We like to think of fairness as the baseline. We tell our children to share, we build societies to promote equal opportunity, and vote for politicians who vouch for equality.
But what if it isn’t?
What if the universe, in its raw and unfiltered state, is inherently unfair? What if the systems we build, and even the evolution that brought us here, are fundamentally designed as engines of inequality? This isn’t to say we should accept it, but to understand the true nature of the forces we are up against.
AI Promotes Inequality
Let’s start with the topic everyone is talking about these days. AI. The promise of AI is that it can uplift everyone. The reality, however, is a different story. It accelerates those who are already ahead.
AI doesn’t create knowledge from a vacuum. It is a force multiplier. For a skilled programmer, AI can debug code and write boilerplate in seconds, freeing them up for high-level architectural work. For a talented marketer, it can generate a dozen ad campaigns to test in the time it used to take to write one.
But for someone who doesn’t know what questions to ask, what good code looks like, or what a strong marketing angle is, AI is a confusing black box. It helps people who already know how to do things do them better and faster. The result of this is that the gap between the skilled and the unskilled doesn’t shrink; it widens at an exponential rate. People who already know things leverage AI to become hyper-productive, while those without the foundational skills are pushed further down the ladder, now competing against not just a person, but a person supercharged by a machine.
Inequality in Evolution
No, this is not a new phenomenon. Take example of our own evolution. Consider the intelligence gap between us (Homo Sapiens) and our closest relatives, chimpanzees. The gap is huge. Maybe chimpanzees can solve some puzzles, but that is it. They don’t code, or build concrete homes or drive a car!
Why is there nothing in between? Where are the “almost-humans”?
The answer is an ugly truth: they were there, and we killed them! We weren’t the only human beings on earth. There were other species in the “Homo” family, notably Neanderthals and Denisovans. We used to share the planet with them. But in the brutal game of survival there was only room for one at the top. We competed for the same resources, the same land, and we won. And we made sure they won’t compete with us ever again by erasing them from the planet.
The huge gap between us and other apes isn’t because of some magic jump in our evolution. It’s proof that we won a brutal fight for survival. Nature doesn’t play fair; it created a massive inequality by letting the winner take everything. There were no prizes for second or third place, and the apes were not even in the game!
Credit Cards
I will end with one more example from our daily lives. Credit Cards!
Whenever you pay using credit cards, you almost always get a cash back somewhere between 1% to 5%. Who exactly is paying for that?
The answer is everyone. Merchants have to pay a 2–3% transaction fee that credit card companies charge them (a portion of which you receive as rewards). Would merchants take the loss? No, They’ll just bake that cost into the price of their products. A milk packet or a t-shirt costs slightly more for every single customer to cover this expense.
So, who wins and who loses?
The person who can qualify for and responsibly use a high-reward credit card, which in most cases is someone with a good income and credit score, gets a cashback on every purchase. The person who can’t get approved for a premium card, and pays with cash or UPI or debit card, pays the exact same inflated price but gets nothing back.
In essence, the poor, the unbanked, and the financially struggling are paying a hidden tax on every purchase to subsidize the lifestyles of the rich. It’s a small, almost invisible, transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, repeated millions of times a day. This is how the system keeps the inequality going on its own.
Is There a Solution?
Just because we see how things are, it doesn’t mean we should give up. the point isn’t to feel helpless. It is just that, fighting for fairness isn’t like fixing a small, simple problem. It’s like pushing back against a very strong force, like gravity. You can’t just get rid of gravity, but by understanding how it works, you can build an airplane that flies.
I don’t have an easy solution to offer, because there isn’t one! The most important first step is to stop looking for quick fixes and to see the system for what it is. My hope is that you start to notice these patterns of inequality in your own life. And when you notice, think about how would you solve it, or is it even solvable!