3 ms·
I'm pretty much an utalitairian, and I agree that that should be the objective. But it does raise an interesting point. Do people in "civilised society" produce
by ArnoVW 6y ago
I'm pretty much an utalitairian, and I agree that that should be the objective. But it does raise an interesting point. Do people in "civilised society" produce more than they consume? Some, maybe. But the average person? I have no statistics to base it on, but I'm not convinced.
Yes, we extract a lot of value. From the earth, from others (directly, or indirectly). But perhaps the depressing fact is that in terms of raw creation of value, perhaps "playing even" is not even such a bad "score"?
- jonplackett 6y agoI’ve wondered about this too. I’m guessing a lot of the effort going into society is from other countries. People picking fruits and growing food is hard working going in. But it probably becomes a problem of definition. Is a tech CEO / Wall Street banker giving or taking value if they enable millions of people to do work but consume a great deal themselves. Everything’s all too muddled up
- WanderPanda 6y agoI think dicounting for corruption, the material/monetary amount is a very good proxy for value. So I would say the average ceo yes, but companies relying on government spending (Palantir I’m looking at you) maybe not
- catmanjan 6y agoI think the value needs to be traced to an essential need, only those functions resulting in food, water, shelter count as intrinsic value - by this definition tech CEO's contribute less than an average farmer
- jeffwass 6y agoYou say only farmers and home builders create value. But the farmers and home builders who work at scale require tools and resources created by industry, which in turn require raw materials, an ability to process these materials, and an ability to transport them. So are people working in those industries any less important than the farmers and home builders themselves? Further, those industries are capitally intensive and require a financial network to raise and allocate the capital required so these industries can function. In a nutshell - everything is connected. How do you simply decide where to draw the line of who is contributing an essential service and who isn’t?
- catmanjan 6y agoI said value needs to be traced to an essential need, this covers most industries pretty well - but there seems to be a lot of tech that is more than 5 times removed from an essential
- krageon 6y agoI would posit tech exists almost entirely to distribute wealth without requiring any measurable value to society. It's our answer to what is from a certain point of view a post-scarcity economy where everyone feels that without work there should be no food.
- Retric 6y agoValue is rather abstract, but economic value is arguably equivalent. As such the long term increase in global wealth suggests over a lifetime the average person must have a net positive output economically, though it may be quite small. Further, as infants are unproductive adults must on average produce significant excess value. PS: Extracting wealth from other people is a meaningless transaction when summing the net impact of every person.
- catmanjan 6y agoHow are you measuring wealth? Global debt is nearly 4 times global GDP
- KMag 6y agoDebt is an absolute level. GDP is a rate of production. Debt / GDP ~= 4 years. That doesn't sound insane, particularly if much of that debt is secured, but I'm not any sort of financial analyst.
- iso1631 6y agoBy comparison my mortgage is 3 times my income, and that's not a high level. Of course the other issue is that my personal "gdp" runs out when I retire - thus I have to pay capital as well as interest to continue to own the asset afterwards. That doesn't apply to countries.
- UweSchmidt 6y agoThis "positive economic output" must account for the environmental impact that humans have: We are currently depleting this planet quickly in ressources and biodiversity, and the "carbon tax" is just the tiniest attempt of putting this on the balance sheets. If you chop down a rainforest and sell the wood, is your economic value positive or negative? This inconveniently conflicts with the old focus on economic output, the 1950s baritone-narrated black and white documentary of assembly lines and all the production numbers going up - progress! Instead, the dude in the wilderness might hint at a happy and fulfilled life based on limited ressources.