I agree with much in the target article. The many societies labeled “egalitarian” contain varying degrees of inequality in various domains. However one defines the category, it neither contains all hunter-gatherer societies nor excludes all those reliant on domesticates (Gurven et al., Reference Gurven, Borgerhoff Mulder, Hooper, Kaplan, Quinlan, Sear, Schniter, von Rueden, Bowles, Hertz and Bell2010; Smith et al., Reference Smith, Hill, Marlowe, Nolin, Wiessner, Gurven, Bowles, Borgerhoff Mulder, Hertz and Bell2010). The mix of self-interest, collective solidarity, and kin favoritism (the last of these scarcely mentioned in the target article) in relatively egalitarian societies is a complex and unsettled question. The authors also do a good job of delineating the various processes that help generate realized levels of (in)equality: status-seeking versus status-leveling, reputation building, consensus decision-making, resource sharing (whether demanded or freely given), and mobility (or more generally, outside options). And I definitely agree with their critique of the revisionist view that egalitarian societies, properly defined, are either mythical or were uncommon in the Paleolithic and absent in modern times.

But these points are commonly made in the professional literature on small-scale societies, if not in popular accounts. Most anthropologists have recognized for decades that inequalities exist in even the most “egalitarian” societies. The usual qualifier is that equality of opportunity exists within age and gender categories – see, for example, the quotation from Fried (Reference Fried1967) in section 2. What does the target article offer that is novel? First, much attention is paid to how (in)equality differs by domain (e.g., leadership versus wealth versus prestige) within any given society. While this is not a new idea, as the citations within the target article document, the authors provide an excellent comparative analysis. Second, we are urged to replace outcome-based views of (in)equality with process-based ones. Finally, the complexities of delineating preferences underlying behavior in egalitarian systems are discussed at length.

Although it is important to identify and analyze the processes that generate (in)equality in any given case, sometimes this is insufficient. The same process (e.g., resource sharing) might vary considerably in potency, depending on how it is enacted as well as on the effect of countervailing or reinforcing processes. Thus, progressive taxation can be mild (only a slightly higher tax rate for the rich) or strong, and even a steeply progressive tax rate schedule can be thwarted by various means of avoiding taxes available to those wealthy enough to pursue complex schemes. More relevant to small-scale societies, even when demand-sharing is normative, it can be blunted if resources are hidden from public view or consumed by solitary foragers before they return to camp – both well-documented practices among Hadza and other foragers.

Conversely, a focus on outcomes is equally important, as we often want to know how unequal some population or society is. Indeed, the entire section 3 of the target article, as well as many other passages, concerns (in)equality in outcomes. The very definition of egalitarian societies offered here as ones “where socio-ecological circumstances enable most individuals to successfully secure their own resource access, status, and autonomy” is just as outcome-based as the classic definitions criticized, with the added problem that “successfully” is inherently vague.

Mattison et al. (Reference Mattison, Smith, Shenk and Cochrane2016) state that “all human societies exhibit inequalities in power and prestige, but are conventionally termed ‘egalitarian’ if, within gender and age classes, inequalities are achieved (and therefore relatively ephemeral) and access to subsistence resources is equal.” The target article quotes only the final phrase and terms it outcome-based, but the full quotation gives equal weight to process (achieved vs. ascribed). More recently, we define egalitarian as “social relations characterized by primarily achieved status differences (rather than inherited or otherwise ascribed), excluding those due to age or gender” (Smith, Mattison, & Dinapoli, Reference Smith, Mattison, Dinapoli, Richerson, Bednar, Currie, Gavrilets and Wallis2022).

Regarding different domains of (in)equality, I fail to see why a “focus on outcome puts emphasis squarely on inequality sensu lato.” This problem only arises if claims about (in)equality are overgeneralized or not given operational definitions. Various anthropologists, economists, epidemiologists, and others have produced research focused on the degree of inequality in quite narrowly defined domains. A prominent example is the GINI Project by archaeologists that uses variation in house size as a proxy for wealth inequality (Kohler, Bogaard, & Ortman, Reference Kohler, Bogaard and Ortman2025). Another is the extensive research on reproductive skew, including in human populations (Ross et al., Reference Ross, Hooper, Smith, Jaeggi, Smith, Gavrilets, Zohora, Ziker, Xygalatas, Wroblewski and Wood2023).

A desire for autonomy as well as status-seeking may well be universals – features of human (or perhaps mammalian or even vertebrate) nature. But as the authors recognize, the factors that affect how and to what extent they are realized are socioecological. A key task of anthropological inquiry is to explain the evolution of social structures and their resulting diversity. How does one go from a world where most humans live in small-scale societies with relatively equal distribution of wealth and power to today’s world (or that of, say, Mesopotamia some three millennia ago) where that distribution is highly unequal and based more on ascribed (inherited) privileges than on achievements?

Although “the assertion of individual autonomy” might allow “relatively equitable distributions of both resources and political power to develop” via “refusal to acquiesce to arbitrary or unreasonable demands, and through insistence on shares in others’ resources,” when some people have much more wealth and power than others, such assertion becomes relatively or even absolutely ineffectual. So why is it effective in many small-scale societies? As argued in the target article, ecological and technological variables provide at least partial answers. Empirical research, guided by theory from evolutionary ecology and economics, reveals the impact of wealth inheritance (Bowles, Smith, & Borgerhoff Mulder, Reference Bowles, Smith and Borgerhoff Mulder2010) and control over clumped natural resources such as fish stocks (Smith & Codding, Reference Smith and Codding2026) in setting some small-scale societies on the path to institutionalized inequality.

In sum, I agree with many elements of the target article and applaud the clarity and thoroughness with which it surveys current research on the topic. My questions or concerns focus on its criticisms of outcome-based views of (in)equality, and what I see as insufficient attention to the factors which can limit the effectiveness of leveling processes.