"The way that hundreds or thousands of hours of human lives swirl about their whims" and many other little quotes in the thread betray the real motivation here.

"The way that hundreds or thousands of hours of human lives swirl about their whims" and many other little quotes in the thread betray the real motivation here. There are many more industries/groups of people that "waste" (under some moralistic definition I would disagree with, but it's a separate discussion) less per capita, but more in aggregate. E.g. most air travel. Or really any large entertainment-related industry (I love video games, but is there really nothing more productive the game developers and players could be doing?) What is really going on is good ol' envy. Historically- primitive egalitarianism, as rational and helpful for building a good society as other aspects the social structure of clans and tribes. This usually happens in practice, too; but for a large fraction (and maybe a large majority) of leftists it's also the poorly hidden goal - "virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"