Something that is true for individuals (outcomes should depend on decisions) don't generally apply to arbitrary groups/categories -- where different individuals within the group are making different decisions that should balance out on net in similar ways.

It makes sense (even if we assumed actual equal opportunity at birth, which would require no inheritance) for individuals to end up in different places. It doesn't make sense for arbitrary socially constructed groups -- like race for this to be the case, without considering some lurking variable(s) that applies generally to individuals in that arbitrary group. 

We should really want equality between arbitrary groups even if we don't think individuals should have equal outcomes, because that means we are on the right track with regards to equal opportunity. Being born into arbitrary group #1 shouldn't have a strong effect on the decisions you can make when compared to being born into  arbitrary group #2.

It is okay to suggest that we tolerate the inequality of opportunity that is inheritance to promote motivation (or long-term time-preference if you will) but there is a point where only prioritizing that just means society isn't equitable in any sense, including equal opportunity. There should be social institutions that allow one opportunities to fast- track past the decisions or luck of one's parents. Otherwise you have the opposite effect where motivation and productive capacity is stifled due to lack of opportunity inherited by the decisions or luck of others.

Honestly I just completely disagree.  I'm paying for kids college.  I put them in private school.  I hired them tutors.  I ensured they had extra curriculum for their applications.  Etc, etc.  That all stimulates the economy.  If we level the playing field I wouldn't have done any of that.  Nor would I be working 50 hours a week and paying close to six figures in taxes.  Ensuring my family has an advantage is 99% of my motivation.  People can argue that isn't fair to other kids...  but life isn't fair.  I'm not 6 ft 8 inch at 265 lbs with a 40 inch vertical leap...  thus I don't play professional sports, such is life.  

Parents should be encouraged to give their children advantages, not be lazy and expert somebody else to fix it.

Honestly I just completely disagree.  I'm paying for kids college.  I put them in private school.  I hired them tutors.  I ensured they had extra curriculum for their applications.  Etc, etc.  That all stimulates the economy.  If we level the playing field I wouldn't have done any of that.  Nor would I be working 50 hours a week and paying close to six figures in taxes.

Okay but your disagreement then is with equality opportunity as well as equality of outcome. 

If different people have different resources available to them at birth, and no capacity to bridge that gap unless they make even more exceptional decisions given the constraints they inherited, then there really isn't equality of opportunity. There is just mere equality before the law. 

The compromise in modern society for enabling inheritance has been to give alternative paths for people born in situations with fewer opportunities. This is what every modern successful society has done, including the United States. 

The social darwinist approach of the late 19th century of let people use whichever lemons they were dealt hindered productivity and general wealth accumulation, rather than enabling it. 

By the way, I don't have children, won't have childen, and plan to give all of my wealth away when I die. I still (voluntarily, not because I have to to survive) work 60 hours per week. The right-libertarian conception of time-preference while broadly true as a general perspective isn't precise enough, imo.

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

Honestly I just completely disagree.  I'm paying for kids college.  I put them in private school.  I hired them tutors.  I ensured they had extra curriculum for their applications.  Etc, etc.  That all stimulates the economy.  If we level the playing field I wouldn't have done any of that.  Nor would I be working 50 hours a week and paying close to six figures in taxes.  Ensuring my family has an advantage is 99% of my motivation.  People can argue that isn't fair to other kids...  but life isn't fair.  I'm not 6 ft 8 inch at 265 lbs with a 40 inch vertical leap...  thus I don't play professional sports, such is life.  

Parents should be encouraged to give their children advantages, not be lazy and expert somebody else to fix it.

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.   

Is providing opportunities to certain groups of people who face certain problems unique to members of their group really "flattening the playing field" though? 

As an example. My mother dropped out of high school in 10th Grade. Why? Because her father sexually assaulted her from the age of 6 until 12 years old and then killed himself when caught. There was no way she could've focused on education in that particular situation. She faced severe developmental challenges. Now if we collectively gave resources (and we do in some capacity) to help people in this situation recover their mental health and self-worth, and expedite their path to development is that "leveling the playing field?" In some sense, yes, but that is the right thing to do given the circumstances of what had happened to the individual. It also helps society to make that individual the fullest they can be. 

To go to a less extreme example. A person born in a low SES situation doesn't generally have many role-models of how to navigate a path toward higher-education and a successful stable middle-class income. They also likely have worse or more minimal primary and secondary educational resources. Suppose they really wanted this though. Should society not provide this person alternative resources or pathways that help mitigate this handicap and enable them to achieve their maximal result? 

I personally think the path towards the result matters just as much as the result as well. For example, if it is many times harder for student A to get a 750 on their Math SAT than student B, because they had to cobble together resources that were already provided by others to student B, then there is some level of meritable capacities that student A has shown that we have no evidence of from student B (not to say student B doesn't have it, but that we haven't seen evidence of it.) The ability to navigate society and combine resources that were not easily provided is a merit-able skill that should be considered in assessments of an individual's capacities to perform a task. That is what, say, holistic admissions do. Other countries have much more rigid, objective metrics, but these other countries also have much more equalization of opportunity earlier in life. 

The irony is that you're extolling the American system over Europe as being able to successfully produce innovative companies, but the American system of tertiary education considers much more than exam scores, while most European countries have entrance exams for universities and tier students into different occupational tiers very early on. 

Honestly I just completely disagree.  I'm paying for kids college.  I put them in private school.  I hired them tutors.  I ensured they had extra curriculum for their applications.  

Parents should be encouraged to give their children advantages, not be lazy and expert somebody else to fix it.