[TheSpiceIsLife]

That's a great perspective, thank you for sharing.

I think it can be summarised as: Inequality has a marketing problem.

No one's buying equality. Those who can afford equality don't need it and those who need it can't afford it.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> Those who can afford equality

The most ardent fight against tyranny and overlords comes from aristocrats who wish to be equal - but just to each other, not to the common herd (thank you very much, goodbye my good man).

[bmmayer1]

The real problem is, while many complain about 'inequality' no one has consistently defined what 'equality' looks like in a way that can be replicable, implementable, or prescriptive.

What is this world in which income / wealth / opportunity is 'equal'? Is this a world we want to live in? What are the rules of this world? What steps need to be taken on the policy front to achieve this world? Are those steps that the anti-inequality elites are willing to undertake?

[photojosh]

I found this via HN when it was published, the TL;DR being that people aren't really opposed to inequality, they're opposed to unfairness. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0082

The relevant chunk of the abstract:

> There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies. We suggest that these two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness.

Not that this actually answers your question... ;)

[bmmayer1]

This is an excellent piece and does answer my question actually. People simply conflate fairness and equality and that seeps into the discourse because it makes for easy platitudinal soundbites. Of course, taken to its logical conclusion, equality looks like this[1]. No one actually wants that world.

[1]http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

[geezerjay]

> I think it can be summarised as: Inequality has a marketing problem.

Not as much as a marketing problem, but has populist political organizations that use it to advance their superficial socialist causes.