porn is doomed to be utterly ineffective at preventing the supposedly harmful effects of porn on its viewers, and on the viewers’ neighbors [because porn is available from many foreign and domestic sources].
2) The crackdown on porn will be made effective — by implementing a comprehensive government-mandated filtering system run by some administrative agency that constantly monitors the Net and requires private service providers to block any sites that the agency says are obscene.
3) The crackdown on porn will turn into a full-fledged War on Smut that will be made effective by prosecuting, imprisoning, and seizing the assets of porn buyers.“

Volokh’s conclusions apply to all forms of porn, not just non-violent porn. He underlines the draconian implications of attempts to censor porn:

“I’m asking: How can the government’s policy possibly achieve its stated goals, without creating an unprecedentedly intrusive censorship machinery, one that’s far, far beyond what any mainstream political figures are talking about right now?“

While Volokh does not address the question of whether porn users have a constitutional right to do so, the First Amendment should protect it as free expression. The paper discussed here implies that porn is no threat to women based on the attitudes expressed by users in the GSS. This is consistent with the libertarian principle that free people must be unencumbered by any authority in their choice of entertainment.

Pawning Growth For Redistribution

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Equality, Redistribution

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Alan D. Viard, American Enterprise Institute, Angela Ranchidi, Bernie Sanders, Chelsea German, Dan Mitchell, Double Taxation, Economic Mobility, Fallacy of Redistribution, First Theorem of Government, Gallup, Household structure, Income Growth, John Cochrane, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Progressive Taxes, Redistribution, Third Way, Thomas Sowell, Welfare State

govt here to help

The following is no mystery: if you want prosperity, steer clear of policies that inhibit production and physical investment. This too: if you want to lift people out of poverty and dependency, don’t promote policies that discourage hiring and work incentives. Yet those are exactly the implications of policies repeatedly advocated by so-called redistributionists. The ignorance flows, in large part, from a distraction, a mere byproduct of economic life that has no direct relation to economic welfare, but upon which followers of Bernie Sanders are absolutely transfixed: income and wealth inequality. Attempts to manipulate the degree of inequality via steeply progressive taxes, transfers and market intervention is a suckers game of short-termism. It ultimately reduces the value of the economy’s capital stock, chases away productive activity, destroys jobs, and leaves us all poorer.

Absolute income growth is a better goal, and encouraging production is the best way to raise incomes in the long-run. Unless envy is your thing, income inequality is largely irrelevant as a policy goal. In “Why and How We Care About Inequality“, John Cochrane emphasizes that inequality may be a symptom of other problems, or perhaps no problem at all. His point is that treating a symptom won’t fix the underlying problem:

“A segment of America is stuck in widespread single motherhood … terrible early-child experiences, awful education, substance abuse, and criminality. 70% of male black high school dropouts will end up in prison, hence essentially unemployable and poor marriage prospects. Less than half are even looking for legal work.

This is a social and economic disaster. And it has nothing to do with whether hedge fund managers fly private or commercial. It is immune to floods of Government cash, and, as Casey Mulligan reminded us, Government programs are arguably as much of the problem as the solution. So are drug laws….“

The writers of the center-left Third Way blog give some details on income growth that might disappoint some progressives. They agree that the emphasis on redistribution is misplaced. Solving economic problems requires a different approach:

“From 1980 to 2010, income gains (after taxes and government transfers are included) favored the wealthy but were still spread across all income brackets: a 53% increase for the bottom quintile; a 41% increase for the next two; a 49% increase for the 4th; and a 90% increase for the richest fifth. Thus, while income inequality may offend our sense of justice, its actual impact on the middle class may be small.

