In the early decades of the Republic, equality meant before God; liberty meant the liberty to shape one's own life. The obvious conflict between the Declaration of Independence and the institution of slavery occupied the center of the stage. That conflict was finally resolved by the Civil War. The debate then moved to a different level. Equality came more and more to be interpreted as "equality of opportunity" in the sense that no one should be prevented by arbitrary obstacles from using his capacities to pursue his own objectives. That is still its dominant meaning to most citizens today. . .

. . . A very different meaning of quality has emerged in the United States in recent decades--equality of outcome. Everyone should have the same level of living or of income, should finish the race at the same time. Equality of outcome is in clear conflict with liberty. The attempt to promote it has been a major source of bigger and bigger government, and of government-imposed restrictions on our liberty.

The persistence of Marxist equality of outcome in modern American thinking is shocking given the repeatedly catastrophic results of this idea on society itself. The list of communist countries who, in one way or another, drove the citizens toward outcome equality in the twentieth century read like a who's who of human rights violators: Albania, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, North Korea, Poland, Romania, U.S.S.R., Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. Such is the hubris of mankind: surely it has failed in the past because I was not the one in charge of it, but this time it will be different.

Each decade the failure rate of countries adopting the idea of outcome equality grows. In fact, of the list of fifteen countries in the last paragraph only five remain communist to this day, and the success of China cannot be divorced from it's largely capitalistic economic structure. Two questions remain glaring, however; why does "equality of outcome" persist with such vigor, and why, with so many dedicated to its success, does it continually fail? Surely, a lifetime of scholarship could precede the answers to those two questions; however, the general principle could be resident already in Friedman's initial assertion. If we take each of the three equalities and examine it individually, a potential hypothesis becomes apparent.

Let us suppose that in the first case only transcendent equality exists--equality in the eyes of God or from our birthright, our humanity. If a society were constructed with sole respect to this type of equality, which type of societal model would best fit it? Likely the anarchist or anarcho-capitalist model would best fit (note I'm using anarchist in the academic sense not the colloquial sense). The positivist idea that rights derive from the State would have no place whatsoever, and the logical conclusion would be a society driven by laws enforced, prosecuted, and adjudicated by private enterprise--the free choice of citizens to pay for and trust in objective third-party arbitration. And the so called third-party arbitrator would survive as a business based on the quality of its objectivity and lack of shadowy backdoor dealings, less it be replaced with a more upstanding institution.

On the other hand, let us examine the society that might best fit the adherence to the idea of equality of opportunity. Note Friedman's phrase "arbitrary obstacles" in his description of equality of opportunity. The implication is that there might well be some natural or systemic obstacles. Natural obstacles, as Friedman later points out, might be, for example, that one child is born blind while another has sight. Systemic obstacles might be a tax levied for national defense, a service that benefits all equally but, at the same time, unlike a progressive tax or social welfare mechanism which disproportionately benefits some and not others. Surely natural obstacles, as previously noted, would affect a society based purely on transcendent equality, but certainly no systemic obstacles would exist in a true anarchist or anarcho-capitalist society. So perhaps a system well suited to opportunity equality might be minarchism--very limited government for the sole purpose of protecting citizens from force, violence, and coercion.

We find, therefore, many similarities and overlaps between societies strictly adhering to transcendent and opportunity equality. Both seem to suggest that rights are largely existential but absolute and in no way subjective. However, unlike the natural evolution evident in transcendent and opportunity equality, outcome equality not only promotes but demands intervention from another party. It is without question a different breed, which Friedman makes clear. Socialistic and Communistic systems both have their root in outcome equality. Marx was clear that each gives according to his ability, and each takes according to his need. Abilities may vary among individuals, but unlike human "wants," human "needs" remain of a relatively fixed order. In the best possible case, none go without as long as all give. But those who cannot give ensure that none go for very long with much.

Ardent supporters of outcome equality point to the necessity and perceived moral high ground of benevolence and social responsibility as a means of dealing with the ills brought about by natural and systemic obstacles to equality. Social ills, they claim, require social solutions and society-wide initiatives. The truth, however, is often lost in the language and the implications lost in the details. Ultimately, they provide no apparatus by which society can be induced to participate in any macro-political rescue without first diminishing or removing outright transcendent and opportunity equality. In other words, outcome equality is gained at the expense of individual liberty, is implemented by force, violence, and coercion, and remains, therefore, an ideology so unlike and utterly separate from both transcendent and opportunity equality as to deny that society itself is nothing more than a voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Society, from the "outcome equality" standpoint, is not something that grows but something that is invented, not something alive, but something dead; and we find that death wherever it is implemented.

Equality of outcome persists, therefore, in an ooze of simultaneous disdain for natural obstacles and a willful disregard for any ethical or moral hierarchy--any sense that we are in fact not liberated as we become equal, but that we are equal as we become liberated. We find it good and honorable to help those in need, to give of ourselves for others. But this goal becomes darkened when we must force and coerce others to that end. Rather than rely on compulsion to achieve our goals, we must persuade in open dialogue others to our opinions, using the strength of our arguments. Compulsion from external entities must end and be replaced with an impulse from within. This is the goal of liberty. This is the only true road to equality.