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Comfort is exactly what people seek. You can't make something both comfortable and undesirable. If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live

Comfort is exactly what people seek. You can't make something both comfortable and undesirable. If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live a comfortable life, then you're implicitly countenancing a world where all people have equal worth - monetarily and otherwise.

tomp 8y ago
They also seek sex, status, domination, power, wealth, fame, ...
james_s_tayler 8y ago
I think the baseline of comfort that we're aiming for is beyond what most of us in the West have. I think the late Hans Rosling's "level 3" probably isn't much less well off in terms of emotional well-being than level 4. And level 3 is significantly cheaper than level 4, so it's not unimaginable that eventually everyone gets at least there over a few hundred more years.
roenxi 8y ago
> If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live a comfortable life, then you're implicitly countenancing a world where all people have equal monetary wealth - monetarily and otherwise. A world where all people have equal worth is a world where nobody has anything, because there will always be someone who will trade their worth for present pleasures and then have less than everyone else. It is possible to have a perfectly unequal world where everyone is comfortable, and one entity controls everything. Indeed, something approximating this is the idealised equilibrium that underpins what 'a good capitalist society' could look like, if faeries were real. The idea in practice is that the people who make the best decisions get all the wealth, so resources are productively utilised, then anyone who wants something does enough wok to produce it (but working in their own area instead of building it themselves). The problem in the modern era is stuff like the 2008 financial crisis, where the mechanisms to take money away from idiot capitalists (ie, bankruptcy of major corporations) have been short-circuited and disabled.

tomp 8y ago

They also seek sex, status, domination, power, wealth, fame, ...

james_s_tayler 8y ago

I think the baseline of comfort that we're aiming for is beyond what most of us in the West have. I think the late Hans Rosling's "level 3" probably isn't much less well off in terms of emotional well-being than level 4. And level 3 is significantly cheaper than level 4, so it's not unimaginable that eventually everyone gets at least there over a few hundred more years.

roenxi 8y ago

> If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live a comfortable life, then you're implicitly countenancing a world where all people have equal monetary wealth - monetarily and otherwise. A world where all people have equal worth is a world where nobody has anything, because there will always be someone who will trade their worth for present pleasures and then have less than everyone else. It is possible to have a perfectly unequal world where everyone is comfortable, and one entity controls everything. Indeed, something approximating this is the idealised equilibrium that underpins what 'a good capitalist society' could look like, if faeries were real. The idea in practice is that the people who make the best decisions get all the wealth, so resources are productively utilised, then anyone who wants something does enough wok to produce it (but working in their own area instead of building it themselves). The problem in the modern era is stuff like the 2008 financial crisis, where the mechanisms to take money away from idiot capitalists (ie, bankruptcy of major corporations) have been short-circuited and disabled.