Bottlenecks: a new theory of equal opportunity

'Bottlenecks' introduces a powerful new way of understanding equal opportunity. Rather than literal equalization, Joseph Fishkin argues that Americans ought to aim to broaden the range of opportunities open to people, at every stage in life, to pursue different paths

Equal opportunity is a powerful idea, and one with extremely broad appeal in contemporary politics, political theory, and law. But what does it mean? On close examination, the most attractive existing conceptions of equal opportunity turn out to be impossible to achieve in practice, or even in theory. As long as families are free to raise their children differently, no two people's opportunities will be equal; nor is it possible to disentangle someone's abilities or talents from her background advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, given different abilities and disabilities, different people