[Biologist123]

> It is very rare for someone to have a sound argument from first principles as to why inequality is worse than equality for society as a whole.

Rare to find sound argument does not equal absence of argument.

I’m not sure what a first principles case would be here, but I guess it would need to start with an agreement about what a person is and what a society is, and the interaction between those two. Difficult as these are not agreed upon, even in the west.

On a relatively orthodox view on these points, your argument might be that beyond a given level of inequality, there are diminishing marginal returns to even the beneficiaries of the inequality. Tinbergen, a relatively well-known economist, thought this was around 5x disparity in income (ignore assets). You might argue about the precise figure, but having lived in places where there is high inequality, the crime rate put a serious cap on my perceived quality of life.