A Question about Equality

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, you didn't harm anyone there. The amount of time that the actors have to work is balanced out by the amount of risk they take about getting paid. The ones who showed up at 9am may be annoyed at having to do a full day's work for the same price as someone who only did an hour's work, but it was safe money instead of risky money. The next time they get the call, they may show up at 4pm to need to do the least amount of work for the cash only to find that you* didn't need as many people that day and they end up with nothing.

The earlier they start working, the more they have to work for the money but the less risk there is for them not getting any money at all. That makes the outcome fairly even.


* Well, not you, per se, since you got fired for not being able to manage resources well and wasting the production company's time and money trying to round up extra actors whom you should have had there in the beginning and they'll be working for your replacement the next time, but the point still holds.

 

[dismal]

That's equality of outcomes? Some people made $100 per hour, some people made $12.50.

And what if one of the actors loses an arm on set during shooting? Do you take an arm from all the others to equalize the outcomes?

Maybe you need to define what you mean because this may be another one of those non-dictionary definition threads.

Nice try but FAIL.


who did i harm? That is the question.

This, btw, is pretty much standard operating procedure in the business. If every actor used had showed up at eight and only worked an hour, they still would have all gotten $100.

This particular example may not have much in the way of harm. Notably this is because I presume all of this is done voluntarily by consenting adults.

Some of the trained actors who got paid $12.50 per hour may be resentful that other untrained actors got $100 per hour, but we would fall back to the fact they voluntarily agreed to work those 8 hours for $100 and not consider them harmed in any legal sense. Their psychological harms are not your problem as you did what you agreed to do.

Your investors, assuming you have some, may consider themselves harmed by the fact you paid $100 per hour for unskilled people when skilled people were willing to work at $12.50 per hour. But again, legally they may have no complaint if they agreed to let you do this.

Another question is whether, once your practices become known, you will hurt yourself. It would be more challenging for you to attract actors to work at 8AM as they have no incentive to be there at that time if they can show up later and get paid the same. They would also reduced incentive to become trained if they could remain untrained and get paid the same. In the long run your access to trained actors would suffer, particularly if other employers had practices the best actors felt compensated them better for their time and talents. Here again we fall back on the fact you are doing this voluntarily and have every right to harm yourself in this way, if you considered it a harm at all.

But the key point is the serious, sometimes tragic, harms don't start to show up until you apply force to bring your vision of equal outcomes onto others who would not adopt your vision voluntarily.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Nice try but FAIL.


who did i harm? That is the question.

This, btw, is pretty much standard operating procedure in the business. If every actor used had showed up at eight and only worked an hour, they still would have all gotten $100.

This particular example may not have much in the way of harm. Notably this is because I presume all of this is done voluntarily by consenting adults.

Some of the trained actors who got paid $12.50 per hour may be resentful that other untrained actors got $100 per hour, but we would fall back to the fact they voluntarily agreed to work those 8 hours for $100 and not consider them harmed in any legal sense. Their psychological harms are not your problem as you did what you agreed to do.

Your investors, assuming you have some, may consider themselves harmed by the fact you paid $100 per hour for unskilled people when skilled people were willing to work at $12.50 per hour. But again, legally they may have no complaint if they agreed to let you do this.

Another question is whether, once your practices become known, you will hurt yourself. It would be more challenging for you to attract actors to work at 8AM as they have no incentive to be there at that time if they can show up later and get paid the same. They would also reduced incentive to become trained if they could remain untrained and get paid the same. In the long run your access to trained actors would suffer, particularly if other employers had practices the best actors felt compensated them better for their time and talents. Here again we fall back on the fact you are doing this voluntarily and have every right to harm yourself in this way, if you considered it a harm at all.

But the key point is the serious, sometimes tragic, harms don't start to show up until you apply force to bring your vision of equal outcomes onto others who would not adopt your vision voluntarily.

so no harm paying everyone the same even though different. Skill levels and hours worked were at play.

BTW, people don't get mad.

 

[thebeave]

Where it could be harmful is if you force a 50/50 gender ratio in, say, a fire department just for sake of "equality of outcome". People's lives could be lost, just because the city's diversity manager mandates that any 100 lb pixie with spaghetti arms who dreamed of being a firefighter can/should get the job. No...just no.

