Why do people think hierarchy is bad and equality is good?

. . . as answered  on Quora. . . .

This is one of those questions that one might consider conducting a poll to find out the answer. But how would we word the questions, prompt the answers? And how would we know if and when the people themselves actually know why they value abstract conditions like inequality and hierarchy as they do? Many people have beliefs and values that they cannot articulate. Arguably, many basic values and attitudes are not possible to articulate accurately, with certitude.

Which is why we theorize, and then compare theories.

So, I’ll take a stab, then read others’ answers.

Everybody knows that people are unequal in different ways. You are superior to me in one way, I’m superior to you in another. This is a fact of life. And most sane people have no problem with these forms of inequality — and one reason some hyper-egalitarian ideologies drive people nuts is that they seem to rub up against the reality of multiform inequality.

But when contemplating hierarchies, we are not really talking about the diversity of inequalities, issue by issue, capacity by capacity, outcome by outcome. Hierarchies are recognizable by being persistent in human organization.

So, “other things being equal,” why would we grant others special positions of inequality that persist? Why would we organize patrols, work gangs, sports teams, etc., with established hierarchies that continue over time and extend over space beyond the natural outcomes of different capacities and talents and efforts, etc? Hierarchies are somewhat rigid in their persistence, and . . . what is the point of that added rigidity?

But take a step back, first. As most of us see human interaction and differences, all our inequalities tend to wash into a rough parity at a general level. Why should one person be exalted above others except on a piecemeal basis, according to each endeavor?

Equality makes sense to many of us even acknowledging extensive and diverse inequalities because, as I state, the inequalities are diverse But, generally, the idea that some people are better overall than others needs to be proved. And that general case requires some extra data.

When we establish hierarchies for a social function, we are trying to match capacities to task — we are trying to make it easier to accomplish some task. So the best berry-picker might be in charge of the berry-gathering group, and the best hunter in charge of the hunting party, and the best organizer in charge of selecting the special hierarchies, and so forth.

The reason many balk at hierarchies is that the rationale for selection of special status seems arbitrary or ill-chosen, or, if not arbitrary, chosen according to standards irrelevant to the function.

Which is why general hierarchies are challenged more often than specific, small-organizational hierarchies. Do I care to challenge the hierarchy of the local fire hall? No. But I may express more concern about the head of the county commission. It is the general, over-arching positions and hierarchies that get the most push-back. Part of this is the difficulty of determining merit, and part of this is that hierarchies are more questionable and challengeable the more basic they are — for, as I stated above, our many inequalities wash out into a rough parity at the basic, general level.

To restate: hierarchies are usually accepted and even demanded on the basis of some merit. But where the merit is harder to figure — and where multiple standards might not unreasonably vie for prominence in judging merit — then equality seems to be the de facto standard.

This is why we have ideological differences regarding hierarchies: leftists generally do not understand how merit works relating to property and markets, and they do not see property-ownership hierarchies as acceptable; or, sometimes if not always, the distribution of property is so obviously orthogonal to normal rationales for (and explanations of) social function. Rightists are generally more accepting of hierarchies, in part because they are more accepting of diversity of hierarchies, realizing that family hierarchies and church hierarchies and business hierarchies are not the same, and the same person high in one may be low in another.

One problem with political hierarchies is that they are based, originally, on the use of violence, so hunters and fighters tended to be conquerors and thus kings, not necessarily on wisdom or justice and the like. Which is why monopoly governance has generally been replaced with socialized governance in modern times, but limited at first to the core services of violence: defense of law and order, for example.

So the idea of socialized/democratized equality grew into dominance of the State because the hierarchies of old-fashioned class and royal monopoly privilege became too tangential to the administration of justice.

And then the idea became to spread this manner of hierarchy revision (by recourse to a baseline equality of citizenry) to other areas where the idea seems (to many of us) less relevant and much more problematic.

Obviously, I think both equality and hierarchy are natural to man, and quite relevant to many aspects of social life. Hierarchy is inevitable in any organization, and becomes more so the more one scales up the size of the organization. The more people in the organization, the more compelling is the case for establishing hierarchy. It’s a matter of efficiency and how decision-making and leadership work. Among equals, there’s a lot of argument to come to a consensus; the more the people, the more the argument. But in a hierarchy, the many have outsourced decision-making and inspiration to a few.

Or, should I say, upsourced?

It is my experience that people generally — and by this I mean normal people — really want leadership. Hierarchy is not a problem for most people. It is only when hierarchies fail to deliver on organization goals and social functions that questions of equality become over-riding. And hierarchies fail to deliver when the standards of performance and goals are diverse and when it is hard to figure the standards and the relevance of inputs to outputs.

Of course, there is another and more pernicious opposition to hierarchy that often masks as this completely legitimate preference for equality: envy and sub rosa competitiveness. One reason to oppose a hierarchy is because YOU want to be on top, and aren’t. So, to increase the likelihood of your own rise, or to punish another for holding a position you desire, you pretend to be for equality.

It is not always easy to determine whether the opposition to a hierarchy is born of desire for group achievement or passion for self-advance. But our literature gives us many clues to this. Shakespeare, especially, was good at dealing with this aspect of human nature.

twv