Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Five Facets of the Ideal Equality

There are five facets of the ideal equality for which the Declaration of Independence argues.

(1) The kind of equality that exists when neither of two parties can dominate the other.

(2) Humankind of having equal access to the tool of government. Something has gone wrong when, as scholars have recently shown, policy outcomes routinely track the stated preferences of the affluent but not those of the middle class or the poor.

(3) The value of egalitarian approaches to the development of collective intelligence. Experts are most valuable when they work hand in hand with a well-educated general population capable of supplying useful social knowledge to deliberations.

(4) The egalitarian practices of reciprocity. How well do citizens do at thinking of themselves as receiving benefactions from their fellow citizens and owing them benefits in return?

(5) The equality entailed in sharing ownership of public life and in co-creating our common world. When we worry, for instance, that young people don’t vote or are apathetic, we recognize that we’ve failed to cultivate in them a sense of having an equal ownership stake in what we make together.

Source: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
By Danielle Allen © 2014l Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, NY; pp. 108-109.

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