| > * In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.* Depends on your utility function. Capital can certainly prove very useful for whoever is wilding it, but the near-edge of this sword can easily cut us when the wielder happens to be a sadistic psychopath. Or when the power of money corrupts the wielder. Or when the costs of building that capital (externalities such as pollution, rip-offs, lay-offs…) outweigh any later benefit… > Fair […] [depends] on each person's morality. Luckily, we humans appear to have a fairly stable morality across individuals. (There are psychological experiments on moral dilemmas, and as far as I know, they indicate we agree on most of the important things. Though there are some "off-switches" in our moral systems —religion, "following orders"…) > * I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.* There are two aspects you need to keep track of. On the one hand, the absolute advantage, and on the other, the comparative advantage. Height for instance is a comparative advantage. We tend to look up to taller people, merely because they are taller. So they're more followed, they "get all the girls", better jobs, and so on. But if everyone was taller, it wouldn't change a thing. That's a purely comparative advantage. Health on the other hand has an absolute component. If we were suddenly immune to all diseases, the world would be a significantly better place. In other words, you wouldn't care if everyone was taller, but you would like everyone to be healthy. |