The author mentioned in this article was recently on The Grey Area podcast and the arguments and reasoning is pretty compelling. It’s also about the discussion and civic involvement and not a particular limit. But the reasoning behind a Limitarianism makes a lot of sense.
If person A makes 100million a year, that’s 1,000 times more than person B making 100k a year. Can you honestly say that person A is working 1k time harder, or is contributing 1k times more than the person B? Also remember that we’re not talking about the hordes of people working below person A who execute most of the work. We’re just talking about that one individual and their contributions.
Either way, the discussion about the subject is the important thing here. What do you want your society to look like in the future and for the next generation? Even if it’s not Limitarianism, starting the conversation and cival discourse to push society towards a better version of its current form is worth the effort.
Another way of thinking about it is the human potential it would open up and create.
Imagine limiting the wealth of the those with enormous fortunes and allowing those in the middle to become enormously wealthy, while at the same time allow those at the bottom to finally make it to a level where they no longer have to worry about surviving. It would be terrible for those with enormous wealth because they would lose control but it would great for those at the bottom who would achieve a way to take back control of their lives.
Imagine a world where those who never had the opportunity now have a chance to become doctors, engineers, scientists, professionals, creators, builders and inventors. Imagine a world filled with people who have the free time to just create things because they can instead of spending their lives just trying to get by. Most people in the world don’t want to become master and ruler of the universe … they just want to have a nice life, do something useful and enjoy their existence with others. It’s only a minority few who feel compelled to neurotically want to collect every bit of wealth everywhere and pathologically amass so much wealth, it would take a thousand lifetimes to actually use it, let alone enjoy it.
Imagine every poor inner city kid build up an education to become a professional at something and not worry about how they are going to make a living. Imagine a millions of poor kids in Indian and China doing something with their time in engineering, science or medicine. Imagine every poor kid in Africa building their countries and developing new ideas.
The world wouldn’t become a utopia … it would most likely still have all the problems we deal with today … but at the very least, we would have a world full of educated, capable people who would be able to handle it all. Right now, we’re just a horde of raging mindless apes that are worried about dying and will kill one another for a share of a few bananas.
Reminds me of the Kurzgesagt video “A Selfish case for Altruism”. If all those people were educated and working on making the world better, that would mean more people curing diseases that you personally could die from in the future. More people solving global warming and other future unknown global issues, that could harm you or you kids in the future. Etc…
Even from a self serving angle, it’s better to have more people in the world well fed, well educated, living well, and contributing to society.
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The author mentioned in this article was recently on The Grey Area podcast and the arguments and reasoning is pretty compelling. It’s also about the discussion and civic involvement and not a particular limit. But the reasoning behind a Limitarianism makes a lot of sense.
If person A makes 100million a year, that’s 1,000 times more than person B making 100k a year. Can you honestly say that person A is working 1k time harder, or is contributing 1k times more than the person B? Also remember that we’re not talking about the hordes of people working below person A who execute most of the work. We’re just talking about that one individual and their contributions.
Either way, the discussion about the subject is the important thing here. What do you want your society to look like in the future and for the next generation? Even if it’s not Limitarianism, starting the conversation and cival discourse to push society towards a better version of its current form is worth the effort.
Another way of thinking about it is the human potential it would open up and create.
Imagine limiting the wealth of the those with enormous fortunes and allowing those in the middle to become enormously wealthy, while at the same time allow those at the bottom to finally make it to a level where they no longer have to worry about surviving. It would be terrible for those with enormous wealth because they would lose control but it would great for those at the bottom who would achieve a way to take back control of their lives.
Imagine a world where those who never had the opportunity now have a chance to become doctors, engineers, scientists, professionals, creators, builders and inventors. Imagine a world filled with people who have the free time to just create things because they can instead of spending their lives just trying to get by. Most people in the world don’t want to become master and ruler of the universe … they just want to have a nice life, do something useful and enjoy their existence with others. It’s only a minority few who feel compelled to neurotically want to collect every bit of wealth everywhere and pathologically amass so much wealth, it would take a thousand lifetimes to actually use it, let alone enjoy it.
Imagine every poor inner city kid build up an education to become a professional at something and not worry about how they are going to make a living. Imagine a millions of poor kids in Indian and China doing something with their time in engineering, science or medicine. Imagine every poor kid in Africa building their countries and developing new ideas.
The world wouldn’t become a utopia … it would most likely still have all the problems we deal with today … but at the very least, we would have a world full of educated, capable people who would be able to handle it all. Right now, we’re just a horde of raging mindless apes that are worried about dying and will kill one another for a share of a few bananas.
Reminds me of the Kurzgesagt video “A Selfish case for Altruism”. If all those people were educated and working on making the world better, that would mean more people curing diseases that you personally could die from in the future. More people solving global warming and other future unknown global issues, that could harm you or you kids in the future. Etc…
Even from a self serving angle, it’s better to have more people in the world well fed, well educated, living well, and contributing to society.
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Kurzgesagt video “A Selfish case for Altruism”
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