I recall hearing a news story a few years ago about the Chinese government’s ban on billboards that glorify royalty and lavish lifestyles.  What got my attention was a comment about a wealthy young man regarding the huge divide between rich and poor in China today.  The young man blithely said that the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor because they rich work hard and the poor do not.

I’m not sure you could find a wealthy American who would plainly and publicly say what the Chinese young man said; however, I suspect there is a fair percentage of Americans that believe in that basic sentiment; life is basically fair in its distribution of gifts.

I think that is nonsense.  Life is not fair.  I was born into the family of an up and coming engineer in the United States; did I somehow deserve that fate as opposed to being born to an impoverished family in Bangladesh?   Of course not.  That family of birth and the genetic gift of IQ has given me options that only a very few in this world enjoy.  My mother and father were both born to poverty, but in the United States where their natural gifts of intelligence allowed them to rise into the middle class.  Again, had they been born in another place or with less intelligence they would not have been afforded that opportunity.   Any effort to rationalize the distribution of ability and opportunity is doomed to failure; there is no reason for it. Continue reading “Of Fairness and Equity” →