Failure to understand the relativity of value is perhaps the primary logical fallacy I see every day. There was an article on this site recently about someone doing their part to "promote equality" by helping someone receive an "elite education" (who otherwise couldn't have had one). Yet isn't the concept of an elite education - by definition - something that can only exist when some people are denied the opportunity to have one?

In reality, patting oneself on the back for helping one person to succeed is exactly equivalent to hoping another person fails. The human instinct for hierarchy is deep and generally unacknowledged.

Quite. One of only a very large class of such failures of understanding and comprehension.

There's something to be said for seeing, say, that everyone capable of benefitting from a high-quality education gets same. But that excludes consideration of those who wouldn't benefit (at least educationally) from the opportunity.

... there being other modes of benefitting from education, including networking, contacts, and exposure to the inner sanctum.