[leurfete]

I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for the top x percent of people.

If "getting better" means raising the maximum possible quality of life inequality seems unavoidable, since people need an incentive to pursue and propagate technological advances.

[lmm]

> I meet a lot of people whose idea of "getting better" is wealth being more evenly diffused across humanity. If that really is our aim the easiest way to achieve it would be to halt, or even reverse, quality of life improvements for the top x percent of people.

What if doing that really would make more people happier on average?

[ctdonath]

It won't. It has been tried many times, and failed with spectacularly deadly results (upwards of 100,000,000 dead in the 20th century from such governance).

Punishing productivity doesn't work.

[pyrale]

Why make a dichotomy between these two definitions of getting better ? It might aswell mean both.