[extropy-chat] Seven cents an hour? (was: Riots in France)

[Jef Allbright]

On 11/12/05, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> It's a moral paradox.  If one is poor, then clearly
> it is OK to shop at Walmart.  What if one isn't
> destitute, but isn't rolling in it either?  How
> well-funded can one be before shopping at Wallyworld
> should produce guilt?
>

Like all paradox, it results from seeing the system at an insufficient
level of context.  At a higher level these pieces have to fit (and new
paradox can then arise.)

It's the same insufficiency of context that leads people to see the
iterated prisoner's dilemma game as a paradox,  that leads economists
to conclude from a logical logical cost/benefit analysis that it is
irrational for individuals to invest the effort necessary to go out
and vote, and that leads individuals and businesses to compete to the
extent that they ruin the very environment--the commons--in which they
must interact.

A pragmatic description of morality might be "that decision-making
which promotes growth of subjective values over increasingly objective
scope (of time, interactees, and types of interactions.)

Extended growth of Self entails growth of Other.  Ruinious competition
serves no one.

So, returning from the abstract and back to the question at hand, it
is moral for an individual to deal with Walmart to the extent that
their overall investment goes toward the kind of world they would
prefer to create.

- Jef