Deserve Justifies Inequality

In this article I want to get people thinking about the types of things that justify inequality. And when I say “inequality” I mean inequality of anything at all, but for the most part let’s address inequality of well-being (e.g. wealth, health, etc.). What are the reasons one might justify their own well-being at the expense of another, with such justification being rational if we were to accept the reason?

From what I can tell, most, if not all, entitlement of well-being over another’s lesser well-being depends on if a person deserves their better well-being over the other or if the other deserves their lesser well-being. It’s the idea that one is “more or less deserving” than another that allows most, if not all, justifications of inequality to take place.

But what happens once this notion of deserve is removed? In other words, once we recognize that a person could not have, of their own accord, done differently and it follows that the notion of being “more deserving than another” itself has no justification?

If you aren’t sure why the idea of being “more or less deserving” than another is an irrational idea, I go over this thoroughly in my book on (the lack of) free will. I’ll probably elaborate more thoroughly in further articles as well, so if you haven’t subscribed do so now. For this article, I want you to just assume that the idea of being more or less deserving than another needs to be abandoned (regardless of what your intuitions may tell you if you happen to still believe in free will). Just use your imagination and pretend that everyone understood that no person was more or less deserving of their well-being than another person.

What does this do? A number of things: first, it exposes the idea of “ownership” of anything at the expense of anyone who has less as simply a human construct that has no real basis. This part makes some people a little queasy, especially if they are privileged. They don’t like the idea that what they have is only artificially “owned” by them. After-all, they may have worked hard for what they have. They think they “deserve” it over another. It’s understandable.

But it’s this very mindset that needs to be abandoned once the notion of being more deserving is abandoned. So what else does the abandonment of being more deserving do? It reduces or obliterates egocentricity. Or at least makes it not very rational if one does have it. In other words, even if one might feel that egocentric idea that they are more deserving arise within them due to an accomplishment they’ve met, they can recognize it for what it is. A psychological response that doesn’t really align with rationality. In the intro of my book I say this:

And of course I didn’t write this book of my own free will. The need and desire to write this book to disseminate the information within to others was one that came about through long processes that stem from events I had no control over. Though my ego desires that I take full credit for my work, the fact of the matter is, I don’t really deserve such. I’ll argue later on in the book that with the realization that there is no free will, we need to move away from such ego driven results, to an understanding of the importance of productivity without it.

In other words, I’m suggesting that I totally understand the control the “ego” can have , and I feel it all the time. The feeling of being more deserving than anyone else is something difficult to get rid of. But just because we have these feelings, doesn’t mean we can’t separate them out. And once we establish the absurdity of deserve over another within the context not having the free will ability defined here, we need to separate out these egoist feelings and start to picture a reality where we make every attempt to equalize things.

But of course that’s easier said than done, unless everyone or at least the majority of people were on board. Take wealth distribution for example. Currently, if I was to distribute all of my wealth to the poor, I’d just place myself in that bucket of poor people. If, on the other hand, all wealth was distributed evenly by everyone, no one would fall into that bucket of poor people. There would be no person without  food, shelter, clothing, health care , and so much more. That’s because the richest 2% of the population owns over 50% of all wealth in the world. And I have no doubt a majority of those 2% think they deserve their wealth. Or if they don’t, they avoid the deep question of whether they should really “own” it if they don’t actually deserve it over another.

That is not to say we shouldn’t let incentives drive us or that we shouldn’t give others incentive in the meantime, only that once everyone recognizes one person isn’t more deserving of an incentive over another, it makes sense to give everyone the most equally distributed well-being possible (the word “possible” here is important).

So ownership and ego have problems in light of one not being more deserving over another. What does this all mean for equality? It means that equality needs to be the rule rather than the exception.

If we were to reduce the world down to 10 conscious identical clones that live on green goop, and 2 clones had all of the goop, had  comfortable homes, had robots taking care of their health, had excess of everything, and were using most of the resources on the planet, while the others had nothing and were barely surviving their sad existence…as soon as it’s recognized that those two clones are not more entitled to the good-life than the other eight, an equal distribution becomes the only reasonable solution. Of course with 7-billion people on the planet, and an endless number of creatures in the wild, an entirely equal distribution is anything but possible. But if the majority of those people had a mindset shift and understood that free will didn’t exist and what it implied for equality and deserve, many would start working toward a more equal world.

People may begin to see the benefit of working toward a more egalitarian society, and perhaps they’d understand the importance of productivity (in regards to what they have the capacity to do) for the sake of everyone, rather than their own egoist needs. But this seems in ways Utopian, and with all Utopian objectives has mounds of problems to account for in its uphill battle. But even if we could never get close to such an equal world  as there will always be the disadvantaged that we may not be able to help (and various other reasons), we can at least understand that striving for equality is the most rational option. Because the main thing that justifies inequality is this idea that one deserves more than another, an idea that’s thrown to the curb with the free will illusion.

A good place to start could be to work toward people not having to worry about survival. Here is an interesting TEDx talk on how the “freedom” to do what one wants and not have to worry about survival could be beneficial to creativity and productivity (which in turn could be used in efforts to help the rest of life on planet Earth).

It’s at least something to ponder. But either way, if people are not more or less deserving of their life status, inequality has some huge justification problems to contend with. It just so happens that blame and deserve are a big part of the free will psychology a majority of people have embedded, which means there will be no shortage of inequality rationalization in the meantime. But that only highlights one very important piece to this “no free will” puzzle.

So what other things besides blame and deserve allow people to justify inequality? Let me know your thoughts.

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'Trick Slattery

'Trick Slattery is the author of Breaking the Free Will Illusion for the Betterment of Humankind. He's an author, philosopher, artist, content creator, and entrepreneur. He has loved and immersed himself in philosophy since he was teenager. It is his first and strongest passion. Throughout the years he has built a philosophy based on analytic logic and critical thinking. Some of the topics he is most interested in are of a controversial variety, but his passion for the topics and their importance drives him to want to express these ideas to others. His other passions include pen and ink line art and digital artwork.

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