I’ve argued before that the concept of equality of opportunity, as generally used, is a misnomer. Equality of opportunity is, at once, ‘a worthwhile ideal and an impossible objective‘ – impossible because, among other reasons, advantages of wealth in one generation get passed on in the next. Mark Harvey and I reiterate the argument in our recent paper ‘Marx’s economy and beyond‘ (and see also the excerpt here):
Genuine equality of opportunity – or something approximating it, for perfection in this domain, as in most, is likely to be unattainable – could only be based on a greater equality of condition in the parental generation… and on serious efforts to counteract the disadvantages among its offspring that are passed on willy-nilly.
It does no harm to draw people’s attention to a clear restatement of the same point in other terms. Here’s Ezra Klein on the subject:
Take equality of opportunity. Everyone in American life professes to believe in equality of opportunity. But nobody really believes in it. Equality of opportunity is often set in opposition to equality of outcome. Communists believe in equality of outcome. Capitalists believe in equality of opportunity.
In truth, equality of opportunity and equality of outcome aren’t opposites. They’re partners. Companions. Inseparable amigos. You can’t have real equality of opportunity without equality of outcome. A rich parent can purchase test prep a poor parent can’t. A rich parent can usher their children into social networks a poor parent can’t. A rich parent can make donations to Harvard that a poor parent can’t.
The inequalities of the parents always and everywhere become the inequalities of the children. As Theodore Dalrymple has written, “true equality of opportunity is unachievable – or could only be achieved through a level of social engineering that would make North Korea look like a paradise of laissez-faire.”
When people say they believe in “equality of opportunity,” they really mean they believe in “sufficiency of opportunity.” They don’t believe all children should start from the same place. But they believe all children should start from a good enough place. They believe they should have decent nutrition and functioning schools and a safe community and loving parents. They believe they should have a chance.