Why inequality matters (2014)

Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by mjfl on Sunday September 13, 2020 @11:13PM (#24466392)

As time goes on, some people will continue the same way of life as before, think of the sentinelese islanders, while the richest people will experience continuously accelerating quality of life gains. Thus, inequality is guaranteed to increase as prosperity increases. Is this inherently evil? I don’t think so.

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Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by mrpopo on Monday September 14, 2020 @12:08AM (#24466664)

The sentinelese (as well as all farmers in low-income countries) are directly impacted by environment degradation caused by the richest people experiencing "accelerating quality of life". Thinking that our way of life is not impacting others is inherently evil, yes.

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Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by Nasrudith on Monday September 14, 2020 @01:41AM (#24467141)

Except it isn't a straightforward relationship between production and environmental degradation. The 'how' matters quite a bit namely in terms of efficiency. To pretend that producing a new genetic therapy is the same as grazing one million more goats is asinine.

The awkward truth is that we have always had an impact on others even back in ancient times wrongly considered isolated arcadias in tune with their environment. Mega-fauna didn't become extinct from running out of food but from humans running out of them as food, and the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon rain forests.

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Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by mrpopo on Monday September 14, 2020 @03:09AM (#24467622)

> To pretend that producing a new genetic therapy is the same as grazing one million more goats is asinine.

You're the only one pretending that?

Of course, 0-impact is impossible, except the scale at which we are destroying our environment is unprecedented. Hunting of mega-fauna has occurred over thousands of years. Two-thirds of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970 (70 years) :

https://www.euronews.com/living/2020/09/10/wwf-proposes-plan...

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Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by mjfl on Monday September 14, 2020 @01:39AM (#24467126)

advancement doesn't imply environmental degradation, in fact it means the opposite.

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Re:Why inequality matters (2014) by chordalkeyboard on Sunday September 13, 2020 @11:18PM (#24466413)

Some would say that the Sentinelese enjoy greater quality of life than the wealthiest among us because they live in the environment for which evolution has prepared them, while even the most prosperous of “civilized” people are subject to the alienation and anomie that are the result of our way of life.

Others will observe that the problem with inequality is not that the wealthiest experience continually greater q.o.l., but that their influence is often seen to deprive the least wealthy of what they once had, and that the process tends to put more and more of us in circumstances of precarity.

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