 

[dismal]

This particular example may not have much in the way of harm. Notably this is because I presume all of this is done voluntarily by consenting adults.

Some of the trained actors who got paid $12.50 per hour may be resentful that other untrained actors got $100 per hour, but we would fall back to the fact they voluntarily agreed to work those 8 hours for $100 and not consider them harmed in any legal sense. Their psychological harms are not your problem as you did what you agreed to do.

Your investors, assuming you have some, may consider themselves harmed by the fact you paid $100 per hour for unskilled people when skilled people were willing to work at $12.50 per hour. But again, legally they may have no complaint if they agreed to let you do this.

Another question is whether, once your practices become known, you will hurt yourself. It would be more challenging for you to attract actors to work at 8AM as they have no incentive to be there at that time if they can show up later and get paid the same. They would also reduced incentive to become trained if they could remain untrained and get paid the same. In the long run your access to trained actors would suffer, particularly if other employers had practices the best actors felt compensated them better for their time and talents. Here again we fall back on the fact you are doing this voluntarily and have every right to harm yourself in this way, if you considered it a harm at all.

But the key point is the serious, sometimes tragic, harms don't start to show up until you apply force to bring your vision of equal outcomes onto others who would not adopt your vision voluntarily.

so no harm paying everyone the same even though different. Skill levels and hours worked were at play.

BTW, people don't get mad.

It could very well be there is little or no harm in this case. But you asked a general question.

 

[Barbarian]

Is this the 'prove me that the sky is blue' routine? Are you really pretending not to get that people with better abilities would, statistically speaking, achieve more and that you would have to apply or threaten violence to make it happen otherwise i.e. to equalize the outcome, and that such violence amounts to wrongdoing?

... although I had the misfortune to know enough communists around here before 1989 who thought exactly that. 'We represent the huge majority of natural born losers, and in the name of their combined envy forbid you to achieve success'.

I am asking you how equality of outcomes harms the more capable.

No, you asked what's wrong with equality of outcome, and given your posting history and your well-known shoulder chip configuration, in the absence of other indications that question means 'what's wrong with women's quotas and affirmative action and suchlike', i.e. legally enforced equal outcomes. That's what I replied to. If you want to discuss some outlandish scenario that's so far out of character for you to bring up as this one is, please indicate so instead of shooting off an one-liner OP.

If I am shooting a film and I am paying background actors $100 for eight hours work. 100 BAs show up at eight o'clock in the am. As me shoot, throughout the day I find I need more people so I am adding people all through the day, some only an hour before the end of shooting. at the end of the day I handout pay packets to everyone and everyone gets $100. Those first 100 are professional actors, trained and experienced, the rest are amateurs. Who if anyone did I harm?

This scenario is woefully underspecified, providing so many opportunities to move the goalposts. In addition, most attempts to fill in the blanks result in counterfactual worlds so much unlike our own that you could just as well assume that in that world nobody cares about any sort of balance between amount of work and amount of pay, much like the "new sort of human" of communism, thereby rendering the entire question meaningless. In our world, with real humans the ones who were there from the beginning would feel cheated because of the implied assumption that you'd pay proportionally with time. This is such a basic principle that even monkeys seem to operate on it.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

It wrongs those who are more capable.

how?

I am asking you how equality of outcomes harms the more capable.

No, you asked what's wrong with equality of outcome,

see above. you clearly state it wrongs the more capable and I asked how. Do try to keep up.

Brb

and given your posting history and your well-known shoulder chip configuration, in the absence of other indications that question means 'what's wrong with women's quotas and affirmative action and suchlike', i.e. legally enforced equal outcomes. That's what I replied to. If you want to discuss some outlandish scenario that's so far out of character for you to bring up as this one is, please indicate so instead of shooting off an one-liner OP.

If I am shooting a film and I am paying background actors $100 for eight hours work. 100 BAs show up at eight o'clock in the am. As me shoot, throughout the day I find I need more people so I am adding people all through the day, some only an hour before the end of shooting. at the end of the day I handout pay packets to everyone and everyone gets $100. Those first 100 are professional actors, trained and experienced, the rest are amateurs. Who if anyone did I harm?

