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

[Hal Finney]

Brett Paatsch writes:
> 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...
>
> If everyone in the world was suddenly infected by a meme that
> caused them to want to to distribute all their wealth downwards ...
>
> You'd need some sort of complex system to implement species wide
> altruism....

Apologies for the truncation, but I chose these excerpts because they
suggest that this line of analysis is collective and global, not personal.
You're talking about human societies and collective action.  What would
happen if everyone in the world behaved altrustically, how could we get
species wide altruism.

That's the opposite of my point.  I am talking about personal, individual
actions.  When we make most choices, we don't consider the implications
for the grand scope of human society.  If I'm hungry, I get a sandwich.
If I want to get the latest news, I go online or turn on the TV.
These are the kinds of personal actions I am talking about.

To choose to save someone from starvation by my personal sacrifice does
not require considerations like those you have raised above.  I can
give money to a charitable organization and have considerable confidence
that it will ease human suffering.  Real people feeling real pain will
be helped by my sacrifice.

Again, I am not trying to decide what other people should do.  I face
a quandary in considering what I, personally, should do.  I ask myself,
under what circumstances would I sacrifice to save the life of a stranger?
Or perhaps just to improve a life which is full of suffering and hardship?
What should I consider my obligations in this area to be?

I still say that these are hard problems, and that in some ways they are
harder than those global issues of species altruism and such.  In fact
those abstract considerations can in some cases be a defense mechanism,
a way for the mind to turn away from facing the brute reality of a world
full of suffering, by recasting it in academic abstractions which make
it easier to evade consideration of the effects of our decisions.

Hal