> What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.
This is false, or at least unjustified. Sure, an equal society may not grow as fast as an unequal one, and so the latter may take the former out of the competition. But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation?
> But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation?
Don't know. We aren't bees or ants - we're tribal hierarchical apes - so we don't have a lot of isolated (or even positive) "everyone is equal here" examples to study.
The socio-biologist E.O. Wilson, when asked about such altruistic-sounding theories, responded: "Right theory - wrong species".
Of the societies we humans apparently know how to create... We know how to create societies with equal misery. We have from time-to-time been able to construct unequal societies with growing wealth, where everyone did better than their parents, over time -- and than those in many societies around them and in history.
What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.
While poverty is a real tragedy and a real grind, a harm to people that should be mitigated, it's not clear that the fact that someone somewhere might be richer than me is any sort of tragedy whatsoever that needs to be addressed.