If your moral views are such that you think equality is important for other consequences like social stability and crime, then one might expect equality to be used by said people as a proxy and that on the margins you'd expect more people to move to more equal states.
If someone's views are not consequentialist, such that they believe it is incumbent on everyone else to affirm the morality of equality, but that this is not linked in any way to actionable consequences of things people subjectively care about, it would still be the case that Caplan is right here. Sure, it could be "good" in the philosophers sense but not in the sense that anyone literally cares about.
This seems to me to just affirm the argument Caplan and others make, though, that it's precisely the case that the extent to which people act on equality is either as a low-cost signal like voting or small dollar donations (which Caplan has other arguments about), or in a circumstance where it directly contributes to some other substantive goal like poverty reduction.
The example of moving on the basis of equality (and gentrification concerns as the other side of the same coin) is used precisely because when equality *isn't* a proxy, it stops being used as a measure. This is an example where the use as a proxy and use as a measure breaks more explicitly than it does with respect to poverty, since it has a narrower index. That would seem to affirm the notion that people are mistaken (if not insincere) about their concern for equality as such, and rather more interested in particular, more directly observable outcomes vaguely associated with equality.
If your moral views are such that you think equality is important for other consequences like social stability and crime, then one might expect equality to be used by said people as a proxy and that on the margins you'd expect more people to move to more equal states.
If someone's views are not consequentialist, such that they believe it is incumbent on everyone else to affirm the morality of equality, but that this is not linked in any way to actionable consequences of things people subjectively care about, it would still be the case that Caplan is right here. Sure, it could be "good" in the philosophers sense but not in the sense that anyone literally cares about.
I've known people that live in ghetto type neighborhoods to increase equality. I think its dumb and it rarely works out, but they genuinely believe.
This seems to me to just affirm the argument Caplan and others make, though, that it's precisely the case that the extent to which people act on equality is either as a low-cost signal like voting or small dollar donations (which Caplan has other arguments about), or in a circumstance where it directly contributes to some other substantive goal like poverty reduction.
The example of moving on the basis of equality (and gentrification concerns as the other side of the same coin) is used precisely because when equality *isn't* a proxy, it stops being used as a measure. This is an example where the use as a proxy and use as a measure breaks more explicitly than it does with respect to poverty, since it has a narrower index. That would seem to affirm the notion that people are mistaken (if not insincere) about their concern for equality as such, and rather more interested in particular, more directly observable outcomes vaguely associated with equality.