![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And liberals are also fairly confident that “hierarchies of competence” do not fully explain the disparate market incomes of the one percent and middle class, in a nation where beloved public school teachers live on the edge of poverty, and Donald Trump lives in the White House. Progressives also feel it safe to say that the economic chasm between black and white households might have something to do with the fact that, for most of American history, chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, and discriminatory housing policies barred the vast majority of African-Americans from the opportunity to accrue wealth. The left, by contrast, assumes that the gender-wage gap (at least partially ) reflects the fact that women have been so thoroughly and durably subordinated in the United States, men in Oklahoma and North Carolina still had the legal right to rape their wives as recently as 1993. Jordan Peterson’s default assumption is that in “Western societies” such inequalities primarily reflect “ hierarchies of competence” that redound to benefit of the public as a whole. The reason (most) progressives posit the gender-wage gap - or racial disparities in incarceration, or income inequality - as self-evident testaments to injustice is not that they are committed to “equality of outcomes.” Rather, it is that they believe that in a society as racist, sexist, and economically stratified as our own, it is safe to assume that such inequalities are not solely rooted in meritocracy or social utility. And even those lefties who are genuinely committed to socializing the means of production are, typically, quite comfortable with the survival of material inequality within a narrow band (to incentivize and reward socially useful labor). seem to want little more than the same suite of social welfare programs enjoyed by their peers in capitalist Western Europe. These days, most self-identified “socialists” in the U.S. ![]() I do not know any feminists who blame the patriarchy for the fact that no woman has ever played middle linebacker in the NFL. When liberals do this, they do not (generally) intend to suggest that all human beings are equal in aptitude - or that fairness requires total equality in the material and social conditions of all individuals and demographic groups. Progressive commentators (and social media users) routinely present racial and gender disparities as dispositive evidence of social injustice. While wholly divorced from social reality, the origins of Peterson & Co.’s obsession with radical egalitarianism are plain to see. Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan - and just about every other prominent critic of “social justice warriors” - regularly decry the left for abandoning the American ideal of “equality of opportunity” for the Marxist dream of “equality of outcomes.” His fellow travelers in the so-called “ Intellectual Dark Web” also believe that it is extremely important - and incredibly brave - to say that full communism is a bad idea in Donald Trump’s United States. In his book, YouTube videos, lectures, and newspaper interviews, the Canadian psychologist - turned patron-saint of “ failsons” - decries the notion that justice requires total economic equality with such fervor and frequency, you’d think he was speaking from a Stalinist gulag.Īnd yet, he is far from alone in this fixation. Jordan Peterson believes that America is besieged by “postmodernists” who wish to build an economic system that will guarantee “equal outcomes” for all individuals. In the United States today, the richest 0.1 percent of households command as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined the average CEO collects 140 times as large a salary as his (or, very occasionally her) typical employee the median white family is 12 times richer than the median black one and the superrich can expect to live 15 years longer than the poor.Īnd North America’s most influential public intellectual has convinced himself that one our society’s biggest problems is its excessive intolerance for inequality. Photo: Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images Jordan Peterson, standing atop a “hierarchy of competence.” ![]()
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