With a singular focus on income inequality, the left’s main solutions are greater re-distribution and a re-writing of the rules to ‘un-rig’ the system. But, however well motivated, some of the biggest ideas into which they are directing their energy do not remotely address the underlying ‘Kodak’ conundrum—how do Americans find their place in a rapidly changing world? In fact, some would actually make the task of increasing shared prosperity significantly harder.“

The hubbub over inequality and redistribution is fueled by misconceptions. One is that the rich face low tax burdens, often lower than the middle class, a mistaken notion that Alan D. Viard debunks using 2013 data from a report from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report accounts for double taxation of dividends and capital gains at the corporate level and at the personal level (though capital gains are taxed to individuals now, while the anticipated corporate income is taxed later). The CBO study also accounts for employers’ share of payroll taxes (because it reduces labor income) so as to avoid exaggerating the tax system’s progressivity. Before accounting for federal benefits, which offset the tax burden, the middle 20% of income earners paid an average tax rate of less than 15%, while “the 1%” paid more than 29%. However, after correcting for federal benefits, the middle quintile paid a negative average tax rate, while the top 1% still paid almost 29%. That is a steeply graduated impact.

Rising income inequality in the U.S. is more a matter of changes in household structure than in the distribution of rewards. This conclusion is based on the fact that income inequality has risen steadily over the past 50 years for households, but there has been no change in inequality across individuals. An increasing number of single-person households, primarily women over the age of 65, accounts for rising inequality at the household level. The greedy corporate CEOs of the “occupier” imagination are really not to blame for this trend, though I won’t defend corporate rent-seeking activities intended to insulate themselves from competition.

Measures of income inequality hide another important fact: one’s position in the income distribution is not static. Chelsea German notes that Americans have a high degree of economic mobility. According to a Cornell study, only 6% of individuals in the top 1% in a given year remain there in the following year. German adds that over half of income earners in the U.S. find themselves in the top 10% for at least one year of their working lives.

There are several reasons why redistributionist policies fail to meet objectives and instead reduce opportunities for the presumed beneficiaries to prosper. Dan Mitchell covers several of these issues, citing work on: the rational response of upper-income taxpayers to  punitive taxes; the insufficiency of funding an expanded welfare state by merely taxing “the rich”; the diversion of most anti-poverty funds to service providers (rather than directly to the poor); the meager valuation of benefits from recipients of Medicaid, and the fact that the program lacks any favorable impact on mortality and health measures. Mitchell features the “First Theorem of Government” in a sidebar:

“Above all else, the public sector is a racket for the enrichment of insiders, cronies, bureaucrats and interest groups.“

A few years back, the great Thomas Sowell explained “The Fallacy of Redistribution” thusly:

“You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.“

That future wealth can and should be enjoyed across the income spectrum, but punitive taxes destroy productive capital and jobs.

A great truth about poverty comes from Angela Ranchidi of the American Enterprise Institute: low wages are not at the root of poverty; it’s a lack of jobs. She quotes a Gallup report on this point, relative to the working-age poor in 2014:

“Census data show that, 61.7% did not work at all and another 26.6% worked less than full-time for the entire year. Only 11.7% of poor working-age adults worked full-time for the entire year in 2014. Low wages are not the primary cause of poverty; low work rates are. And if Gallup is correct, the full-time work rate may already be peaking.“

More than 88.3% of the working-age poor were either unemployed or underemployed! And here’s the kicker: redistributionists clamor for policies that would place an even higher floor on wage rates, yet the floor already in place has succeeded in compromising the ability of low-skilled workers to find full-time work.

Cochrane sums up the inequality debate by noting the obvious political motives of progressive redistributionists:

“Finally, why is “inequality” so strongly on the political agenda right now? Here I am not referring to academics. … All of economics has been studying various poverty traps for a generation…. 

[The] answer seems pretty clear. Because [the politicians and pundits] don’t want to talk about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, bailouts, debt, the stimulus, the rotten cronyism of energy policy, denial of education to poor and minorities, the abject failure of their policies to help poor and middle class people, and especially sclerotic growth. Restarting a centuries-old fight about “inequality” and “tax the rich,” class envy resurrected from a Huey Long speech in the 1930s, is like throwing a puppy into a third grade math class that isn’t going well. You know you will make it to the bell.

That observation, together with the obvious incoherence of ideas the political inequality writers bring us leads me to a happy thought that this too will pass, and once a new set of talking points emerges we can go on to something else.“

Leftist Ad Hominid Species Screams “White Racists!”

