Dear Platt,
You asked André 10/6 9:13 -0400:
'Do you believe it is moral to destroy billionaires like a doctor destroys
germs? Do you think society should put a limit on the amount of money an
individual may earn? How do you connect an inordinate desire for wealth, the
meaning of "greed," to biological behavior?'
Killing/destroying is a biological level reaction to a biological pattern of
values (species) that conflicts with the dominant biological pattern of
values (species). Society killing billionaires is a low quality social
pattern of values (like any death penalty). Society should put a limit on
inequality, but not by limiting or destroying the biological level
foundation of (groups of) people. A higher quality social pattern of values
would do so by creating fairer competition which makes it more difficult to
become a billionaire. Putting a limit, in the sense of stating the idea that
'this is the maximum amount of inequality we tolerate and this is what we
are going to do against it' is essentially a (low quality) intellectual
pattern of values. Higher quality ways of limiting inequality are all those
ways that do not rule out the possibility of an individual to become a
billionaire (except in those situations where it really would be insane,
e.g. in an isolated society in which a lot of people are starving), but make
it less attractive essentially by persuasion. An inordinate desire for
wealth is no biological behavior (as 'wealth' is a social level value), but
low quality social behavior.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:19 BST