Igualdade e outras falácias

Por Leandro Oliveira

The Hoonde Menuhin school in the south of England is also a place of privilege. Musically talented children from all over the world compete for a chance to come here to study.

Much of the moral fervor behind the drive for equality comes from the widespread belief that it is not fair that some children should have a great advantage over others simply because they happen to have wealthy parents. Of course it is not fair, but is there any distinction between the inheritance of property and the inheritance of what, at first sight, looks very different. These youngsters have inherited wealth, not in the form of bonds or stocks, but in the form of talent. That 15_year_old is an accomplished cellist. His father is a distinguished violinist. It is no accident that most of the children at this school come from musical families. The inheritance of talent is no different from an ethical point of view from the inheritance of other forms of property, of bonds, of stocks, of houses, or of factories. Yet, many people resent the one but not the other.

Or look at the same issues from the point of view of the parent: if you want to give your child a special chance, there are different ways you can do it. You can buy them an education - an education that will give him skills enabling him to earn a higher income; or, you can buy him a business or you can leave him property, the income from which will enable him to live better. Is there any ethical difference between these three ways of using your property, or again, if the state leaves you any money to spend over and above taxes, should you be permitted to spend it on riotous living but not permitted to leave it to your children? The ethical issues involved are subtle and complex. They are not to be resolved by resort to such simplistic formulas as fair shares for all. Indeed, if you took that seriously, it is the youngsters with less musical skills, not those with more, who should be sent to this school in order to compensate for their inherited disadvantage.

(...)

SOWELL: ...that exists now, but the question of it is, those processes may indeed reduce freedom greatly. I would go beyond the question of equality and put it more generally that any process to ascribe any status to any group of people, equality, inferiority, superiority, must necessarily reduce freedom because whatever the government wishes to ascribe to any group, whatever "place", to use the phrase that was very common in the south that blacks "should have their place", whatever place the government is going to assign to people: that place will not coincide (wait) that place will not coincide either with what all those people are doing or with how others perceive all those people because there's too much diversity among human beings to maintain any system of ascribed status from the top is going to mean reducing people's freedom across the spectrum. That's the point.

PIVEN: People have an ascribed status. It isn't as if government by its intervention creates it, people are born into this world in a given specter of the society and many, many of them are born at the bottom of the society. The argument of, about equality of results was an argument that was linked to equality of opportunity. People recognized that unless there was a degree of equality in... a degree... enough food, enough security, access to education. Unless these things were available to all children, then equality of opportunity was merely a mockery. That's why equality of results became an issue and it became an issue for black people in the United States and they expressed their concern whatever the opinion polls.

SOWELL: You expressed it, dammit, look...

PIVEN: They expressed...

SOWELL: No, they did not! They did not!

(Aplausos)

SOWELL: Dammit!

PIVEN: They expressed that.

MCKENZIE: Frances finish it and then reply.

PIVEN: They expressed their will by their extraordinary participation in a protest movement that began in the late 1950s and didn't end until the 1960s.

SOWELL: I have never...

PIVEN: Intellectuals were not in that protest movement. Black people were in that protest.

SOWELL: You want me to answer or do you want to keep on? Do you want me to answer it?

PIVEN: I've finished.

SOWELL: Good. Black people have never supported, for example, affirmative action, quotas, anything of that sort. Wherever polls have been taken of black opinion on such matters as should people be paid equally or should there be this or that. Black people have never taken a position that you described. So it is not a question of what black people choose to do: it's what you choose to put in the mouths of black people and it's what you choose to project. It is not what any black people have ever said anywhere that you could put your finger on.

PIVEN: It's what you choose to put into the mouths of the pollsters (pesquisas), as far as I can see.

SOWELL: I put in the mouth of the pollsters?

PIVEN: Look at the leadership of the black community.

SOWELL: Like most people I have never seen a pollster...
(Risos)