[WalterBright]

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless.

A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless.

But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts.

(In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

[jocaal]

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman

[WalterBright]

Good one! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote something similar:

Enforcing equity means nobody has freedom. When people are free, there is no equity.

[mmooss]

You might want to read up on Solzhenitsyn. Wrote some very important books, but not someone you want to quote on ethics.

[WalterBright]

He's right on this one.

[mmooss]

Right or wrong, that's not an appeal to an authority.

[mmooss]

Everyone is both selfish and selfless, to different degrees at different times and in different situations, including the people you apparently believe to be completely selfish (you don't really believe that?).

(Obviously a simplistic binary system, but appropriate for HN comments where time and space is limited.)

The religion and worship of selflessness is a cult - who ever followed such an ethos; even what great American? Did Washington? Lincoln? King? Eisenhower? Who before Trump? Who anywhere at any time is admired for it? Any religious figures? Saints? Moses/Jesus/Mohammad? Siddhartha Gautama?

Step back, stop drowinging in Internet ideology, take a even slightly broader view than the immediate tide of ideology - the concept is an absurdity for its simplicity and morality. Wake up sooner, rather than later.

A functioning society can't be built around either extreme, and because no human fits either extreme, it's a pointless debate about science fiction.

Markets are great tools and work with a mix of selfishness and selflessness - markets are destroyed by the too selfish, parasites who, for example, undermine the essential trust, safety, and integrity of the market for their own profit. The tools of selflessness are also great and built a society of freedom, which creates markets, innovation, opportunity, and social stability - universal education, for example; much healthcare is funded that way; many people wouldn't have effective rights without pro bono legal help and advocacy.

They are different tools each relatively better for different problems. Obviously 'free markets' leave a lot to be desired; obviously we can't function solely on selflessness.

> (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

C'mon; that is a silly point and you know it (though it actually supports my claim in this comment).

[WalterBright]

The US has done quite well with a mostly free market.

[mmooss]

> The US has done quite well

Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

> with a mostly free market.

We both know there are massive social programs, and the market is unfree in many ways - powerful participants often make markets very non-free for others, and of course some are highly regulated to the point of distortion.

I actually favor using the free market whenever possible, most importantly because of the first word - people should be free to do as they like in business too, as much as possible - and because it works very well for the great majority of things.

I think we need freer markets - open to all competitors. Extreme capitalism is destroying the free market because capitalists are driving out competition. It's become capitalistism - an economy allocating things for the capitalists, not for capital.

[WalterBright]

> Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

Some people don't like ice cream, too.

When one makes general statements, replying that it isn't 100% is pointless.

[mmooss]

I think you're ducking the issue. The idea that it works so well is questionable.