|—||statement of a judge when sentencing Lavoisier to death, 1794.|
It is pointless to try to distinguish inequality of outcomes from inequality of opportunity. There is no more right to “equal opportunity” than to “equal outcomes.”
No, I’m not going to rehearse the familiar refrain: “We’re all different.” That’s true, but it doesn’t get to the essential. The essential is: inequality is morally irrelevant. Inequality is not “unfair,” nor is it “fair”: it has no moral significance at all.
|—||Letters of Ayn Rand (via for-life-is-not-a-paragraph)|
Here’s a way to think about an area of a circle, which is \(\pi r^2\). First, here is a visual proof for this formula (reference):
Here’s another way to think about it. The red square on the next diagram has area of \( r^2 \).
Remember that \(\pi\) is approximately 3. So this means…