Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno libertarians.

Re:Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno l... by unalone on Thursday August 20, 2009 @01:42PM (#775606)

They'd rather be "rich than poor" because we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible.

I'd agree with you if you'd said "comfortable rather than stressed", but there's a difference between the two. Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.

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Re:Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno l... by gloob on Thursday August 20, 2009 @02:51PM (#775800)

Everybody can be comfortable at once. Not everybody can be rich.

That's a poor criterion for deciding whether or not something is an intrinsic human desire. Whether or not something can be universally achieved is orthogonal to the question.

I don't doubt that we have a society that says rich is awesome, poor is terrible, but here's the thing: when we say that "society says foo", what we mean is that a large percentage of individuals are saying foo. Lots of individuals say "rich is awesome, poor is terrible" because they actually believe that they prefer the one to the other, not because some external "society" (I place it in scare quotes because any society does not have an existence independent from individuals) forces or tricks or brainwashes them into it.

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Re:Something was wrong. It seemed I had angered the techno l... by unalone on Thursday August 20, 2009 @03:19PM (#775883)

But you can't separate a person from the context of their society. We had millenia of human existence without any idea of riches, so obviously it's not an intrinsic desire. Perhaps it's intrinsic in the context of a society that has things such as rich and poor, but that's different.

(I'm finding it hard to track replies in this thread, so apologies if I stop my side of the discussion.)

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