You catch yourself spacing out on a piece of booty walking down the street. You don't do this often. This is afterall a special piece of ass. It is a rare beauty to feast your eyes upon and not many similar booties can compare. You value that booty on the top 1%.
Let's say you decide to make a bold move and approach the owner of the booty. You engage in small talk and you nail a date. Too bad though. You can only date once for exactly 15 minutes and 35 seconds. You see, since we are leaving in the parallel universe of Equalistan, you have to share this rare beauty with everybody else in your community. The value of the booty has to be equally distributed relative to time in order to avoid ass-discrimination.
We almost never notice issues about equality when it comes to authors of books, friends or professors. We always want the best quality when it comes to people. Somehow though we came to believe that the chaotic matrix of what constitutes an invidual, can be broken down into means upon which we can all be equal. We talk about monetary equality forgetting completely that one's capital is financial, intellectual and social. Neither can exist without the other two.
Peculiarly enough, every single time there is an election the subject of equality pops up as a central argument. Afterall most people want to be treated fairly in life and since we live in democracies this is rather inevitable. Thing is, there is no such thing as equality. Even in socialist regimes where equality was a central idea, the concept was never implemented. Nonethess the concept is always flashy and seems to capture every single debate in human affairs.
In theory one human should have equality of opportunity. This could work if humanity was populated by clones. Humans though, much like every other being bound by entropy are not the same. Every single human is unique. Even identical twins who develop different lives end up with different diseases, habits and character. The reason is quite simple. We live in a chaotic world were nothing alive can be simulated to an exact copy.
Surely the masses will vote aiming to close the gap with the upper strata of society. This move though often ends up hitting back like a boomerang. Policy makers and politicians are in a way controlled from the rich. The political world operates to serve those who sponsor their office. Politicians first aim is not to aid the people but themselves. It's business above everything else. The rich might be getting a larger tax cut as a result but they will make sure they get their money back through other policies such as the minimum wage or exporting their wealth in tax havens.
Imagine a world where each person was equal. Exactly equal. That would mean that even parents would not be qualified to raise their children since some parents' input is superior to others. The children would belong to the state and most likely put into equal indoctrination programs. Defenders of Equalistan might object that they're only concerned with opportunities granted by money. It remains unclear though what principled justification there is for such a distinction; plenty of other factors influence children's odds of success, and could be affected by government intervention either way.
In Equalistan, wealth of any means would not exist either. Every person at the end of the day will be given the exact amount of assets as everyone else. Value from anything will evaporate. There won't be any need for different brands of clothing, cars or personal opinions. Everything has to be equal both in quality and price.
Any form of possesion including people will have to be distributed equally in the community. You like the X person more than the Y because of ω characteristic? Too bad. Every single body part is valued the same. Every word, idea and concept has an equal value. If you think otherwise then you will be considered a racist.
All these might sound extreme but when it comes to Equalistan one cannot have any form of deviation because the system would otherwise collapse. Setting the "average" is also another hurdle the policie makers would have to deal with. Who would be responsible on this planet to set a rule that everybody follows? Even if we are talking about a superior A.I. it would be impossible to balance out all the given variables that constitute and manifest every single situation on earth. Humans have different backgrounds, culture, likes, ethics and code of behaviour. How one objectively balances out all these into an accurate formula? How this would be translated into a monetary compensation when at the same time millions of transactions take place every hour?
People who strive for equality end up strapping chains on their own ankles. The most unequal thing one can do is to force two unequal things to be equal. Consider how a person born with a perfect memory would be balanced out with someone with not so perfect memory. As a society we would have to strip someone who is superior in order to reach the average. Every single aspect of life will be crashed into a pulp of mediocracy. Even if we would secretly wish we were the smart 4.0 GPA student rather than the average 3.0 we would have to bow down for the sake of everyone else. There won't be any incentive to go the extra mile since all rewards would be evenly spread out. Innovations will most likely be brought to a hault. All humans, including those enjoying the innovations of the accomplished ones will suffer.
There is nothing wrong with people not being equal. We are all different. We are special carbon conglomerates much like everything else in the universe. Equality is a mere illusion, a false concept of analogy going against every single concept humanity has accumulated so far. The faster one avoids this way of thinking the better their prospects in life would be.