[extropy-chat] Re: Ethics and evolution

[Technotranscendence]

On Monday, September 05, 2005 6:40 AM Alfio Puglisi
puglisi at arcetri.astro.it wrote:
>> The strength of your argument stands alone.  No
>> further comment is needed.
>
> Actually, further comments are needed, because I
> often have the same doubts as Bill. For example,
> how would cope someone with an IQ of 80 or less
> and no education worth its name, when the available
> grunt jobs are automated away, and his market value
> is less and less? How can he afford a private health
> insurance?

Well, that's a made up scenario because there are plenty of "available
grunt jobs" still available.  Also, there's the law of association.
It's almost always of benefit for people to associate with people who
overall have less skills or talents.  Ludwig von Mises demonstrated this
in _Human Action_ with his subchapter on "The Ricardian Law of
Association," which is online at:

http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap8sec4.asp

(In fact, the whole book is online for those who want to read it.  It's
long, so it might be better to just dip into it instead.)

> Charitable organizations would probably exists in
> a libertarian environment like they exist in the
> current, mostly socialist one, but relying on those
> for everything not profitable isn't a good strategy.

Two points here.  First, private charity, whether individual or
collective, predates current welfare states.  So, it's not like it has
to be rediscovered in a libertarian society.  It seems a near universal
human tendency.  Second, there is more to profit than just money.
Elsewhere I brought up the concept of psychic profit -- meaning not
telepathy or stuff like that, but the benefits derived which are purely
mental, such as feeling good about something.  This has a huge impact on
human behavior.  After all, some people will choose to work in a lower
paying job if it provides psychic benefits.  This is why, e.g., someone
might work in an art gallery over becoming a corporate lawyer.  It's
also why people volunteer to help others.

I don't see why the scope of this wouldn't be wide enough to cover all
the problem cases.  In fact, me guess is, were people allowed to freely
choose in the first place, they would create more wealth to begin with
and probably give more away.  Of course, it's anyone's guess what will
happen, but my guess lines up more with economic theory and the history
of societies with a wider latitude for free interaction.

This higher level of wealth creation generally drives down costs, so
health insurance and the like will, all other things being equal, become
better, more efficient, and less costly.  It's actually state
intervention that has driven up health costs in modern societies.  If
you want to talk about free markets, let's have a free market in this
one important area, which is too vital, IMHO, to leave to the whims of
bureaucrats or legislatures.

> Pure libertarian free-market environments to my
> eyes resemble too much an evolution-like "survival
> of the fittest" game, where you'll do great if you are
> good (or better, if you have marketable skills/assets),
> and suffer a lot if you aren't.

The problem is thinking that the welfare state and socialism somehow
escape evolution.  They don't.  On a pure free market, people freely
interact to choose what they believe are most profitable means and ends.
This goes for everyone, low or high IQ; low skill or highly talented;
impoverished or richly endowed.

In a welfare state or under socialism, it's still survival of the
fittest, but it's just a different way of interacting.  Now, political
usefulness and political connections become much more important.  Those
with the connections or with the usefulness get the loot.  Those without
them get marginalized.  Notably, under welfare states and under
socialism, overall productivity is lower (and more production moves to a
black market), so less people overall can be supported at as a high a
standard of living.  All sorts of bad behaviors are encouraged because
few people feel the full costs of their bad activities and each person
begins to see other people are either victims or predators.  Envy reigns
supreme and more activity overall gets devoted to taking wealth than to
making it.

Regards,

Dan
    See "Freedom Above or Tyranny Below" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/~neptune/SpaceFreedom.html