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> Clearly, it means that at the population level, we just don't care. You are right in both of these descriptions. What we want (are willing to spend money on)

> Clearly, it means that at the population level, we just don't care. You are right in both of these descriptions. What we want (are willing to spend money on) and what is going to make us happiest, are different things. And capitalism rewards finding things that we will spend money on. Not things that will make us happier. But can you imagine a world where we didn’t make billionaires out of people for making us unhappy? For destroying the environment through resource extraction? Imagine we took all that money and funded and rewarded the scientists who had the forethought to develop a coronavirus vaccine. We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now. Since capitalism rewards the opposite of that, the only way we get to that world or closer to it is by abandoning capitalism as the gold standard for social organization. One small step towards that is to stop idolizing billionaires like Thiel

1996 6y ago
> We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now. Or maybe not, just like how the FDA fumbled the test development while forbidding private alternatives to avoid losing face. I can imagine such a word, were graft and power decides what project gets the money, instead of the population aggregated preferences through the free market. I seriously believe we would all be worse off. It is not about justifying our own preferences, but thinking about all of mankind. If the vast majority of the world population believes "destroying the environment through resource extraction" is needed to elevate their standard our living to ours, we have to gracefully accept they are our equals, and to collectively deal the problem later on. I think you should consider that what we want and what is going to make us happier is generally the same. There are rare exceptions, and we take offense that capitalism rewards them too, but they remain exceptions.

1996 6y ago

> We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now. Or maybe not, just like how the FDA fumbled the test development while forbidding private alternatives to avoid losing face. I can imagine such a word, were graft and power decides what project gets the money, instead of the population aggregated preferences through the free market. I seriously believe we would all be worse off. It is not about justifying our own preferences, but thinking about all of mankind. If the vast majority of the world population believes "destroying the environment through resource extraction" is needed to elevate their standard our living to ours, we have to gracefully accept they are our equals, and to collectively deal the problem later on. I think you should consider that what we want and what is going to make us happier is generally the same. There are rare exceptions, and we take offense that capitalism rewards them too, but they remain exceptions.