We now discuss contemporary political ideas in terms of the…

We now discuss contemporary political ideas in terms of the concept of covert narcissism. Egalitarianism readily admits a psychological explanation because it is so impractical that nobody can justify it. To proceed, we need to distinguish between types of egalitarianism. Equality before the law is not impractical; it is a necessary for any valid theory of ethics and in particular for a system of justice (see Kant). Equality of outcome and equality of opportunity, on the other hand, both destroy society by destroying the potential for specialization. Eliminating differences eliminates an important reason that people are valuable to one another. (see Ricardo and his argument on comparative advantage) Although equality of opportunity and equality of outcome appear to mean something very different, they are not different in practice. They both involve concepts of fairness that are enormously costly to implement (even if we could neglect the cost of destroying society) and which would require the government to make value judgments about all of its people. Not only would this be subjective, but it would require an army of bureaucrats to implement to apply these value judgments. I think this is obvious in the case of equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity means that we need to "level the playing field" as if life is some literal game that isn't fun unless everyone has the same starting position. Thus, like equality of outcome, equality of opportunity is a rebellion against real life.