Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. You started an ideological flamewar and perpetuated it below. We ban accounts that do that.

HN's guidelines say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Please follow that one along with the others.

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Then we must get right of all private law firms. Why should a wealthy person get a better lawyer?

> Why should a wealthy person get a better lawyer

The moment we acknowledge that some lawyers (doctors, teachers, chefs, etc.) are better and some are worse, we must by necessity accept that there is no such thing as equality. Because some will by necessity get a better deal, and some will get a poorer one.

> The moment we acknowledge that some lawyers (doctors, teachers, chefs, etc.) are better and some are worse, we must by necessity accept that there is no such thing as equality. Because some will by necessity get a better deal, and some will get a poorer one.

Some analogies work better here than others. Sure, a rich person may get a better chef and better food than a poor person.

But should a rich person get better justice than a poor person? The entire idea of justice is that it's blind, everyone who comes before it is equal. If we accept the fact that rich folks get more justice than poor folks, we are by definition admitting that there is no justice at all.

Not at all, we could make the process random and take money out of the equation. We already do that with some services - you dont get to choose the best firemen, soldiers or policemen.

You realize that "the law" don't really have a good track record of making things fair for the average person?

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” - Anatole France

Besides, what does equality under the law mean? Arguably we already have that, but we see massive inequalities that cannot be entirely chalked up to inherent dispositions of the people that face them. Either the law, in its equality, does not do as it should (in which case the justice system needs strengthening), or the pure bluntness of law is insufficient for change.

How does one encode "meritocracy", into the law without being unjust and interfering with private life?

What if we were to find an inequality that can be remedied with law? Would it mean that we should use the law, to imprison people?

Or how about conflicts of rights? Many feminists (rightly or wrongly) claim that the pornographer's right to freedom of speech interferes with women's equality - some (Maitra, Langton, Hornsby, et al.) claim that it interferes with womens' right to be understood (and thereby freedom of speech)?

Is justice blind, as is often claimed? There are reasons to doubt that even Rawls himself considered the current system of justice as near his theory of the veil of ignorance.

The law, considered alone, does not do a great job of reducing inequality, except as a gesture.

Please don't use HN for ideological battle. This kind of rhetoric is predictable and tedious regardless of which ideology you're for or against. What we want here is curious conversation, which is in another area altogether.

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What gave you the impression I was talking about equality of sporting ability, or even equality of wages? I'm not talking about either of those, and neither is the article. Equality clearly (and charitably) does not mean absolute sameness.

No philosopher, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, except Barbeuf (in the year 1796) has ever demanded "strict equality".