From: David Clark (clarkd@rccconsulting.com)
Date: Thu May 12 2005 - 10:51:03 MDT
> Reading into his sentences, he is saying that we are morally better off
> treating people equally, even though they may be different in this
context.
>
> To offer some defense of this position, even though none was reported,
> one might presume that highlighting the differences between people can
> lead to unwarrented judgements about them, even though the differences
> might be real. The argument is twofold: one is psychological, one is
> contextual.
How does it help society to 'downplay' differences when the full truth is
required to have a fully informed opinion when making decisions? Recently I
read in the paper that 50% of the Canadian Federal income tax payers paid
less than 5% of all the income tax collected. We have a socialist party
(NDP) that insists on telling everyone that companies and wealthy people
aren't paying their fair share. My point is that it is politically
incorrect to talk about the % contribution to our national coffers by the
lower half of our population, so people in general have no clue who is
paying the bill.
The idea of treating people equally in whatever context, even though they
are obviously not equal, sounds exactly like the underlying principal behind
socialism. Socialism has never worked in our world on a large scale because
it doesn't consider the fact that people's productivity is greatly
influenced by motivation. If the differences are artificially lessened then
the incentive for the less productive is also lessened and people are less
likely to do any better. Some pressure is required for people to do their
best, even if those same people would prefer not to experience the pressure.
Very often I have read that women earn much less than what men do. This
could be because women are discriminated against when it comes to their
salary or any number of other reasons. Without public discourse on why
these differences occur, we can't know in any real way if the difference is
just or not.
To look at history and say that differences have been badly used so we
shouldn't look at differences, is burying your head in the sand. Although I
agree that discrimination has been unjust at times in the past, that doesn't
mean that all discrimination is bad. Isn't it ok to discriminate against
brain surgeons that have only operated on frogs? If you have 1 position and
10 people have applied then some discrimination must to used to select just
one.
Businesses make budgets so that as their economic year progresses, they can
see the differences (plus/minus) between the year they have predicted
(budget) and reality as it happens. The reason for this is to highlight the
differences and investigate and take action to remediate the consequences of
that difference. Analyzing the differences is normally the best way to
identify problems and discover new information. To avoid looking at
differences takes away one of the best learning tools humans have.
There is no way to stop most people from coming to conclusions that are not
based on the facts and an accurate look at the differences. Stupid people
will believe stupid things no matter that you hide the truth or not. The
question is whether the truth and the differences will be discussed by all
the others or not.
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