Equality versus Egalitarianism

TMC Institute 2021

I am sitting in the airport in Tashkent, waiting for my return flight to Heathrow. My visit has been a great experience thanks to my friends and colleagues at the TMC Institute. I have been very well looked after, and I have had the pleasure of taking part in a fifth anniversary celebration, a graduation ceremony, a wedding, a special birthday party, and, had the added excitement of giving talks to both students and staff. On top of this, I signed an agreement with a local bank which offers our students the opportunity to have a placement at the bank so that they can experience the reality of working in finance. Certainly, from my perspective, it has been a very enjoyable and successful visit, and I look forward to returning to Uzbekistan.

It is scarcely believable that it was only five years ago that I attended the opening of the first campus of the TMC Institute. Back then, in 2021, I was inspired to write a blog about meritocracy and the importance of higher education: https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/meritocracy-and-higher-education

Meritocracy has come in for quite an amount of criticism because it creates hierarchies that offend those dedicated to egalitarianism. But I want to fight back because, as an anthropologist interested in evolution, I would argue the ideologues dedicated to the concept of egalitarianism have got it wrong. It is a deeply seductive ideal to imagine a world where every outcome is levelled, where no gap in wealth or status exists, and where the human project is reduced to a single, flat plane of identical results. This is the promise of egalitarianism, a philosophy that, for all its moral posturing, I believe finds itself in direct and irreconcilable conflict with the very engine of human progress, which is our evolutionary nature.

To pursue equality of outcome is not merely impractical; it is a denial of the competitive, innovative, and hierarchical instincts that have propelled our species from the savannah to the space age (I have just been watching the progress of Artemis II).

The superior, more natural, and ultimately more just path for modern society to take is not egalitarianism but equality of opportunity. This distinction is not a matter of semantics but a fundamental fork in the road between a society that stagnates and one that progresses. Attempts by states to enforce an egalitarian agenda have repressed human initiative and ended in corruption, where the desire to succeed has depended on connections and bribery.

Homo sapiens did not arrive at the apex of the food chain through cooperation alone, though cooperation, of course, plays an important role. We arrived through relentless, often brutal, competition for resources, mates, and status. Our ancestors who were stronger, smarter, more creative, or more resilient were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. This has wired our brains with a powerful drive for differentiation. We seek to excel, to be recognised, to climb hierarchies, and to leave a legacy that distinguishes us from our neighbours. Egalitarianism, in its purest form, declares this drive to be a moral failing. It suggests that the scientist who discovers a cure for a disease should not be rewarded more than the office worker who files papers, because any disparity in outcome is seen as an injustice. I believe this is a recipe for the tragedy of the commons applied to human ambition. If effort, talent, and risk-taking yield the same material result as sloth, conformity, and safety, the evolutionary logic of the human animal screams one thing: why bother? You cannot repeal millions of years of biological programming with a policy memo.

Equality of opportunity, in stark contrast, does not fight our nature; it harnesses it. It says that the starting line should be as fair as humanly possible. Every child, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, should have access to a decent education, healthcare, and the protection of the law from being actively blocked by prejudice or hereditary privilege. The path must be cleared of artificial barriers. But once the race begins, let the runners run. Let the fastest, the most strategic, the most dedicated, and the most innovative pull ahead. This is not a cold or cruel philosophy; it is the only system that gives meaning to effort and virtue to achievement.

When a young woman from a poor background invents a new technology and becomes wealthy, that inequality of outcome is not a sign of societal failure. It is a signal. It is a beacon telling every other young person that the path to a better life is open, that their own potential is not capped by a bureaucrat’s spreadsheet of “fair” results. A key to this opportunity is to make sure that there is equality within the education system, whether this is provided by the state or private institutions like the TMC Institute. It is then up to the student as to how they harness their learning for their success in life. Success is not necessarily driven by wealth or status but much more by an individual's sense of purpose.

The anti-evolutionary nature of egalitarianism becomes most dangerous when it moves from abstract theory into the machinery of the state. To enforce equality of outcome, you must continuously intervene in the living, breathing organism of society. You must punish the high achiever with confiscatory taxes to reward the low performer. You must cap the potential of the gifted to soothe the envy of the mediocre. You must create a sprawling bureaucracy to decide what a “fair” distribution looks like, a task so complex and subjective that it inevitably devolves into tyranny.

As a professor who also analyses history, I can point to a graveyard of societies that tried to flatten human hierarchy, from the Khmer Rouge’s Year Zero to the collective farms of the Soviet Union. In every case, the result was not harmony but mass suffering, famine, and the collapse of innovation. The human animal, when forced into a cage of enforced sameness, does not become content; we become resentful, lethargic, and cunningly subversive. The black markets, the corruption, and the quiet flight of the ambitious are the immune response of a species rejecting a foreign and deadly doctrine.

Critics may l argue that equality of opportunity is a naive fantasy as long as children are born into vastly different family environments. This is a fair point, but it is an argument for making the starting line more equal, not for eliminating the race. The solution to a broken ladder is not to declare that no one should climb; it is to fix the ladder. Invest in universal pre-schooling. Ensure that public schools in poor neighbourhoods are places of quality learning, not childminding fortresses of despair. Society should provide robust safety nets for the genuinely unlucky, such as those born with severe disabilities. These are the policies of a compassionate, opportunity-based society. They recognise bad fortune as a legitimate cause for help, but they do not redefine all inequality as bad luck. The lazy son of a millionaire who squanders his inheritance and the driven daughter of a janitor who builds a business empire have made choices - those choices should be informed by equal opportunities. An egalitarian system would seek to punish the daughter and reward the son. An opportunity-based system, however, applauds the daughter, pities the son, and works to ensure that the next janitor’s child has an even better ladder to climb.

Ultimately, embracing equality of opportunity over egalitarianism is both rational and an act of intellectual and biological humility. It is admitting that we are creatures of ambition and differentiation, and that these traits are not flaws to be engineered away but features to be channelled toward the common good. The great triumphs of civilisation – the lightbulb, the vaccine, the skyscraper, the symphony – were not produced by committees enforcing equal outcomes. They were produced by individuals driven by a desire to excel, to be better than what came before, and to reap the rewards of their excellence. A society that respects equality of opportunity says to every person: your birth does not define your destiny, but your choices, your education, your work, and your character will. That is a promise in harmony with our deepest nature. A society that demands equality of outcome says only: no matter what you do, you will end up the same as everyone else. That is not a promise of justice. It is a promise of a future where no one has any reason to run. And a species that stops running is a species already in decline.