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Discrimination, Equality, racism

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A Taste For Discrimination, Assimilation, Celebrating Diversity, Cultural Sorting, Davis Bacon Act, discrimination, Economics of Discrimination, Jim Crow Laws, Minimum Wage, Racial Quotas, racism, Rent Controls, Social Mobility, Systemic Racism, Unintended Consequences, Virtue Signaling, Voluntary Sorting, War on Drugs


Lately I hear that all white people are racists, and I feel compelled to examine the intellectual grounding of such an inflamatory claim. Consciousness of race is not racism, as some would suggest. Indeed, solutions to racial division offered by activists usually require that we bear race in mind as a primary differentiator. Insofar as one must consider the worth of another person in any context, people of good faith simply do not care about a person’s race. Rather, they care about traits that count, such as honesty, skills, work ethic and perhaps affability. Should they somehow care more? What would vindicate them?

Inflammatory Claims

There are probably several motives for the charge of universal white racism. On one level, it represents political agitation. Posts carrying the charge on social media always involve a measure of “virtue signaling” to like-minded friends, or perhaps before the Gods. (I’m sure the posters will be forgiven.) Such posts might represent acts of social contrition to allay deep-seated feelings of guilt. The posters might fancy that they are raising the consciousness of others, proudly imagining the important lesson they are teaching. The bad news for them is that most people of good faith are rightly skeptical of proselytization like this. In fact, the agitation probably does more to breed skepticism than anything else.

Voluntary Sorting Behavior

What some view as racial division is often an innocent consequence of voluntary sorting based upon the shared subcultures most compelling to individuals at a given time. There are many subcultures into which a person might fit: work, school, profession, sports, music, religion, politics, hobbies, geography, ancestry, ethnicity and race. And there are micro-cultures within all of these categories. These cultural segments differ in many respects, and they may overlap in many cases. The extent of sub-cultural overlap may be viewed as a gauge of assimilation.

In any given context, people tend to voluntarily sort themselves into the sub-culture they find most compelling. This voluntary sorting does not yield a fixed social distribution of individuals across groups. Individuals can choose to associate with different sub-cultures to which they belong on a day-to-day basis.

There is a pronounced tendency for sorting to occur within larger “populations”, such as cafeteria-goers in a large office or in a large school. People from particular work groups might sit together: there is some sorting by age, by gender, and by race. African-Americans often sit together. There is mixing of members of these subgroups as well. People are brought together by work or school, but the shared work or school culture is frequently less compelling to individuals in their choice of a lunch table than other sub-cultures to which they belong.

Isolation or Assimilation

Assimilation does not mean that cultural differences must disappear, but it does mean that subcultures must at least be tolerant of others. A key question is whether one subgroup would welcome a member of another subgroup to join them. There might be reasons to refuse in some circumstances, such as a group of accountants who wish to avoid economists. Lol. However, a group of Caucasians who prefer to remain exclusive, making African Americans feel unwelcome, are guilty of racism, and vice-versa. As for the converse, an African American individual who prefers not to join a group of Caucasians, and vice versa, there is usually a good rationale for presuming the individual to be innocent of racism: they are simply choosing a more compelling sub-culture.

Certain sub-cultures may be especially amenable to selection from across sub-groups. For example, team sports often foster racial mixing, as do music and various professions. Religion and economic stratum can be powerful shared sub-cultures, drawing members across racial groups. In other words, mixing of sub-cultures will occur when a compelling sub-culture is shared. That is a form of successful assimilation.

When voluntary sorting takes place, the parties seek commonalities. That’s a form of discrimination that may be quite healthy and not racist in any way. On the other hand, accepting diversity implies respect for other cultures and subcultures. Voluntary sorting allows those cultures to function, but it does not necessarily imply exclusion of others who might be curious and wish to learn and take part in a culture’s traditions, or who might even wish to become a part of a different community.

Counterproductive Compulsion

The insistence that racism is widespread is often an expression of support for compelled remedies or paying reparations of some kind to alleged victims. In a free society, the kind of voluntary sorting discussed above will always be a reality; any attempt to prevent it would require extreme coercion. Reparations for historical injustices, legal or economic, raise ethical questions about the treatment of those who must bear the costs. They also carry high administrative costs and tend to breed resentment and division. There are well-known downsides to quotas in hiring and in school admissions. Not only do quotas lead to reverse discrimination, they also can place the intended beneficiaries into situations of vulnerability to failure.