This scenario is woefully underspecified, providing so many opportunities to move the goalposts. In addition, most attempts to fill in the blanks result in counterfactual worlds so much unlike our own that you could just as well assume that in that world nobody cares about any sort of balance between amount of work and amount of pay, much like the "new sort of human" of communism, thereby rendering the entire question meaningless. In our world, with real humans the ones who were there from the beginning would feel cheated because of the implied assumption that you'd pay proportionally with time. This is such a basic principle that even monkeys seem to operate on it.

 

[ZiprHead]

not according to derec

I'm with Derec.

Awww, bless your heart.

 

[ZiprHead]

Which outcomes in particular?

The outcomes in which a divorced mother or single mother takes home the same valuable salary as a man working in any field. Women produce the babies. If the government wants us to continue making the babies, they had better be willing to pay the most valuable of salaries to women. Women make the future geniuses, right? Geniuses cost money, right? How much do women get paid per genius?

If you're a man - some woman carried you to term. When you ripened, she squeezed you from her loins. She gave you a shot at survival in the years following. Is that not worth at least one million dollars? Most women think so. That you don't think so means you need to be squeezed back into that place from which you'll never return.

There's only one way to resolve our differences. What way is that? Thermonuclear war. Men think ahead. Women had better build a much higher presence of front line troops. Women have never fought and died for their rights. They've always expected men to do that for them.

What's coming? The majority of men are going to go to war with the embarrassment we call the US Federal Government. I'm not talking about the non-veterans, non-inactive and non-active troops that guard our country today. The majority of the Federal work force is non-veteran. The majority of the Federal work force are the cowards that like sending lessor paid men to die for their rights. I'm talking about those that never served their countries a day in their lives that collect the highest paid salaries while simultaneously disparaging US service members and locking vets out of good jobs.

Women are more cruel than cruel. That a woman's only rational role is to spit out a child from a satanic womb for the purposes of injuring the world for all of eternity is the mark of my X wife, Deborah Kramer.

Debbie - You know I hate you to my very core. You can save several by admitting your incurable STDs, babe. May you rot, eternally, in hell.

Dude, seek help.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Which outcomes in particular?

Well, according to Derec, as but one example, the justice meted out in the family courts with regards to divorce.

Yeah, but you posed the original question. Which outcomes are you referring to when asking about equality of outcomes?

After several pages I'm surprised no one tackled that directly. We've all been operating on various assumptions of which outcomes you are referring to, such as when you pointed out Derric's arguments about equality of outcomes.

 

[arkirk]

Well, according to Derec, as but one example, the justice meted out in the family courts with regards to divorce.

Yeah, but you posed the original question. Which outcomes are you referring to when asking about equality of outcomes?

After several pages I'm surprised no one tackled that directly. We've all been operating on various assumptions of which outcomes you are referring to, such as when you pointed out Derric's arguments about equality of outcomes.

It is a bit vague, but deserves an answer. There have been several examples posted here that are extremely emotional and angry. Notably there was one poster very concerned that "skilled" people received less than those just grabbed off the street. What exactly was the "skill?" Being alerted on how to get an extra job at a studio. Then we had someone who thinks that women are incredibly "cruel." He had what he regarded a very bad experience in a divorce court. I think in both of these cases the perceived problem was inequality of outcomes...not just inequality, but (at least in the minds of the posters) grieviously unfair inequality.

I don't know what might have been meant by equality of outcomes in the OP but I do know that if there is an exchange of actions that leave one party bereft, grossly underpaid, our otherwise seriously emotionally damaged, something went wrong that a little more equality of outcomes would definitely help. So if we look at these examples, maybe there is a clue there what it could mean...and it would be an improvement. The two examples cited could have had very outcomes very different from how they turned out if there was a little more attention to our constitution...to promote the general welfare...and a little more democracy at the same time.

 

[ronburgundy]

You are asking the wrong question. You should be asking "why does doing X to ensure equality of outcomes wrong?", where X is your preferred method.

I never ask the wrong questions.

