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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

• 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