Yeah, I find the view of "equality" here to be weirdly specific. He seems to mean equality of allocation of goodies, and he seems to think that if it isn't the only thing people want, then they don't want it at all.

Sure, I don't want a hellscape where everybody is equally miserable when compared with a well-off world where most people are happy and some people are miserable. But if I have to choose between an equal hellscape and a hellscape where some people are merely miserable and others are extra-screwed, then I'm going to pick the equal hellscape. I want both happiness and equality.

The biggest omission to me here, though, seems to be completely ignoring power. Economic equality is tightly bound with the distribution of power. Powerful people have an easier time getting rich; rich people have more power across many dimensions. People signal their power and status through economic expenditure.

Somehow, though, the word "power" doesn't even come up here. Maybe the thing people "really" want (if that framing isn't entirely broken) is equality of power. That shouldn't be a surprise in that America had a whole revolution about that, and then a civil war to boot.