Markets Are Not Racist

Then there is the allegation that private markets are a source of “systemic racism”, having “disparate impacts” on certain minorities. However, it should be noted that the market mechanism tends to penalize racism. A consumer who chooses to avoid sellers of a different race will tend to pay a higher price for the privilege. An employer with a “taste for discrimination” must choose from a smaller labor pool and may lose the opportunity to hire the best talent. In other words, racists must pay for their preference. They also forego the creative benefits that diverse organizations tend to enjoy.

Certain minorities have struggled to achieve success in the private economy, but there are much better explanations for that difficulty than market forces, which provide the best opportunity for growth and assimilation. There is no question that institutional obstacles have had extremely harsh effects on groups starting from lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. A few examples: the failed public education has been especially burdensome for urban and rural minorities; various public policies have effectively excluded minorities from markets, including Jim Crow laws, the minimum wage and the Davis-Bacon Act; the so-called social safety net is rife with features that penalize work and reward fragmentation of families, making it as much a trap as a net; the drug war creates illicit market opportunities which present catastrophic but unappreciated risks for both the participants and their families; rent controls, zoning laws and restrictions on new construction limit the stock of affordable housing; heavy regulation makes starting a business difficult for those without the financial and legal resources to deal with it; and the ugly tradition of cronyism tends to reduce social mobility by entrenching privilege rather than rewarding economic value. The deck is stacked in many ways against economic mobility by public policy, and racial minirities have borne much of the burden.

Immigration Hotspot

Another controversy is whether racism is manifest in the negative views of many Americans toward immigrants. These claims allege ethnic and religious discrimination, including the hatred of Muslims. No doubt there are Americans who harbor racist attitudes toward immigrants. Some of this is grounded in unreasonable economic fears. There are also fears that terrorists may be among new immigrant populations, especially refugees, but that fear is hardly unreasonable given the recent experience of Europe and the difficulty of establishing reliable background information on some of these individuals.

Sharing Freedom

Racism still exists and it will never go away entirely. However, our dedication to freedom compels us to protect speech as long as it is not threatening. Racial discrimination by participants in markets can be difficult to detect, but racists must pay an economic price imposed by the market mechanism, and there are often legal remedies if racial discrimination in markets can be proven. Fortunately, racism today is not as widespread as the agitators would have you believe. The best policy for assimilation and acceptance is to promote a shared culture of freedom and economic opportunity.

Egalitarian Aggression

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Big Government, Equality, Liberty

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Comparative advantage, Dylan Matthews, Egalitarianism, Equality of Opportunity, Inequality, Integrity of the Family, John Rawls, Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., Mises Institute, Redistribution, Robert Nisbet, The Mises Daily, Vox, Wilt Chamberlain Problem

communism Lady liberty in rear view mirror

In what sense is “equality” a rational objective? Can it ever be achieved without aggression? It’s certainly admirable for individuals to treat all others fairly and without bias against personal traits. A society composed of individuals possessing that kind of integrity is one in which “equal opportunity” exists in an intuitive sense. Such a society would yield market outcomes that are free from personal discrimination.

There are many social pitfalls when central authorities attempt to enforce this sort of equality. There will always be minor and even random cases of treatment that someone considers unfair. Any effort to adjudicate such incidents comes at a great resource cost. The potential for moral hazard in pursuing grievances is also strong, and the enforcement authority may well have biases of its own.

Stronger forms of equality are even more difficult to achieve in a free society. There are many barriers to “equality” that most people would regard as natural, like genetics and the integrity of the family. And like family, many other barriers to equality are cultural virtues, such as educational and occupational rewards based on merit. The institution of strong private property rights provides an effective system of incentives that fosters efficient resource allocation, promoting economic growth and human well-being, but it’s rewards will not be distributed equally.

Institutionalized tampering with any of these features for the sake of equality tends to legitimize envy as a cause of social action. And the intrusions require design and enforcement of a system of social “overrides” by a central authority possessing police power. Needless to say, this must involve elements of aggression and tyranny. These overrides introduce significant risks to individual freedom and the functioning of markets, and are likely to cause widespread destruction of welfare. In that sense, forced equality cannot be a rational objective.

