Equality can only be obtained through authoritarianism

Okay so I think it is here where we have to answer the question at the end of the Inequality video, the question being: would I rather pick a country to live in where everyone has the same amount of wealth ($5000), or would I pick a country that has wealth inequality (half $10.000 and half $500). 

My first thoughts regarding the question proposed is that we are missing a very crucial piece of information in regards as to why the inequality exists in the first place. This question determines exactly what type of economic and political system I/we would be living under, since if we leave out this piece of information I think it is obvious that we would all pick the everyone is equal option since why would we not want, if we had the power, to allow everyone to live equally as prosperous? But alas we have to confront that crucial piece of information if we would really want to answer this question truthfully because the fact of the matter is, inequality is a reality of life.

We have encountered it on a daily basis in school when some people would get better grades than others, some people would get 10s others 2s, why does this happen? well some people are smarter than others, some people study more than others, and some people had a better and more fortunate upbringing which gave them more opportunities. Would we want a system in which the teacher averaged the grades out so everyone gets the same grade, if so, I don't think anyone would be in favor of this system as it would be an attack on the personal effort you put in to achieve that grade. 

This brings another important point out, what is the degree of grade mobility in the class, if you study and work harder, would you get a better grade, if you can't get a better grade for studying more what is the point of having a system where inequality is systematically divided and enforced between people who get 10s and 2s, this would be an allusion to countries in which massive inequality is enforced by an authoritarian state between the rich oligarchy and the poor population. 

So I think we can make a matrix to see what possibilities we have for the classroom example: 

  1. free pupils (high grade mobility) and equal grades: I think it is obvious why this never happens.
  2. free pupils (high grade mobility) and unequal grades: what actually happens due to a diverse set of reasons (even if we account for personal upbringing I still think we would have grade inequality because of personality, interests, work ethic, etc)
  3. unfree pupils (no grade mobility) and equal grades: basically the teacher averages the grades of the entire class so everyone gets the same grades.
  4. unfree pupils (no grade mobility) and unequal grades: the teacher takes the grades of the students who gets bad grades and adds them to a set up pupils who are the teachers favorites. 

And so to finally answer the question of which country is preferable to live taking into consideration the political and economic realities, the only three options in order of preference are: (option 2. free society, unequal wealth distribution and possibility of wealth mobility) > (option 3. unfree society, equal wealth distribution and no wealth mobility) > (option 4. unfree society, unequal wealth distribution, and no wealth mobility)

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