Equality of outcomes or Equality of
opportunity – You Decide!
Excerpt from
Crime and Punishment
By
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“In earlier times it was said to me: “Love your neighbour” and I acted on it, what was the
result? The result was that I divided
my cloak with my neighbour and we were both left half naked, for according to
the Russian proverb: “If you run after two hares, you will catch neither.”
Science, however, says: love yourself first of all, for everything in the world
is based on personal interest. If you
love yourself alone, you will conduct your affairs properly, and your cloak
will remain whole. Economic truth adds
that the more private enterprises are established, and the more, so to say,
whole cloaks there are in a society, the firmer will be its foundations and the
more will be undertaken for the common good.
That is to say, that by the very fact of devoting my gains solely and
exclusively to myself, I am at the same time benefiting the whole community,
and ensuring that my neighbour receives something better than half a torn cloak,
and that not by private, isolated bounty, but as a consequence of the general
economic advancement. The idea is
simple, but, unfortunately, has been too long in finding acceptance, obscured
as it is by vaporous ideals and misguided enthusiasms, a certain keenness of
intellect, it would seem is necessary.”
