Equality of Opportunity
This concept constitutes a key segment in meritocracy’s spine, and stipulates that people should have unhindered opportunity to advance their position in life. As such, this concept is tightly related to social mobility. There are few critics of this idea, but there is much debate concerning how we implement it.
We find a great example of this idea in the American Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Key Points:
- Identify and break down barriers to peoples development
- Make it easy for people to improve their lot in life
- Create a framework for social mobility
- Utilize technology to improve equality of opportunity
- Compensate for undeserved handicaps in life
- Especially aid children in unfortunate living conditions
- Make education and employment less dichotomous
- Digitalize education and training
- Measure and stimulate experiential advancement
- E.g. nurses morphing into doctors by exp./exams
- Incentivize ambition and punish sloth
- Accept prospect of downward social mobility
- Offer social safety trampoline to avoid negative spiral
- Examples of Equality of Opportunity:
- Grading system in education
- Open e-learning platforms like e.g. Wikipedia
- Training and development programs
- Objective recruitment systems
- Variable/performance-based pay
- Differentiated rewards in sports and competition
- Examples of Non-Equality of Opportunity:
- Monarchies, dynasties, and aristocracies
- Unearned inheritance of excessive wealth
- Irrelevant criteria used to hold people back
- Prohibitive expenses for e.g. good education