It comes as no surprise that inequality is on the rise globally. The richest 1% own more than half of the worlds’ wealth, and if that number doesn’t surprise you, you should know that the 100 richest people own more than the poorest four billion – that’s right, billion. South Africa, the country suffering from the highest Gini Coefficient (0.62) (OECD, 2017) is well acquainted with this harsh reality.

While there are various factors contributing to and sustaining growing social and economic inequality, such as the legacy of an apartheid regime, governance mechanisms, taxation, corruption, access to education, technological disruption and, most important, globalisation. Yet one that is foundational, perpetual, and exponential is ownership. Ownership is indeed a prerequisite for long-term inequality.

However, economic theory — in particular, game theory — suggests that when actors, or in its terms, players, are left long enough to play for keeps based on a predetermined set of rules, they may initially defect and/or co-operate, but eventually reach a state of equilibrium where they co-operate, and that equilibrium refers to the point where they are producing “equally” beneficial outcomes for the parties involved.

This begs the question: Are we programmed to create unequal societies (sole ownership) or are we naturally inclined to want for others what we want for ourselves (mutual benefits)? If it’s the latter, then why hasn’t our nature taken over our nurture and why haven’t we been able to successfully tackle social and economic inequality?

One of the main reasons for this, Professor Elizabeth Anderson argues, is due to our misconceptions about the aim of equality. The fundamental aim of equality is not to compensate for bad circumstances, what she calls the creation of equal outcome, but it is rather to create a society in which inhabitants stand equal in relation to one another, which is the creation of equal opportunity.

Therefore, in order to decrease inequality, we need to focus our attention on creating a society where all its actors, be it policymakers, politicians, business owners, employers, educators and civilians are consciously making decisions and driving policies and practices aimed at addressing and creating equal opportunities.

An example of this is when higher education institutions make scholarships available to students from low-income or previously disadvantaged backgrounds when instead, they need to re-evaluate their selection criteria and their investment strategies in order to broaden the pool of applicants eligible to apply.

This fundamental shift requires the adoption of new business models, construction of relevant criteria for selection and attrition, and the composition of governance mechanisms that serve not just the top 1% at the expense of the 99%. With anything new, we need buy-in, and for buy-in, we need human connection.

We need to be orchestrators and custodians of social systems that serve all of us, and provide us all with opportunities, and appeal to one another’s sense of justice, fairness and equality when doing so, building on our inclination to trust in the face of risk and our efforts to be trusted members of society.

Inequality cannot be fixed from the top down, it must be tackled collectively from the bottom up. DM