Do you consider yourself more left or right wing?

[Chrkeller]

sc94597 said:

Chrkeller said:

Yes, that is what I believe.  

Right.

Legal egalitarianism and equal opportunity are two different things. Some argue you can't truly have the first without minimally having some degree of the second, and of course the second requires the first in legal societies, but that is an entirely different discussion. 

Both are also different from equality of outcomes (at least at the individual level.) 

Personally I prioritize positive freedom (with negative freedom as a necessary delimiter) over "equality" of any kind and that is why I disagree with luck egalitarianism as the sole structuring philosophy of society. 

The goal of society, in so much as it makes sense for it to exist, should be to maximize the ability of individuals to self-determine the circumstances of their life and to multiply their capacities (productive and non-productive) in so much as they don't interfere with others' capacity to do this. Equal opportunity can help in this direction, but it isn't an end in itself, and optimizing for equal outcome (at the level of individuals) almost certainly doesn't enable this.Â

Agreed and I don't think flattening the playing field does that.  No student left behind, as an example, means we teach mediocrity, we aren't pushing excellence.  Opportunity means letting excellence shine.

Likely we have to agree to disagree.  Not being rewarding for excellence means many will just settle for average.   

When I graduated secondary school, the school banned valedictorian because it was offensive to everyone else that wasn't best in class.  My view is that is BS, excellence should be celebrated, not condemned.    

The US has a cutthroat society..  and 8 out of the top 10 companies in the world are American.  Who here goes a day without Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft, etc?  Nobody.  Excellence drives innovation.