from Sarah Hoyt, Tiddlywinks — Threat or Menace?

Look, guys, yes, some societies have been more egalitarian than others – mostly very poor societies are egalitarian because everyone is poor. – pioneer societies tend to be more “equal” because everyone is struggling, for instance. However, anyone who’s read bios of colonial times knows that some people came over with all their fortunes, some with the clothes on their backs, some people did the absolute minimum to survive, and some worked their tailbones off and went from rags to riches. As everywhere in history.

Equality? Don’t make me laugh. Not only has it never really existed, but societies that try to enforce it become blood baths like revolutionary France, or hell holes like Cuba. And even then they’re not egalitarian. Those at the top, enforcing the “equality” always end up far better off than the masses, because, well, some animals are more equal than others, right?

So, how is inequality supposed to become a civilization-ending blight?

That I remember from studying history, some of the most expansionist, thriving civilizations were highly unequal. Say, Rome. Or ancient Greece. Or England as a colonial power.

When you ask for a clarification, you get some bleating about entrenched classes. But look here, that doesn’t happen in a free society, where the state is not trying to enforce either equality or redistribution. The only places where rigid quasi feudal classes emerge are in places like the Soviet Union or, yes, Cuba, or North Korea, where the people in power make themselves aristocracy.

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