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This essay will accentuate whether the dismissal of equality of opportunity is a reasonable one. Throughout this essay, I will be denoting fair equality of opportunity, which reaches deeper into the social background than formal equality of opportunity. Rather than clearing away any obstacles for any position, it allows itself to prevent the differential effects of the social lottery at earlier stages of individuals’ lives. First, this essay will explore the arguments supporting the dismissal of equality of opportunity pioneered by Radcliffe Richards. In support of my argument, I will consider Peterson and William’s logic and portray how, despite the weakness in his argument highlighted by Rawls and Sandel, this can be overcome using supporting arguments. Therefore, this will lead me to conclude that this dismissal of equality of opportunity is unreasonable as its expectations to correct the natural lottery inequalities are unfeasible. The current meritocratic system of equality of opportunity is required for society to function efficiently and is satisfactory.
One argument refuting that equality of opportunity is satisfactory is postulated by Radcliffe Richards (1997). He depicts an equality scenario that he labels a ‘typical descent’, instantiating the shift between different stages in educational institutions to tackle the broad problem of equality of opportunity. In the first stage, the private school has a ‘son’s-of-gentlemen’ admissions policy, favoriting legacy, and a ‘cultural tone’. This nepotistic approach is seen as discriminating, consequently, the school is committed to a new approach, and formal barriers are abolished. The headmaster enables any intelligent applicant who will keep the cultural tone of the school. Richards identifies that we only have ‘ground-level impartiality’ (Richards, 1997: 260). Arbitrary restrictions have been rectified for candidates wanting to apply, however, it is a limited form of an equality of opportunity principle. In other words, it has “no positive, normative content of its own” (Richards, 1997: 260) as it retains a position on the cultural tone policy. This leads to the scrutinization of policy, and in stage two being enforced, the cultural tone policy is seen as disadvantageous for certain infants. Thus, it is replaced with an academic ability policy. As a result of this new principle, social mobility increases, supporting the notion that people should advance in society according to their abilities and skills. As opposed to the first stage, it adheres to the impartiality principle but varies with it having positive content rather than negative. In stage three, academically talented students with socially deprived backgrounds are unfairly disadvantaged, so compensation policies are implemented. Richards states that the principle at stage three follows the concept that “there is equality of opportunity when people have equally rich formative backgrounds” (Richards, 1997: 265). This principle can be called the equal social background principle. Stage four identifies that the academic ability policy negatively impacts those who are genetically unlucky in the natural lottery. A fair lottery will be generated at random in place of this admission policy, giving everyone the same chance to get in. This principle can be called the equal chances principle. The principles in stages three and four commonly believe that balancing formative environments cannot count as genuine equality of opportunity because of the genetic disparities facilitating unjust opportunities for success. The natural lottery is not malleable, implying that true equality of opportunity should permit the admission of everybody. In other words, equality of outcome is required for true equality of opportunity, resulting in a descent that the school’s headmaster would never consider to be the end goal. However, stage four is incompatible with stage three because it has abandoned the academic standards relevant to stage three. Stage four fundamentally discards a reasonable standard for the thoughtless motive of widening opportunities to a greater extent. In Richards’ scenario, there are limited spaces for everyone to be accepted, closing the real-life variation with equal chances rather than equal outcomes. Richards identifies that “equal chances operate here as a proxy for equal outcomes” (Richards, 1997: 269). I think this typical descent strongly emphasizes that rectifying the natural lottery points toward equality of outcome. Therefore, Richards’ real-life example stresses the flaws of ‘authentic’ equality of opportunity as it is ultimately dedicated to a conclusive assertion of equality of outcome.
