When one becomes a program director at a top non-mainstream school, it gives you an amazing opportunity to hear a lot of great programs that you wouldn’t otherwise get to hear. Including various seminars with Professor Budil. He learns a lot of new things and it stimulates further thinking. You might realise that in modern history, those periods that were carried by an ethos of equality brought prosperity, rising standards of living, rapid introduction of new inventions and general progress in all areas. In those periods when people accepted that they had to reconcile themselves to inequalities, it led to a rigid caste society and decline.
We know this from the last thirty years. Many Western countries have adopted programmes of privatisation, deregulation, tax cuts and widening social gaps. All those countries have subsequently become harshly impoverished, and in all of them a deep civilisational decline has followed. But it is not just a case of the turn of the 20th century. The same thing has been happening regularly over the last 250 years.
I am far from saying that a focus on equality necessarily leads to prosperity. That would require deeper investigation. The relationship is likely to be much more complex. And I also recognize that some extreme enforcement of equality can lead to despotism. However, the overall trend is more likely to be that the less inequality, the richer and freer the society. Despite what has been drilled into our heads since we were young.