Appeal to age? Really? Where's your reliance on merit? The "behind the veil of ignorance" argument from Rawls has a solid basis. The premise is merely that if

Appeal to age? Really? Where's your reliance on merit? The "behind the veil of ignorance" argument from Rawls has a solid basis. The premise is merely that if you were born with a higher a priori chance of living a fulfilled life, why not assist those who didn't get that chance? At the very least, you'll feel good while you're doing it. There are basic human needs that we all share. It's possible to do anything in a totalitarian way, so just avoid doing things in that manner. You can say all you want that helping others causes them to be lazy or weak (after all, you said "There is literally no incentive to do anything productive"), but--let's be frank about the world situation--I'd rather have the problem of widespread abundance, than that of terrifying, indefensible scarcity. I lose sleep worrying about the hundreds of millions of malnourished and undereducated people who are getting completely fucked just because of where, and to whom, they were born. I'm sitting here trying to pay off my student loans, so I can get moving, solving some real problems. Like you, I enjoy the latest and greatest O(log n) distributed social marketplace, but we have to have priorities in life--what is wrong with an egalitarian, humanist priority? Actually, what could be a better priority? That is the ethic I want to strive for, that's my damn imperative. If you're a causal determinist (which is a very defensible position), you can ascribe everything to luck, or nothing, depending on your mood. But nothing inbetween. I don't want to see the word blame or responsibility thrown around without some serious reason to back it up. You want to talk about choice and empowerment and I'll show you a dozen people who have never had reason to believe in their own agency. "Human nature" is a semantic stop sign [1]. What does that phrase even mean? We're sapient apes with tendencies toward the ugly when things get scary, and the beautiful when things get nice. We respond to our environment (this includes other people); in fact, we are merely another part of our environment. There are a few sciences dedicated to studying this phenomenon, e.g. sociology, economics and psychology. The reason you even have a high horse upon which to sit is because you got lucky. You're smart, or well-fed, or connected, or whatever--that's all luck. Good luck or bad luck, that's all it is--probability. And I say: when it comes to living a fulfilled life, fuck probability. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/ EDIT: Obviously, if you disagree, reply.