Anti-egalitarianism is stronger than that: it says that things get better if they become less equal, holding total happiness constant. Make the happier person happier, make the saddest sadder by the same amount, and things have gotten better overall.
IOW, it is not “anti-egalitarian” in the sense of “not caring about maximizing equality”, but rather in the sense of “caring about maximizing inequality”.
Yes, disrupting perfect equality is a good thing in itself. I think that moral systems are not in any way laws of nature, but social constructs, and should be evaluated not by some higher principles, but by their effect on society. In practice equality mean stagnation, therefore any moral system that holds perfect equality as an ideal is flawed. There is an optimal level of inequality for any given circumstances, and it is never zero.
But that inequality is an instrumental rather than a terminal value. You only value it because it prevents stagnation, not because it’s intrinsically a good thing.
Anti-egalitarianism is stronger than that: it says that things get better if they become less equal, holding total happiness constant. Make the happier person happier, make the saddest sadder by the same amount, and things have gotten better overall.
IOW, it is not “anti-egalitarian” in the sense of “not caring about maximizing equality”, but rather in the sense of “caring about maximizing inequality”.
Yes, disrupting perfect equality is a good thing in itself. I think that moral systems are not in any way laws of nature, but social constructs, and should be evaluated not by some higher principles, but by their effect on society. In practice equality mean stagnation, therefore any moral system that holds perfect equality as an ideal is flawed. There is an optimal level of inequality for any given circumstances, and it is never zero.
But that inequality is an instrumental rather than a terminal value. You only value it because it prevents stagnation, not because it’s intrinsically a good thing.
Yes, it is instrumental.
So it’s not anti-egalitarian in the sense used here.