“Income inequality is bad and getting worse!” the leftist
cries. “Something must be done! Something must be done!”
What uproar is this?! Such a fuss over the composition of a
statistical distribution?! What are we to make of this?
Egalitarianism (with the income version of it being the most
popular) can be understood as either one of two things: either as madness or as
a mask.
For what but madness could it be to deeply concern ourselves
with the distribution of personal incomes? Certainly we care about how much
income we receive, or how much income
our beloved friends and family receive. But beyond this, who but a madman could
be bothered by whether the distribution is tighter or more spread out overall? Who
but a madman could derive pleasure or pain from the relative girth of a
histogram?
Perhaps a mask then. Perhaps our economic egalitarians
pretend to care about the overall distribution, while really only caring about
increasing their share in it. All ye brave humanities students and struggling
artists, a more equal distribution of income would truly be a boon to thy
pocketbooks! All ye valiant civil servants and social science professors,
greater egalitarian programs shall increase thy departments’ budgets!
But the mask can only explain so much. For amongst the ranks
of the egalitarians, we find affluent individuals of all professions, many of
whom could only lose financially should more egalitarian policies come into
force. It would seem that the opinions of such individuals can only be
explained by madness: they have fallen victim to a fixed idea!
What happened is this: the opinion-molders of society (the
academics, the bureaucrats, and the young, hip creatives) took steps to pursue
their own financial self-interests under the guise of egalitarianism. No blame
for these folks, it was a clever ploy!
It was the private sector affluents who were the dupes. They
took the egalitarianism of the opinion-molders at face value. They foolishly
wanted to appear ‘progressive’ and ‘compassionate’, and so became fanatics of
the fixed idea of economic equality. The beneficiaries of the unequal
distribution of income became advocates for its destruction! All in the name of
wooly, airy ideals whose realization wouldn’t do them a damn bit of good. What
can this be but madness?
But madness need not be permanent; the deluded may yet come
to their senses! In the foolish ideal of egalitarianism, they have lost
themselves. But what is lost, can yet be found.
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