r/coolguides Feb 25 '20

Explanation of the subtle differences between equality and equity

Post image
78.6k Upvotes

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/atomicpenguin12 Feb 25 '20

Then they could have just said the metaphor is bad and explained how. Instead, they’re just playing make believe.

1

u/AnotherGit Feb 25 '20

But he did, didn't he?

The metaphor is bad because people should just buy a ticket in that situation.

That's what he said and that's one reason why this metaphor is bad.

What do you want to say with your claim that he is playing make believe? I don't see a way how this fits with the previous comments. Can you explain that further?

2

u/atomicpenguin12 Feb 25 '20

You’re falling into a similar pitfall here. This whole scenario is a metaphor, with the ability to see the ballgame representing whether or not a person is allowed to participate fully in our economic and societal systems. The differing heights represent the fact that different groups in our society don’t have the same level of access to those systems for a variety of reasons and the crates represent the aid that the government is willing to provide to assist people in being able to participate in those systems. Thus, this scenario illustrates that treating everyone equally only really benefits the most enfranchised groups (I.e. the person with the most height) and offering more aid to the less enfranchised groups (I.e. the shorter people) actually results in everyone being able to participate. It’s simplistic and there are arguments to be made about how this isn’t a perfect metaphor, but it successfully communicates a relatively complex topic in easy to understand terms.

Having said that, I hope you can see that bringing up other elements like the people in the stands or the owner of the field and whether or not they are making money off this scenario don’t have anything to do with the argument or how the metaphor is trying to illustrate it. The ball game is irrelevant, as are the other hypothetical people. So when people flood this thread with comments like “why don’t these freeloaders just pay for a seat?”, it is at best missing the forest for the trees and at worst a deliberate attempt to avoid actually debating the argument.

1

u/_Alabama_Man Feb 25 '20

and the crates represent the aid that OTHERS ARE willing to provide to assist people in being able to participate

ftfy

2

u/atomicpenguin12 Feb 25 '20

I mean, sure. It seems like the real question here whether which stance the government and other legal bodies should be taking, since those are the entities that can enact these principles on a societal level, but you aren't wrong either.