This post by Tom Papworth depresses me. He cites Robert Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain parable to show that:

Egalitarianism is completely incompatible with freedom. The guardian of distributional justice must constantly intervene to thwart free exchange among individuals.

This is daft. Wilt Chamberlain was in fact taxed very heavily - top tax rates in the 60s were over 70% - and yet he continued playing. His fans weren't 'thwarted' from seeing him play at all. Tom's claim that high taxes undermine incentives is, in this case, plain wrong.
Yes, Chamberlain's fans would have been thwarted, had their desire been to see him make even more millions than he did. But it's not obvious they did want this.
Tom is wrong in another sense. He says that egalitarians are mistakenly 'fixated on money':

What matters in society is one's ability to satisfy one's ends, not the amount of cash one has under the mattress. Therefore an equal society is surely one where everybody's ends are equally satisfied. If Wilt and his fans are equally happy, society is equal even as Wilt amasses his millions. If Wilt and his fans are compelled to have the same amount of money, and as a result Wilt's fans feel deprived of good basketball while Wilt gets to accompany the President to an important funeral, society is unequal even if Wilt and his fans have a similar bank balance.

This is wrong, and not just because progressive taxes did not deprive Wilt's fans of good basketball. It's also wrong because the monetary inequality that arises from such voluntary transactions can cause other ends to become unsatisfied.
For example, the rich might use their wealth to fund political causes, thus generating inequality of political power. Or they might misinterpret their good luck as some reward for their own virtue and so develop an excessive arrogance or sense of entitlement, thus threatening social cohesion. Or they might just spend their money on inherently scarce positional goods, which third parties - who otherwise have no view on Wilt Chamberlain - cannot then afford.
All of this, though, is a secondary issue. Egalitarians' objection to inequality is not, principally, that it rewards the likes of Wilt Chamberlain or even Carlos Tevez. It's that, instead, a lot of inequality arises from non-voluntary mechanisms such as exploitation or primitive accumulation (which is still going on today). Nozick himself saw this. He wrote:

One cannot [his emphasis] use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of rectification of injustice could apply to justify it (Anarchy, State and Utopia p 231)

All of this brings me to my main gripe. If Tom had spoken to any egalitarian, or read Jerry Cohen, he would be aware of the sort of points I've made and would have tackled them. But he shows no sign of having done so. He's just constructed some straw man ('the egalitarian') and knocked him down with a 40-year-old story that actual, real egalitarians have long since answered (whether well or badly is another matter).
He is, then, just stuck in some intellectual ghetto talking to fellow believers.
But of course, it would be absurd to think that only 'libertarians' are guilty of this. Lefties do it too; I don't have to name names, do I?
And this is why I say I'm depressed. What we're left with is not a political discussion at all, but rather two mutually ignorant circle jerks.