These points are developed more fully in “The Menace of Egalitarianism“, a piece by Llewellyn Rockwell Jr. at the Mises Daily blog.

“A libertarian is perfectly at peace with the universal phenomenon of human difference. He does not wish it away, he does not shake his fist at it, he does not pretend not to notice it. It affords him another opportunity to marvel at a miracle of the market: its ability to incorporate just about anyone into the division of labor. … Indeed the division of labor is based on human difference.“

Rockwell goes on to explain the law of comparative advantage, which allows more productive and less productive individuals to profit by specializing in areas for which each has the lowest opportunity cost. And when producers compete for rewards, as Rockwell notes, average consumers (and rich ones and poor ones) are the ultimate beneficiaries.

Outcomes such as the inequality of wealth and income are not only impossible to avoid, they are natural consequences of economic freedom. Several earlier posts on Sacred Cow Chips have dealt with this topic, and can be viewed from the Home page by typing “inequality” into the search box near the top. For his part, Rockwell discusses the “Wilt Chamberlain” problem, whereby private demand to witness great athletic prowess results in a shift towards an unequal distribution of income:

“… the pattern of wealth distribution is disturbed as soon as anyone engages in any exchange at all. Are we to cancel the results of all these exchanges and return everyone’s money to the original owners? Is Chamberlain to be deprived of the money people freely chose to gave [sic] him in exchange for the entertainment he provided?“

The fact that “equality” is seldom well-defined as an actual objective should be met with skepticism. Here’s more Rockwell:

“It is precisely this lack of clarity that makes the idea of equality so advantageous for the state. No one is entirely sure what the principle of equality commits him to. And keeping up with its ever-changing demands is more difficult still. … Equality is a concept that cannot and will not be kept restrained or nailed down.”  

He takes a dismal view of “cultural inequality” and “equality of opportunity” as worthwhile causes for invoking the power of the state. For example, two families in different economic circumstances will generally confer different opportunities to their children. Dylan Matthews at Vox makes the same point in “Equality of Opportunity“, though Matthews’ analysis is weak in several respects. The point here is that there is only so much that can be done to correct for unequal family-related endowments without undermining the integrity of the family (not to mention property rights). This has long been a bone of contention with respect to the design of U.S. welfare programs. But the problem is much deeper:

“In the course of working toward equality, the state expands its power at the expense of other forms of human association, including the family itself. The family has always been the primary obstacle to the egalitarian program. The very fact that parents differ in their knowledge, skill levels, and devotion to their offspring means that children in no two households can ever be raised ‘equally.’

Robert Nisbet, the Columbia University sociologist, openly wondered if [John] Rawls would be honest enough to admit that his system, if followed to its logical conclusion, had to lead to the abolition of the family. ‘I have always found treatment of the family to be an excellent indicator of the degree of zeal and authoritarianism, overt or latent, in a moral philosopher or political theorist,’ Nisbet said.“

And here is Rawls himself expressing doubts, as quoted by Rockwell:

“It seems that when fair opportunity (as it has been defined) is satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction.“

The quest for “equality” is a creeping force. It infects economic life in a way that makes widespread gains in welfare difficult to achieve, diminishes expectations and fosters social devolution. It also leads to demands for eliminating useful distinctions, which can only be erased though aggression by the state. This forces a convergence toward the least common denominator throughout the culture. I believe the following statement by Rockwell rings true:

“The obsession with equality… undermines every indicator of health we might look for in a civilization. It involves a madness so complete that although it flirts with the destruction of the family…. It leads to the destruction of standards — scholarly, cultural, and behavioral. It is based on assertion rather than evidence, and it attempts to gain ground not through rational argument but by intimidating opponents into silence. There is nothing honorable or admirable about any aspect of the egalitarian program.“

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  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library
  • Scattered Showers and Quicksand

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TLCCholesterol

The Cholesterol Blog

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

CBS St. Louis

News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and St. Louis' Top Spots

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

Public Secrets

A 93% peaceful blog

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together

PERSPECTIVE FROM AN AGING SENIOR CITIZEN

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

Scattered Showers and Quicksand

Musings on science, investing, finance, economics, politics, and probably fly fishing.

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