[Y_Y]

Fair enough. I do think that "equality is good" is the claim that would need to be justified if this were a formal debate, but I can give some more details on what I think.

Roughly, my feeling is that perfect equality is unstable, or at least enforcing it would cost a lot more than allowing for (limited) inequality. I don't think that perfectly free markets are desirable (or efficient) but I think that how do distribute resources in a way that maintains equality while also keeping the median wellbeing high (relative to other systems) is a huge ask.

[appleorchard46]

It's a good thing this isn't a formal debate then, because neither I nor the paper claim equality is good nor am I debating the assertion otherwise.

Thank you for the clarification, your position makes more sense now. It sounds like you're not saying there's something inherently bad about equality, but rather that the practical cost of enforcing absolute equality top-down makes it actually a net negative in well-being for the population of a state?

(I can't help but point out that if there's someone with the power to enforce it, things are very far from equal - but I'm guessing you mean 'equality' more in a monetary / real goods sense)

[Y_Y]

You correctly describe my position, but I'd add that I don't yet see that perfect equality would be more desirable than some small amount of inequality.

Even behind the veil of ignorance I can imagine that, say, a society with a small amount of inequality would have higher average wealth and that most people would be happy with such a system even if, say, 10% of people were worse off than under perfect equality.

(For balance, maybe you could have a "crabs in a barrel" style of enforcement where all of the equal society members equally ensure that nobody becomes richer or poorer than anyone else. See e.g. this old story https://granta.com/the-black-sheep/ )