I do not think that inequality is a good thing for society, nor do I think that inequality is necessary to create a motivated and efficient society. The readings discussed how the debate in the American Sociological Review presented Tulmlin’s argument that inequality actually created a less efficient and less harmonious version of society compared to a version of society with lower levels of social inequality. He pointed out that inequality creates conflict between different social classes and prevents fruitful collaboration between parties. In this vein alone, I think that it could be sufficiently argued that inequality is negative for society because it discourages tolerance and promotes hostile competition.
Great ideas and innovations are birthed out of other great ideas and innovation, so I think that a society that encourages working together and innovating to fulfill each other’s needs is a much more nurturing society than one that fosters innovation and “hard work” through competition that renders the majority of the people in the society frustrated, poor, and tired. I think that it is rather ridiculous to claim that inequality is necessary to promote production and hard work because I think that needs and desire are just as capable of motivating people to do good, meaningful work. I think that it is a problem that we often conflate high production and new inventions, as well as optimization and growth, with progress. However, it is only a measure of “progress” to the extent that it fulfills the needs of people and improves lives. I think less having less productive people exist in our world would be fine if the work that they do is of good quality and is fulfilling to them. Having people produce less, consume less, and have more meaningful actions to me is better than everyone being motivated by inequality to produce something superficial and short term that will make money, regardless of ethical impact or personal passions surrounding their work. I think that we should question why we even strive for productivity as the ultimate societal goal.
I am not sure what “equality” would truly look like. I think that it is more of an ideal that we will have to constantly strive for rather than something we achieve in full one day. Like other ideals such as democracy or liberty, I think equality will need to constantly be defended and evaluated. I don’t think there is ever going to be a moment where we will look around and say, “well we can stop working toward equality, we’re all equal now.” The complexities and scale of the interactions of societies and arrangements of resources I think are too complicated to really comprehend, let alone distribute perfectly equally. However, I think that there are ways that we can become much more equal than we are now. I think that I would be in favor of some sort of universal basic income that would allow people enough money to be able to afford the resources they need to live a simple, but healthy life.
If people then wanted to make more money beyond that, they could pursue other money-making avenues. At the same time, I think that inequality extends beyond the national level, so therefore solutions to inequality must also extend beyond the national level. Until we renavigate the power relations between different countries and groups of countries that were established through colonization and industrialization, I don’t think we can meaningfully address inequality. I think that this will be next to impossible to navigate at this large-scale because there are so many competing interests, and a few people have a lot of political/ economic power.
