[james_s_tayler]

I'm with you. Inequality seems to be baked into the natural world. Look at power law distributions and the preferential attachment model as one of the ways they arise. There is mathematics to suggest the notion of inequality is a fundamental part of life.

The Polya process is another thing that comes to mind. In that model, if you were picked in the past then you are more likely to be picked in the future. That's the classic competitive exclusion "rich get richer" at work.

But here's the equalizer: Every distribution of possible outcomes under the Polya process has an equal probability of happening.

That strikes me as very interesting. Basically, if you were to run history forwards from the same starting point again and again, in some of those iterations your life would turn out significanty better than others. So, there is equality for everyone in that sense, but on a case-by-case basis it's more of a better luck next time.