No. What you describe as rational is, you might say, not well reasoned. If your reason only operates on the next several hours or days into the future, perhap

No. What you describe as rational is, you might say, not well reasoned. If your reason only operates on the next several hours or days into the future, perhaps you have a point. I intend to live my entire life with as much happiness and joy as possible. Rationally, my thriving over years far outweighs any mere survival in a short-sighted sense. And importantly, your idea of what is rational doesn't lead there. It's simply foolish, momentary satiation. For anyone taking your proposed rational course, however, me and my more rationally self-interested cohorts will eventually get wind of that game (assuming they act "rationally" according to your proposition), we'll band together to defeat them: after all it's in our interest to do so. Not that we're somehow altruists, but that we're self-interested for the long term, over the course of our lives rather than the next meal. But even so, we don't need the threat of being pummeled by opponents to recognize the course of action you propose as "rational" is mere fools gold; we can see the benefits of the products of others as being far more enhancing than any one meal or some temporary bit of wealth. I gain tremendous benefit from the productivity of other people. Some of those people are artists, some are sanitation workers, some are engineers, and almost all I will have never known individually or even of their existence beyond the output of their minds and labor. It is in -my interest- that -they- thrive in a reasonable way, too. It's in my rational self-interest that they know they will reap the rewards of their efforts, rather than for me to simply steal it and undermine that trust. All of this I can derive from the rational pursuit of my own self-interest.