Equal Opportunity - Criticism

Criticism

There is agreement that the concept of equal opportunity lacks a precise definition. While it generally describes “open and fair competition” with equal chances for achieving sought-after jobs or positions as well as an absence of discrimination, the concept is elusive with a “wide range of meanings.” It is hard to measure, and implementation poses problems as well as disagreements about what to do.

There have been various criticisms directed at both the substantive and formal approach. One account suggests that left-leaning thinkers who advocate equality of outcome fault even formal equality of opportunity on the grounds that it "legitimates inequalities of wealth and income." John William Gardner suggested several views: (1) that inequalities will always exist regardless of trying to erase them (2) that bringing everyone "fairly to the starting line" without dealing with the "destructive competitiveness that follows" (3) any equalities achieved will entail future inequalities. Substantive equality of opportunity has led to concerns that efforts to improve fairness "ultimately collapses into the different one of equality of outcome or condition."

Economist Larry Summers advocated an approach of focusing on equality of opportunity and not equality of outcomes and that the way to strengthen equal opportunity was to bolster public education. A contrasting report in The Economist criticized efforts to contrast equality of opportunity and equality of outcome as being opposite poles on a hypothetical ethical scale, such that equality of opportunity should be the "highest ideal" while equality of outcome was "evil". Rather, the report argued that any difference between the two types of equality was illusory and that both terms were highly interconnected. According to this argument, wealthier people have greater opportunities––wealth itself can be considered as "distilled opportunity"––and children of wealthier parents have access to better schools, health care, nutrition and so forth. Accordingly, people who endorse equality of opportunity may like the idea of it in principle, yet at the same time they would be unwilling to take the extreme steps or "titanic interventions" necessary to achieve real intergenerational equality. A slightly different view in The Guardian suggested that equality of opportunity was merely a "buzzword" to sidestep the thornier political question of income inequality.

There is speculation that since equality of opportunity is only one of sometimes competing "justice norms", there is a risk that following equality of opportunity too strictly might cause problems in other areas. A hypothetical example was suggested: suppose wealthier people gave excessive amounts of campaign contributions; suppose, further, that these contributions resulted in better regulations; then, laws limiting such contributions on the basis of equal opportunity for all political participants may have the unintended long term consequence of making political decision-making lackluster and possibly hurting the groups that it was trying to protect. Philosopher John Kekes makes a similar point in his book The Art of Politics: The New Betrayal of America and How to Resist It in which he suggests that there is a danger to elevating any one particular political good – including equality of opportunity – without balancing competing goods such as justice, property rights, and others. Kekes advocated having a balanced perspective, including a continuing dialog between cautionary elements and reform elements. A similar view was expressed in The Economist:

It strikes us as wrong – or not obviously right – that some people starve while others have private jets. We are uncomfortable when university professors earn less, for example, than junior lawyers. But equality appears to pull against other important ideals such as liberty and efficiency. —in 2000

Economist Paul Krugman sees equality of opportunity as a "non-Utopian compromise" which works and is a "pretty decent arrangement" which varies from country to country. But there are differing views, such as by Matt Cavanagh, who criticised equality of opportunity in his 2002 book Against Equality of Opportunity. Cavanath favored a limited approach of opposing specific kinds of discrimination as steps to help people get greater control over their lives.

Conservative thinker Dinesh D'Souza criticized equality of opportunity on the basis that "it is an ideal that cannot and should not be realized through the actions of the government" and added that "for the state to enforce equal opportunity would be to contravene the true meaning of the Declaration and to subvert the principle of a free society." D'Souza described how his parenting undermined equality of opportunity:

I have a five-year-old daughter. Since she was born ... my wife and I have gone to great lengths in the Great Yuppie Parenting Race. ... My wife goes over her workbooks. I am teaching her chess. Why are we doing these things? We are, of course, trying to develop her abilities so that she can get the most out of life. The practical effect of our actions, however, is that we are working to give our daughter an edge – that is, a better chance to succeed than everybody else's children. Even though we might be embarrassed to think of it this way, we are doing our utmost to undermine equal opportunity. So are all the other parents who are trying to get their children into the best schools... —Dinesh D'Souza, 2000

D'Souza argued that it was wrong for government to try to bring his daughter down, or to force him to raise up other people's children. But a counterargument is that there is a benefit to everybody, including D'Souza's daughter, to have a society with less anxiety about downward mobility, less class resentment, and less possible violence.

An argument similar to D'Souza's was raised by Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, who wrote that the only way to achieve equality of opportunity was "directly worsening the situations of those more favored with opportunity, or by improving the situation of those less well-favored." Nozick gave an argument of two suitors competing to marry one "fair lady": X was plain; Y was better looking and more intelligent. If Y didn't exist, then "fair lady" would have married X; but Y exists, so she marries Y. Nozick asks: Does suitor X have a legitimate complaint against Y on the basis of unfairness since Y didn't earn his good looks or intelligence? Nozick suggests that there is no grounds for complaint. Nozick argued against equality of opportunity on the grounds that it violates the rights of property, since the equal opportunity maxim interferes with an owner's right to do what he or she pleases with a property. Property rights were a major component of the philosophy of John Locke, and are sometimes referred to as Lockean rights. The sense of the argument is along these lines: equal opportunity rules regarding, say, a hiring decision within a factory, made to bring about greater fairness, violate a factory owner's rights to run the factory as he or she sees best; it has been argued that a factory owner's right to property encompasses all decision-making within the factory as being part of those property rights. That some people's "natural assets" were unearned is irrelevant to the equation, according to Nozick, and he argued that people are nevertheless entitled to enjoy these assets and other things freely given by others.

Friedrich Hayek felt that luck was too much of a variable in economics, such that one can not devise a system with any kind of fairness when many market outcomes are unintended. By sheer chance or random circumstances, a person may become wealthy just by being in the right place and time, and Hayek argued that it is impossible to devise a system to make opportunities equal without knowing how such interactions may play out. Hayek saw not only equality of opportunity but all of social justice as a "mirage".

Some conceptions of equality of opportunity, particularly the substantive and level playing field variants, have been criticized on the basis that they make assumptions to the effect that people have similar genetic makeups. Other critics have suggested that social justice is more complex than mere equality of opportunity. Robert Nozick made the point that what happens in society can not always be reduced to competitions for a coveted position; in 1974, Nozick wrote that "life is not a race in which we all compete for a prize which someone has established" and that there is "no unified race" and there is not some one person "judging swiftness."