It also strikes me how much the old phone network, and its cultural aspects, have faded into the past - particularly when I drive past some derelict bit of telecom infrastructure. Even 30 years ago, it was amusing to watch kids try to deal with a rotary-dial phone. Now even landlines are an endangered species, and area codes are barely relevant. Finding a working telco pay phone these days would be like finding a unicorn.

Meanwhile, on a random roadtrip through rural Illinois yesterday, I was seeing "5G UC" on my cell phone, out in the middle of nowhere. Unevenly distributed, indeed!

>Finding a working telco pay phone these days would be like finding a unicorn.

Even if I found one, I would only be able to make a collect call. I never carry loose change on me, and I haven't had a calling card in decades.

There used to be a way to pay with credit card IIRC?

Not that I was ever exposed to. Calling cards were just account numbers with a monthly statement. If you used a credit card for that, then maybe, but to me paying with a credit card suggests a per call transaction. That I have not experienced. But the world is a bigger place than just me, so maybe it was available in other areas?

> Inequality is as old as dirt

Yes

> unfortunately

No. Perfect equality means that nobody can excel in anything, anywhere and any time. With perfect equality comes stagnation. If you happen to know Rush' song "The Trees" you'll know what I'm talking about:

Now there's no more oak oppression For they passed a noble law And the trees are all kept equal By hatchet, axe, and saw

It is not so much inequality which can be a problem but the fact that the lower bounds can be too low for an acceptable quality of life. As long as the lower bounds are high enough - above the "poverty line" - there can be inequality without that being a problem in and of itself.

Another thing which can be a problem is the reason for there being inequality, e.g. when some rule or custom creates artificial limits for some people but not for others ("discrimination").

For a society to thrive you want people to make the best of their possibilities and to use their capabilities to the fullest extent. With that you automatically get inequality because not everyone has the same possibilities and capabilities, e.g. a farmer on a rock-infested piece of glacial detritus will not be able to produce bumper crops even if he is at least as capable as the farmer in the river delta who can not leave his wooden shoes outside without them sprouting roots and growing leaves. On that same river delta a capable farmer will be able to more reliably produce good crops than one who has never heard of crop rotation. If you take the most productive developer in your company and provide him with a fully equipped tool shop he will not be able to produce as good a widget as would the most experienced mechanic who in his turn would not be as productive a developer. Both can do their best to reach their local optimum but the developer will most likely see that result in higher earnings than the mechanic will.

Inequality is not a problem. Equity - forced equality as personified by the "they" in the lyrics to "The Trees" - is a problem.

Great point. The distinction between equality and equity is an important one, with the canonical image for it for me being the one with the fence*. Where inequality today looks like billionaires throwing parties and doing drugs on their own private island at one end, and people living in tents and going hungry, also doing drugs, but with no hope at the other end, it's not the inequality itself that's the problem, it's that the lowest end of the spectrum is so utterly bleak that people have to steal and commit crimes to survive that's the problem.

* https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shrehan-Lynch/publicati...