With the LLs being a little less vocal at the moment this little piece may seem ill timed however as the word is forever being bandied about this taxonomy of consistent conceptions of equality should be useful.
Monism – simply the most hard line definition for equality imaginable: all is one and since all is one all are equal. As is obvious, I am not you so this is rather silly. As an aside it is rather interesting to note that Hinduism, a monistic religion, is one of the most hierarchical civilisations.
Peoplekind – the way feminists seem to think the world should be: a mass of biological, cultural and intellectual androgyny. Biology though is again discriminatory: men can’t get pregnant. As such men and women cannot be perfectly substitutable. Further different races aren’t substitutable: hence the reason why we aren’t all beige and why white men never win 100m Olympic Gold medals.
Retardnation –every perpeople (person is patriarchal) has equal abilities beyond the shackles of biology. Well beyond the lunatic asylums and universities, you have the New York Times reader and the Mises.org reader. Empirical reality again smashes the Retardnation idea though the Public schools are attempting you rebuild the glass totem.
Imagine – the John Lennon idea: despite the fact that men aren’t women, blacks aren’t whites and idiots aren’t clever we should all hold hands and be one big family, treating everyone the same. Well you can’t even treat everyone in your own family the same – that’s the reason you only visit when you HAVE to like Christmas. Further would it be right to treat your wife the same as you treat a redneck in the next state: “Sorry love no flowers for the next 150 years as I need to buy beer for Chuck this time and then there’s Li san Chan the year after…..” Leaving aside moral implications it is an empirical impossibility to treat everyone equally since no-one has even met everyone.
Socialism – everyone earns equally little. As Nozick observed this is another empirical impossibility since even if we begin with equal wealth distribution unless everyone has identical preferences some will earn more than others: if watching opera is more popular the NASCAR then Andrea Boccelli could afford a Cruft’s winning guide dog whilst NASCAR will begin using 1960s lawnmower engines from David Lynch’s the Straight Story. If you abolish money and even trade itself, these inequalities and would arise: some will acquire more goods in an autarkic existence than others.
The Limp Iron Wrist – Bosses have regular power cuts whilst the great unwashed attach the crocodile clips to the grid. Unfortunately unlike electricity power cannot be measured as it has different effects on different people: watching Hitler’s speeches entertains me as he is a great orator but it doesn’t make me want to join the CIA;)
Individual Liberty – each individual can do as he pleases as long as he does not violate the non-aggression principle (it matters not how we arrive at this position). But if we take this position then the whole edifice of the left aspect of libertarianism is well, left. The only aspects of individual liberty that could be considered as a part of the left we have left would be those stemming from aggression: monopolies causing a reduction in the free market price of labour (see Mera’s article), subsidies to transport firms and the old thorny issue of limited liability. Thus cultural package of leftism has been parked in the liberal’s favourite place: the middle of the road with the dead skunk.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
If anybody ever wanted to embarass those dumb libertarians at a cocktail party, they can always use this zinger argument to keep the libertarian silent:
"Equality in education, sir, is the same thing as excellence in education!"
One sentence victory for the egalitarian and the progressive with a single irrefutable point, and thus all other inferior argumentators bow their heads in shame and leave. A moment of a smug satisfactory smile for the progressive follows.