Wow. That is a massive mountain of hubris. You'd be the first person in history for whom that is true, if it were true, which is isn't.

I just don't ask your questions. Luckily, it's a free forum. You get to ask your own, for yourself.

If no one thinks that equality is wrong, then asking why they think that is objectively the wrong question (or at least meaningless and without a possible answer).

Note, even if someone seems to offer and answer, it doesn't make the question meaningful.
Nearly ever poster in the thread has had to reformulate it to make it meaningful. Most posters are saying "It isn't wrong, so there is no "why", but methods of achieving it can be, and here is why that is the case". 1 or 2 people seem to be saying that it is wrong and here is why, but in fact that are saying "Equal outcomes in the context of unequal inputs is wrong", which is not what you asked. IOW, every reply is some form of "not applicable, but here is something more qualified that is applicable."

I don't see a single reply that actually takes your OP for what it asks and offers and answer. That should tell you something about the question.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't see a single reply that actually takes your OP for what it asks and offers and answer. That should tell you something about the question.

Or it should tell you about your reading ability.

 

[ronburgundy]

I don't see a single reply that actually takes your OP for what it asks and offers and answer. That should tell you something about the question.

Or it should tell you about your reading ability.

Your failure to produce a single example tells us alot, though you're not typically one to even try to produce evidence for your claims.

 

[ronburgundy]

Putting my two cents in on the OP. There is nothing wrong with equality of outcomes per se. How the equality is achieved makes the difference along with the specifics of the outcomes. For example, I don't think too many posters would disagree that equality for all before the law in a court is a good outcome when achieved by a fair and balanced process. Equality of opportunity in education is another example of an outcome that I think most people would agree with. Equality of incomes achieved through arbitrary and capricious transfers is not a good outcome.

Your own reply to OP proves my point above about it being a poor question. You modified it into a different question about methods of achieving equality, exactly as I described.

 

[arkirk]

If you run a casino and it is set up to make money, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. If you're a swindler or a cheat, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. It seems there are some who are dead set against equality...

 

[dismal]

If you run a casino and it is set up to make money, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. If you're a swindler or a cheat, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. It seems there are some who are dead set against equality...

If I'm a sports fan, a reader of books, a listener to music, a watcher of movies, an eater of food, a student, a driver of cars, a liver in houses, a participant in pretty much anything meaningful in life I don't want to see "equality of outcomes".

I want to see the best teams, the best writers, the best musicians, the best actors, the best chefs, the best educators, the best mechanics, the best architects, the best providers of anything meaningful in life thrive and have incentives to produce more high quality things.

And if not the best, at least someone more capable and motivated than the average guy off the street who gets paid the same whether what he produces is crap or not.

 

[laughing dog]

Your own reply to OP proves my point above about it being a poor question. You modified it into a different question about methods of achieving equality, exactly as I described.

Your response confirms my observation. I modified nothing. I made a distinction.

 

[arkirk]

If you run a casino and it is set up to make money, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. If you're a swindler or a cheat, you are not going to want equality of outcomes. It seems there are some who are dead set against equality...

If I'm a sports fan, a reader of books, a listener to music, a watcher of movies, an eater of food, a student, a driver of cars, a liver in houses, a participant in pretty much anything meaningful in life I don't want to see "equality of outcomes".

I want to see the best teams, the best writers, the best musicians, the best actors, the best chefs, the best educators, the best mechanics, the best architects, the best providers of anything meaningful in life thrive and have incentives to produce more high quality things.

And if not the best, at least someone more capable and motivated than the average guy off the street who gets paid the same whether what he produces is crap or not.

Every single highlighted best in your list is subjective and based on your reaction to these operations including your notion of the ability to absolutely judge these them. Could a great chef cook food you don't like? Could a great architect design a building you think is atrocious? You make a thing of the best sports teams, when a lot of people have exactly zero interest in sports and in fact may resent it when public money is spent building a stadium for these sports. You are speaking from the position of boss of your culture, but actually only reflecting your boss' view of "anything meaningful in life." You are suggesting that "all things that are meaningful in life" are subject to your judgment. A lot of people would disagree with you on that.

 

[NobleSavage]

You guys want this for sports as well?