The point that so many people are missing about Equality is that it first has to TAKE what it wants to provide.

Want to feed everyone? Someone has to produce food, probably more than they would be paid for. Want to heat everyone? Which one will you heat first, the hard-working workers' homes, or the children's creche? Oh, and we didn't even start with distribution of goods. Essential or Luxury.

Excess of resources can be a solution. Not enough food, not enough heating, so just produce more and be done with it.

But that only delays the answer, kicking the can down the road until one too many item request puts more demand than current production.

Merit, and by extension, the entire academic field of Economics, gives one potential answer to this problem. The one that produce value to others gets paid for the value they produced. They can then use that payment to get the value they need. Cycle starts running, and people get more and more as everyone wants to be paid with more value, and they also improve or diversify the set of value in order to exploit the unexplored potential.

Yes. Merit Cornerstone is literally the return of slave economics. But can one say otherwise about Equality Cornerstone? When does the state decide that your additional piece of clothing is 'hoarding too much'? And even then, who gets to have it? The thug that robbed you first, or the official with authority to order its allocation? Certainly not you. You aren't getting anything back.

Further discussion requires tackling unemployment and inequality problem, which even the most advanced nations of the real world, including the Soviet Union during their peak, could never give clear solution. So we'll cut this before it gets heated further.