Declaring [equality] to be a final value makes it invulnerable to arguments except those appealing to other, rival, “noncompossible” final values. Thus, it becomes a matter of (if we may put it so) “moral tastes.” It ceases to be a matter of agreement, unless it be the agreement to differ, to non est disputandum. This is a feasible stratagem, and a very safe one. But it fails in underpinning principles of distributive justice; for stating that equality is an ultimate value is one thing, to establish that it is just is another. The two are neither coextensive nor even commensurate.

-Anthony de Jasay, Justice and Its Surroundings