The modern advocacy for equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity, subtly elevates envy into the primary organizing principle of society. By insisting that income, status, housing, and prestige must be roughly equalized regardless of differences in talent, effort, risk, or fortune, this doctrine fosters perpetual comparison against the most visible successes of others.

Individuals cease to be evaluated by their own achievements or objective standards; instead, any disparity becomes evidence of injustice rather than a spur to personal improvement. When inevitable differences persist—because people are not identical units—the resulting frustration manifests as raw envy, no longer a private failing but a publicly sanctioned grievance and political entitlement.

Socialism offers no rational remedy for this envy because the system itself relies on it as fuel. Once the premise is accepted that no one may legitimately possess more than another without redistribution, every visible sign of success—a yacht, a private jet, a fine home, a high-earning career—becomes perceived as a direct theft from everyone else.

The socialist does not extinguish envy; he institutionalizes and weaponizes it, channeling resentment from the patient toward the doctor, the tenant toward the landlord, the worker toward the entrepreneur. Without this cultivated sense of unfairness, the justification for widespread expropriation evaporates.

Moreover, socialism lacks any mechanism to halt the process. Historical experience shows that even after revolutions nationalize industry and displace the wealthy, new hierarchies quickly emerge among party officials, bureaucrats, and insiders.

The old envy simply shifts targets—to the commissar’s dacha, the apparatchik’s privileged child, the leader’s luxuries—now rendered more infuriating because they lack market justification or legal protection. Inequality reappears almost immediately, but in a form that is politically unearned and legally undefended, intensifying resentment and triggering purges in a repeating cycle.

Capitalism, despite its imperfections, provides at least a partial counterbalance: the realistic prospect that individual effort can lead to personal advancement tomorrow. It directs ambition toward creation and self-improvement.

Socialism, by contrast, confines ambition within a framework of mutual resentment, where the only apparent path to satisfaction is leveling others downward. This ensures an endless supply of designated villains, as each eliminated "exploiter” class must be replaced to sustain the narrative.

Ultimately, the socialist project is self-undermining because it treats envy—a destructive passion—as a legitimate basis for justice. Envy is not appeased by redistribution; its core is not merely desiring what others possess, but desiring that others not possess it. No scheme of equalization has ever satisfied this impulse.

Until this emotional reality is acknowledged, every new redistribution policy, equity initiative, or call to "tax the rich” will only inflame the very resentment it purports to resolve, leading societies toward suspicion, denunciation, and eventual disintegration.

-cmcateer