[sixo]

Your dismissal of moral concerns is not convincing.

Imagine a world where the only energy you do is use was generated by a stationary bike you had to ride yourself. You would, generally speaking, use that energy differently than energy you would pay for--you would generally reserve your effort for worthwhile things, and would be averse to farming energy yourself just to power frivolity or vice. How you determine what to put your energy into would explicitly be a moral question.

Instead in our world we an abstractions conceals the source of the energy. But if the moral concerns from the first world had any weight, they haven't lost it now; if energy is anything short of completely free we should by the same logic be averse to expending energy on worthless work or vice. The human being is not a utility monster, but something very different, and moral questions of this sort are central to how it navigates the world, they should not be dismissed.

[stdbrouw]

Doesn't this argument hinge on equivocating between two different definitions of aversion, though? I'm averse to bananas, but that doesn't mean I think it's immoral to eat them. The moral dimension kicks in if somebody else had to ride that stationary bike for you, because then you'd be wasting their time on frivolities.

[quotemstr]

Of course I'd use energy differently if it cost more. If I had to generate energy by pedaling a bike, I'd consider it costly indeed. So what? Energy doesn't cost as much as it would if I had to manually generate it, and who are you to say allocation decisions made under that regiment are good and ones made under ours are bad?

Wouldn't your argument also compel us to use steel as if it were gold? Salt as if it were saffron?