Equality and its Implications

Two students sit the same exam. One is faster at recall, one is better at argument; neither is equally good at everything. Yet your college treats both of their votes in the student council election as worth exactly one each. Nobody thinks this is strange, until you ask why — because if equality meant that people actually were the same in ability, this obvious unfairness of treating unequal people identically would need defending. It doesn't need defending, because equality was never a claim about sameness of fact in the first place.

In two minutes

The principle of equality is not the false claim that people are actually alike in ability, intelligence or virtue; it is the moral demand that everyone's like interests be given equal weight and consideration, whatever factual differences exist between them.

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