hal@finney.org (hal@finney.org) writes:
>The point is, do you favor or oppose someone else's good luck, if it
>is a net benefit to the group as a whole.
That isn't quite the point. It is a net benefit only if the value of
the increased resources exceeds the harm associated with the increased
inequality.
There are good reasons to think that changes in a person's relative
wealth have much bigger effects on how that person feels than changes
in absolute wealth do (see Robert Frank's book Luxury Fever). This
means that it not hard to imagine that something which increases both
inequality and the total resources available can cause a net harm. And
because people have incentives to understate the extent to which they
value relative rather than absolute wealth (admitting that you want
to keep others from getting rich is rather antisocial), it is easy to
misjudge this.
As the size of the benefit gets up into the trillions of dollars, the
effects start to resemble making one person a world dictator. It is
this kind of consideration that would probably cause me to oppose a
"benefit" of this sort that exceeded something like $100 billion.
I will be reluctant to believe people who are claiming they would
support giving someone $100 trillion until they explain why they
aren't deterred by the maxim "power corrupts".
I think this exercise does a good job of illuminating some of the
motives for opposing superhumanism, although a lot of motivation is
probably a plain old desire for job security.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Fed up with democracy's problems? Examine Futarchy: http://www.rahul.net/pcm | http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf or .ps
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