One of my favourite Canadians, the Canadian Mike Rowe (Curtis Stone) introduced me to an interesting concept that solidified in my mind why equality of outcome is ridiculously impossible.

 

Curtis pulled this from a book that I haven’t read, but he cites it in the video if you’re interested. Frankly, the concept is a bit hippy-dippy for me, so you may see a bit of measured skepticism from me.

The premise of the video is that there are 8 forms of capital:

Financial capital – money

Material capital – non-liquid assets

Living capital – plants/animals/ability to cultivate plant and animals

Social capital – relationships with others

Cultural/Power capital – things your community values, tradition, powerful connections, reputation

Intellectual capital – book knowledge

Experiential capital – practical knowledge

Spiritual/Habitual capital – religious attainment, unflappability, disposition toward success

My broad definition of capital captures all of these. Capital is a thing of value that is able to be bestowed upon others in an exchange. You can group these categories into three main groups. Asset Capital  – (Financial, Material, Living), Human Capital (Intellectual, Experiential), and Relational Capital – (Social, Cultural, Spiritual). I’ve sort of modified the spiritual capital category to include non-spiritual habits. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call spirituality a form of capital, so I’m bolstering it. Similarly, I’ve bolstered cultural capital to include reputation and powerful connections such as exists when you’re a government representative, for example.

The reason why equality of outcome will never happen is simple. You can only confiscate and redistribute asset capital. It is impractical to the extreme to redistribute Human Capital and Relational Capital.

A prog may argue, however, that it doesn’t matter. The only “real” capital is Asset Capital. So, they go full commie… from each according to their ability to each according to their need, and we’re all now on exact equal footing asset-wise. How long before somebody with more human and relational capital trades something of value for some money? Now that person has $10 more than the rest of us and one less chicken. How long before the carpenter lends his services to me, takes my tree and returns me a finished table in exchange for $100? It’s not long before the communist utopia turns into a mess of inequality and oppression again.

It comes down to a basic truism. Knowledge, relationships, assets, habits, and power are all of value, and they’re all interrelated to one another. Just like a loom increases the value of a textile worker, non-asset capital increases the ability of a person to acquire asset capital. After all, rich people do rich people things and poor people do poor people things. When a poor person wins the lottery, they’re as likely as not to be broke within a few years.

I don’t know if I fully believe in this model. Calling things like traditions and religious attainment “capital” seems a bit wonky. However, this exposes a basic truth. Equality of opportunity will, by definition, result in inequality of outcome. We each have a unique mix of these 8 categories of “capital”, and even when presented with the same base set of laws and opportunities, we will apply our “capital” differently from one another. Equality of outcome is exposed as the soft bigotry that it is. It’s a forced leveling, a social engineering to subsidize those who have less human and relational capital and to punish those who have more of it.