However, this is a tenuous case as it is illogical to say that equality of opportunity is unsatisfactory when the end objective is distorted by an aim of equality of outcome, which is immensely improbable. Peterson (2018) defends contemporary equality of opportunity as being satisfactory. It is unreasonable to dismiss it based on it not correcting the natural lottery, as that is adopting an unattainable equity position. This is a position favoring equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. The fundamental idea of equality of opportunity is to remove arbitrariness and discrimination from the recruitment procedures to support everyone getting a fair chance of success. The expectation and end objective should be to ‘level the playing field’ and have a society whereby the most complex jobs are allocated to the most qualified people. The egalitarian desire for everything to be equally distributed is erroneous and not pragmatic. Society must have a competence hierarchy structure to facilitate a reasonable functioning civilization. Every individual is not capable of understanding and practicing certain occupations in the world. For example, a neurosurgeon is responsible for performing to the highest degree of standards, as lives are at stake. It is crucial for the neurosurgeons recruited to be as competitive as possible, and the same applies to plumbing, carpentry, and contractors for society to run efficiently (Peterson, 2018). A hierarchy of excellence is a prerequisite for a civilization to flourish. The hierarchy is salient not only so we know who the most capable are but also so we can reward them sufficiently to incentivize them to keep reproducing their excellence for the benefit of the rest of society. Peterson states that psychological literature implies that intelligence and conscientiousness are the most crucial determinants of achievement and success in the Western world. Intelligence is vital to ensure bright people occupy more complex positions to benefit the rest of society. Conscientiousness is crucial to identify diligence and hard work to maintain consistency. Thus, those that rise to the top of the hierarchy are smart and hard-working people, portraying that the meritocratic system is satisfactory. Unfortunately, many of the world’s greatest thinkers are the beneficiary of the natural lottery. It takes a sedulous and hard-working individual to apply genetic talents effectively, but having a significantly high IQ is something granted as a child. The harsh reality is that the nature of the world is out of our control; countless external factors cannot be changed. The distribution of traits such as intelligence and conscientiousness results from enumerable fortuitous genetic and cultural processes. A lot more is decided from birth than people like to believe. To pursue equality of outcome, you will end up with a catastrophic dystopian society which would be undesirable as it would lack all the benefits of competition. Equality of outcome society would be organized such that every category of outcome has exactly proportional representation from every possible category of person. There would be a devastating amount of social force to make that happen, and the negative consequences will far outweigh the benefits. It is more desirable to open the marketplace and permit an enormous range of hierarchies to arise and allow people to compete for their positions. Furthermore, who decides how the groups are categorized? For example, if you stratify the population by IQ, then an equal number of people would be drawn from every category of IQ to be surgeons, which is substantially ludicrous and will cost lives. Thus, there is excessive social engineering required to produce equality of outcome. The historical data on civilizations that desired and aimed for equity is the disastrous communistic societies of the 20th century, which were murderous and counterproductive (Peterson, 2018). As seen historically, “you have to cede so much power to the authorities to the government in order to ensure equality of outcome that a tyranny is inevitable” (Peterson, 2018). Another salient problem with equality of outcome is how would you measure it. There is a multitude of ways to attempt to measure, the outcome of happiness, well-being, affluence, social mobility, social connections, and quality of relationships (Peterson, 2018). It is an endless list of magnitudes of evaluation between people. It is impossible to achieve equality of outcome on every one of those measures (Felkins, 1997). Arguably, it is unfair to be biased and concerned towards only economic justice, so why not consider factors such as the quality of social circles? The problem is that there is no place to prevent equality of outcome from spiraling out of control. Therefore, this is a strong argument against the dismissal of equality of opportunity as unreasonable because it exposes how the expectations of correcting the natural lottery inequalities are unachievable and undesirable. I believe the current meritocratic system of equality of opportunity is necessary for society to function resourcefully and is satisfactory.
Peterson’s analysis may be criticized because he defends equality of opportunity as a satisfactory system with unequal distribution. It is clear from scientific evidence that as inequality increases, society destabilizes. There is no solution postulated of how to ably move resources to the lower end of the competence hierarchy to prevent destabilization. The notion that if you work hard you can defeat inequality further exacerbates the destabilization. It leads the successful to trust that their achievement is their own doing and they, therefore, deserve the salary the market delivers them with. However, it also implies that those at the bottom of the competence hierarchy deserve their luck, increasing the indignance many working people have against the governing elites. Sandel (2021: 155-157) also highlights that those essential meritocratic principles are not met. For example, Ivy League universities received substantial monetary assistance for low-income families in the USA. Despite this support, the privileged dominate the occupied places, with more people in the top 1% strata than the entire bottom half of the country combined. Thus, the social mobility at the forefront of the ‘American Dream’ does not match the statistics. The expectation of equality of opportunity providing a ‘level playing field’ and allowing everyone to have the same chance of succeeding is fallacious. This expectation does not consider prevalent nepotism, in which candidates gain an advantage based on their contacts, not their skills. For example, Harvard refuses to reveal details, but data required to be made public in court exposed that the acceptance rate for legacy applicants was 34%, compared with 6% for candidates without legacy prestige (Binkley, 2022). However, I believe that Peterson’s argument can answer such criticisms. He does not hide from the fact that hierarchies can sometimes be corrupt. For example, there are cases where individuals rise to the top because they have psychopathic traits, but all these occurrences are disproportionately representative. Most of the time, our hierarchies of competence are reasonably functional and respected. The hierarchies are also valuable in motivating the youth to be ambitious and aim toward the hierarchies of their choice. It is essential to recognize that not everyone rises towards their merit, and corruption certainly reduces the correlation. This acknowledgment, however, does not support that merit is a corrupt idea, that is, an unconnected set of propositions with totally different consequences (Peterson, 2021). To say that equality of opportunity is unsatisfactory when an aim of equality of outcome distorts the end objective suggests the demonization of the acquisition of competence. This is what Peterson calls a ‘war on competence’ and explains that it is occurring because competence implies value, which implies a hierarchy of people with differential abilities that directly contradicts the notion of equality. Thus, it can be argued that equality of opportunity is satisfactory. The point is not to say that it is a flawless system or that there are no prejudiced parts, but to dismiss it because it is not correcting the natural lottery is unreasonable.
