In his book
“Animal Farm,”
George Orwell fascinated us with the ever-remembered quote from
the pig Napoleon, which reads, “Sure pigs in the sty are equal, but some are
more equal than others.” That was Orwell’s satirical critique of the communist
regimes in the post WWII world.
اضافة اعلان
According to
the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” the term equality has become an
integral lexicon of the body politic.
Yet as it stands now, it is one of the
most controversial and definition-resistant terms. However such difficulty is
only viewed in the eyes of the intellectuals.
In ordinary political debates, it
is a simple term used in a mathematical way to express the fact that each
individual in any group gets an equal share of anything as the others.
Justice on the
other hand is more complex. According to law, justice uses the same scale to
weigh and the goddess of justice is blind to color, ethnicity, gender, age, status,
and wealth.
Conventionally
people often use the two terms, justice and equality, as perfect alternates
meaning exactly the same thing.
In Arab
culture, this mix-up is often a common practice.
Yet, I claim here that this
lack of separation between the two concepts is responsible for much of the
discontent and anger with government practices.
People usually
adopt paradoxical attitudes towards the two concepts.
They use them willy-nilly
as may suit their respective purposes.
If we talk about salaries, the majority
wants them to be equal for the same job.
No one should get extras, bonuses ,or
any other salary hikes even if that employee is performing way above his peers.
Yet, very few
people raise the issue when
taxes are jacked up on higher income brackets.
Why
would a dinar in the JD50,000 bracket be taxed less than a dinar in the
JD200,000 bracket? If people do not want to acknowledge the efficiency and
effectiveness of salary differentiation, then why would they accept a difference
when paying taxes, especially income or profit taxes?
The pressure
on public sector employees to be given the same wages if they are of the same
rank and seniority has served as a boost to the less efficient and productive
people.
Better employees can always find better jobs outside governments. When
the better employees leave, they are substituted by a larger number of mediocre
ones. That is how window-dressing, overstaffing, and corruption creep into the
system.
Communism did
not differentiate between the less and more efficient which is in diagonal
contradiction with human nature.
Eventually, communism had the roots of its
destruction implanted in its government structures.
It eventually
and eminently self-destructed and broke asunder.
If the
mathematical approach to equality persists, justice and fairness eventually
give way to entropy and lethargy.
A practical manual should be developed in
order to promote a culture of competitiveness, innovation and self-motivation.
According to
Aldous Huxley, “that men do not learn very much from lessons of history is the
most important of all the lessons of history.”
I wish the
Royal Reform Committee all the success in the world.
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