Rant: the older I get, the more I think that "value" (our social evaluation of worth) should be based on nothing more than hours of labor. An hour of labor from

Rant: the older I get, the more I think that "value" (our social evaluation of worth) should be based on nothing more than hours of labor. An hour of labor from someone with a 130-IQ might carry a higher price on the market than an hour of labor from someone with a 90-IQ, but that doesn't mean our society should perceive the former as being more "valuable." Because at the end of the day, each person is giving up the same hour of life on this earth God gave him. To take this to its extreme: If Superman existed, would he be just as valuable as a normal person? If he needed a kidney, would it not make sense to move him up on the transplant list? After all, doing so would save countless lives. At some point, the disparity in abilities becomes so great that only an ideologue can claim people are equal. I agree that it's important to lift the veil of ignorance only in special circumstances (employment, limited educational opportunities, etc), but one should avoid defining people as equal when what we really should be doing is treating them as equal. One should also note that who is doing the work isn't important. It's what is being done that matters. Whether it's an executive or a janitor, the same amount of good is being done volunteering at a soup kitchen. The difference is that the executive could do more good by working at his job and donating an hour's worth of pay to the soup kitchen. That's the sense in which a person can be more valuable to society. From Money: The Unit of Caring[1]: > There's this thing called "Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage". There's this idea called "professional specialization". There's this notion of "economies of scale". There's this concept of "gains from trade". The whole reason why we have money is to realize the tremendous gains possible from each of us doing what we do best. > This is what grownups do. This is what you do when you want something to actually get done. You use money to employ full-time specialists. 1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/