Equality of opportunity?
January 11, 2011 at 5:13 pm 1 comment
Comment on “The Drum”, 11 Jan 11
A few quick observations… firstly, it seems Christopher Joye hasn’t actually read the book by Andrew Leigh, just two reviews of said book. I suppose next time I could just read the comments on one of Mr Joye’s articles, and then proceed to frame my own response – fair enough?
More generally, I think that the concept of “equality of opportunity” is fine… but not in our capitalist society. For capitalism to work there needs to be about 10 to 20% of the population living off the labour of the other 80 to 90%. While in theory anyone can move into the top percentile, in practice if those proportions are not maintained, what you end up with is not capitalism. Gee, it could even evolve into socialism!
That’s why the rich and their barkers are so keen to promote fairytale stories of “equality of opportunity”, where someone succeeds (ie gets rich) despite a lowly background. It just obscures the fact that someone has to fall before another can rise.
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