4 ms·

I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living independent of where they were born. Or at the least, the same "pollut

I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living independent of where they were born. Or at the least, the same "pollution limits" independent of borders. The earth and the climate don't care who pollutes how much. The total amount of pollution matters and there shouldn't be a privileged few consuming magnitudes higher than the rest. Plain and simple.

dredmorbius 13y ago
I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living I suspect we'll get there. What I'm less certain of is what that standard of living will be.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? (Meanwhile the rich consume as usual.) Don't you see how fucked up that stance is?
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? Sorry, I'm not parsing that. Are you missing a negative somewhere? My intended meaning: a greater level of allocation equity may be achieved. If we're lucky, it's going to be at a relatively high level (I'd be happy with a late 19th / early 20th century industrialized world equivalent). If we're not, it will be at subsistence agricultural levels -- somewhere between late bronze and early iron ages. Modern industrialized civilization is a tremendous heat engine, and without high-quality fuel inputs, it will cease to function. That will tend to decrease global wealth and population drastically.
    - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
      Missing a negative! :)
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        Gotchya. As to the statement: life ain't fair. There's a question of whether it's better to let some survive and/or thrive, and others not. It goes back a long ways. One of the more recent debates emerged when Garrett Hardin published his "Lifeboat Ethics" essay in 1974, which prompted fierce debate for several decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~ckliu/course/research/lifeboat.pdf http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~ckliu/course/research/lifeboat.pdf

dredmorbius 13y ago

I wish for a future where every human being has more or less the same standards of living I suspect we'll get there. What I'm less certain of is what that standard of living will be.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago
So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? (Meanwhile the rich consume as usual.) Don't you see how fucked up that stance is?
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  So poor people should try getting rich because there is a chance everyone will get poor? Sorry, I'm not parsing that. Are you missing a negative somewhere? My intended meaning: a greater level of allocation equity may be achieved. If we're lucky, it's going to be at a relatively high level (I'd be happy with a late 19th / early 20th century industrialized world equivalent). If we're not, it will be at subsistence agricultural levels -- somewhere between late bronze and early iron ages. Modern industrialized civilization is a tremendous heat engine, and without high-quality fuel inputs, it will cease to function. That will tend to decrease global wealth and population drastically.
  - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
    Missing a negative! :)
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Gotchya. As to the statement: life ain't fair. There's a question of whether it's better to let some survive and/or thrive, and others not. It goes back a long ways. One of the more recent debates emerged when Garrett Hardin published his "Lifeboat Ethics" essay in 1974, which prompted fierce debate for several decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~ckliu/course/research/lifeboat.pdf http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~ckliu/course/research/lifeboat.pdf