This is supported by Williams (1973). The idea of equality also epitomizes how correcting the inequalities of the natural lottery leads to an unpragmatic end objective. Williams requests the reader to visualize an obsolete society founded on a traditionally privileged warrior class, which has now decided to oblige the idea of equality of opportunity. The first step towards equality of opportunity is eliminating class boundaries and choosing the warrior elite based on merit. New candidates can be considered from low-income families, and now there are no limitations to gender. The problem here is that girls are usually physically weaker than boys. The unprivileged individuals in the lower class of society are also disadvantaged as they are malnourished; this is significant as they cannot reach their full potential strength. However, let us say that regardless of caste, everyone is nourished correspondingly. It would still leave the genetically feeble unable to meet the necessary standards. Thus, the genetically impaired would have unequal likelihoods of success, and reformers would protest that equality of opportunity has not been achieved. Williams asks the question, “Where should this stop? Should it even stop at the boundaries of hereditary?” (Williams, 1973: 247). For example, imagine there have been contemporary technological advancements in a society that has eliminated all social lottery inequalities. It recognizes the unjust abilities produced by the natural lottery and develops a genetic brain-altering operation to eradicate this. Even in a fictional scenario trying to correct the natural lottery, there are still arguments of this is an unreasonable attempt to achieve true equality of opportunity. Presume that this operation is only accessible to those who can afford it. More affluent individuals would utilize this practice to make their children rise to the top of the educational system. This is discriminative towards low-income families as they do not have equal opportunities, and the opportunity to correct their genetic weaknesses is out of reach. Despite Williams identifying that these objections against the fictional society are moral rather than metaphysical, it still represents that true equality of opportunity will engender genetic engineering, leading to equality of outcome. An introspective analogy would be to compare equality of opportunity with the renowned game ‘Snakes and Ladders’. To pursue equality of opportunity is a bit like landing on a snakes-and-ladders snake, which leads you on a slippery slope with no grasps to support you until you land on a square that looks disconcertingly like the one you left earlier. An institution committed to equality of opportunity will instantly recognize this problem, even though many misdiagnose the issue as a failure to reach the objective instead of not having a clear objective. I believe this is a strong argument as it perfectly demonstrates how catastrophic the attempt to correct the natural lottery is.
However, there is still an underlying question unanswered: how can we overlook the idea of correcting the natural lottery when it is equally arbitrary to the social lottery? A moral and impartial way of approaching this question is assuming Rawls’ (1971) ‘veil of ignorance’, where you decide what is best for humanity, with information gaps on one’s genetic and social advantages. Using this philosophy, Rawls concluded that any collective structure that allows the benefits of the social and natural lottery to be utilized for wealth and income gains is flawed; both are arbitrary from a moral perspective. “Once we are troubled by the influence of either social contingencies or natural chance on the determination of distributive shares, we are bound, on reflection, to be bothered by the other” (Rawls, 1971: 74-75). Rawls would support the current equality of opportunity structure being considered unsatisfactory. Rawls would state that society is built upon concerning intellectual ability testing as a form of raffle whereby the ability to process and analyze information is valued most significantly. This society does not regard moral criteria such as altruism, compassion, or bravery; thus, we have embarked on a new form of impoverishment. It must be affirmed that expecting this moral criterion to exist in an efficient society is nothing more than a fantasy. If there were a perfect solution, then it would be implemented. It is entirely rational to be a free-market advocate and strongly support equality of opportunity simultaneously. Equality of opportunity should be defined as attempting to eradicate impediments to people demonstrating talents that would make them efficacious and competent players in the productive market. Therefore, it must be argued that equality of opportunity is satisfactory in correcting inequalities whilst maintaining a utilitarian culture.
To conclude, the dismissal of equality of opportunity is unreasonable because the prospects of correcting the natural lottery inequalities are impossible and will cause undesirable impacts across society. The arguments defending the dismissal of equality of opportunity on the grounds of it failing to rectify the natural lottery proposed by Richards are adequate. Nevertheless, they lack a necessary clear objective as an alternative. It is critical to explicitly explain why the natural lottery cannot be corrected using Peterson and Williams’ rationale primarily. I believe the current meritocratic process of equality of opportunity is indispensable for society to function efficiently, and I would consider it as satisfactory. Therefore, the dismissal of equality of opportunity is an unreasonable one.
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