Tryals

Is inequality natural? Yes and no. We are born, of course, with unequal talents, abilities, situations and opportunities. Nature has no obligation or apparent inclination to meet human notions of fairness. Natural selection seems to be a costly blood-sport. Antelope all run fast but some run faster, the rest die sooner. Chimpanzees are all more-or-less equal in their natural situation. Each individual must forage their own food. Yet chimpanzee society is remarkably un

So we have come, rather quickly, to the more intractable kinds of inequality. Wealth is an especially challenging problem to a democracy, not least because so many of a democracy’s citizens desire wealth for themselves and commit tremendous energy to acquiring it. They may deplore the consequences of privileged access to resources, but at the same time demand that nothing stand in the way of their own acquisition of such resources. They’re the ones who vote for politicians

Equality is not the same as sameness . We can easily imagine a society in which all available resources would be carefully rationed and parceled out in equal portions to every individual member. Everyone would receive exactly the same amount and quality of food, the same size of room and bed, the same frequency of health checkups, the same quality and duration of education, the same number of working hours with the same precisely-defined breaks, the same clothes and haircu

In the last decade of the seventeenth century, a pioneering demographer named Gregory King produced an estimate of the national income of England, together with a table estimating the distribution of the nation’s wealth among the bands of its social hierarchy. He divided all of English society into 26 ranks—the vast majority of the population falling into the bottom five. The top six ranks represented the better sort —titled nobles, landowners and gentlemen who did not labo

Can there ever be an unqualified right of private control of any resource, aside from the mostly-unobjectionable daily sorts of exclusivity? ( My sweater, my toothbrush, my bedroom .) Such a right, to be effective, would require the recognition and consent of the other members of the community—those who might also want access to the same resource—and a robust system of public oversight able to distinguish and enforce such rights, as well as use coercion when necessary. Su

Exclusive or private ownership is not the only way to distribute and manage resources. Before you stuff your fingers in your ears, consider that this observation need not lead inevitably to state ownership or a communistic regime. There are various styles of ownership between these extremes, such as family trusts, corporations and cooperatives. There are churches, mosques and synagogues—all owned by communities. We are used to the idea of owning shares —in companies, holi

But have we even agreed on what property is? Many with strong opinions are already sure. My property is what belongs to me . That clears up exactly nothing. So let’s try to do better. Property is nothing but a publicly-recognized claim on a particular resource . To claim property is to demand the removal of that specific resource from the realm of common use and reserve it for the exclusive use of a particular person. Property, then, is fundamentally an act of ex