[extropy-chat] extreme inequality *and* wealth-sharing asdownregulators

[Brett Paatsch]

Hal Finney wrote:

> ....  How much should we feel obligated to give to help the poor?
> This is the question of wealth and redistribution, applied at the
> personal level, and it's a hard question indeed.
 
> Some might argue that we should give all of our wealth until we are
> at the same level of the poor we have donated to.  In this way, one
> life is made more difficult, while many others are greatly improved.
>
> The net happiness in the world would almost certainly be increased
> if each of us adopted this policy.
 
> How can we turn away from this logic? 

With respect its not logic. It is a castle in the air. 

>  How can we allow people 
> to suffer when we each have it in our power to ease their suffering? 

Individually and collectively people are a part of the natural world. 

In history, and indeed before it, there have always been people who
were not only poor relative to other people but starving in absolute 
terms simply because they could not get enough to eat.  Parents do
not as a matter of policy ensure that their is suffient food for their
offspring to survive before having them. They just have them because
they can. Because sex is fun and feels good and offspring are a 
consquence of acting naturally even if they are not a direct aim. 

And sex isn't just fun and pleasant for bright people or for animals
that are likely to have offspring that can thrive its fun for everybody
so everybody does it. 

Human societies didn't invent poverty or starvation or disease (though
ways of living do influence the types of disease) and to some extent
human societies have been in part attempts to mitigate against poverty
and starvation but human societies and the ways in which humans
organised themselves are works in progress. 

If everyone in the world was suddenly infected by a meme that
caused them to want to to distribute all their wealth downwards 
such that there would be no one else alive less wealthy than 
themselves (as a matter of policy) then you would still have some 
impossible problems of implementation unless you did other things
(ie acted on other politices as well). 

In practice there has never yet been the enabling technology 
(information and distribution systems to name just two things) and
levels of enlightened(?) thinking for such a meme to become 
widespread. 

First you'd have to have a reliable worldwide census so that people
could know who everyone else in the world at any given instant was
in order to know who was less wealth than you. Meanwhile the
poorest people are running around trying to determine who might
be still poorer than them as they are inflicted with the same meme. 

You'd need some sort of complex system to implement species wide
altruism. You can't get species wide altruism even in principle without
complexity. Some information systems and distribution systems have
to be global to be able to implement the species wide altruistic act.

I could go on and on but I think its easy for people to get the point
themselves.  

Immediately you'd discover its not just a problem with one prong
- the lack of desire to give wealth away, its ALSO a problem 
of there not being a global mechanism for implementing the
policy.

When we look around at the state of the world (and how we
don't like it) it is worth bearing in mind that we didn't make the
mess collectively any more than we are responsible for it 
individually.  Everyone is trying to deal with the stuff life throws
at them and no one including the very very wealthy currently 
have the resources to solve all human suffering.

Brett Paatsch