Equal Opportunity. ?.

There are a lot of “equal” words flying around today.  “All men are created equal”, “equal opportunity”, “equity”, “equal outcomes” and various other forms of “equal”.  I think many people just get behind anyone using any combination of these words automatically.

Of course, “all men are created equal” comes from the Declaration of Independence. These must have been pretty groundbreaking words back then when the world was much different.

But let’s take “equal opportunity” in this post and unpack it.  We are all born with equal rights.  But whether we get equal opportunity depends on what the value you can bring to a situation, job or appointment.  That depends on your parents first, your schools, and the individual to learn, prepare and get experience. 

Diedre Hansen McClosky puts it this way.  I have paraphrased for brevity. “If we try to get other equalities we don’t get them at all.  Robbing Peter to pay Paul turns out to make us all poorer by driving Peter out of business, corrupting Paul, and giving Helen, the bureaucrat who runs the redistribution, such powers that she is tempted to misuse them in a very nasty fashion.  

And equality of opportunity, which also sounds nice, is impossible to achieve if you take it literally.  You had better parents than Tommy, say, should we forbid your parents from being better, or should we intervene to coerce Tommy’s parents to be better – or at least be better in the opinion of Helen the bureaucrat?  

Say one person is smarter than another and speaks Spanish as well as English.  So to make them equal at the starting line, should we drive nails into that first person’s head until they are as stupid as the second person, and they forget Spanish?

You see the problem.  The metaphor of an exactly equal starting line for a foot race is not the sensible, practical, doable, fair proposal.  The sensible proposal is to let people race as they will.  That way you get more runners and immense innovation in the economy.”

Ok, now it’s me again.  I think we can look at the words “equal opportunity” in a number of ways.  Certainly, as it is related to discrimination of any kind, I feel that issue is so far behind us it’s not worth discussing on Think Daily.  That argument is over and anyone who doesn’t realize it is a millennium behind.

Equal opportunity to choose your own path and make of oneself what one chooses is something I believe in and is a meaning of the term I think we should all support.  But if I show up for tryouts for the New York Yankees and have an equal opportunity to make the team as the men, or women for that matter, who are prepared, experienced and naturally gifted, I don’t think the Yankees would get very far.

This is because I am 58 years old, I can not run fast anymore, I can’t hit a major league pitch, I have not been in the game getting better, and I simply don’t deserve to be on the team.  They are trying to win, and they don’t want me.

It’s the same for a company.  They are trying to win with their customers and they want the best people they can get for the job.  Fortunately, there are thousands of types of companies that need people of all skills at all levels, and there is a place for most anyone.  But we all don’t have an equal opportunity at any job.  We must be judged on merit.

And that’s where we all start – with equal rights and an equal opportunity to pursue what we wish, learn to create value or not, and accept the consequences of our decisions and the compound interest of how we have spent our days, whether it be positive or negative.