"Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transce..." — Mary Douglas

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.

Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.