Envy’s hidden hand | Hacker News Reader

Envy’s hidden hand

aeon.co

A beautiful society. But one that I fear is inevitably outcompeted by other societies.

Let me explain. The article says that this society frowns upon the accumulation of wealth or excellence in individuals because those things damage the egalitarianism.

This is great for social stability, but it's not so good for the accumulation of capital, division of labor, and specialization. If one wishes to build a mill on a river to grind grain, then one MUST accumulate food first so one can spend time building the mill. This is the accumulation of capital that precedes investment.

If one wishes to be a miller, one must, almost by definition, stop hunting and stand out among one's peers by doing something different.

A society like this can exist on a planet that is devoid of other societies ... but once your neighbors start accumulating capital and climbing the technological ladder, you continue to exist only on their goodwill and charity.

The egalitarian hunter-gatherer with wooden spears is, after all, no match for the iron spear wielding Zulu who is organized into professional warbands and has absolutely no pity for other civilizations.

I understood it that their society does not simply frown at one member standing out, but rather its framework is such that, if one becomes better than others in some regard, one has to overall “level it out” as it were by suffering ridicule and/or making some nuanced changes to one’s behavior.

My primary objection is to the first paragraph of your comment, though. Becoming out-competed by other societies is only an issue as long as this framework is not adopted on higher scales. I know this is out of this world, but it’s interesting to consider.

The true “global village”, possible thanks to modern connectivity, might be the great enabler; although the same technology also facilitates community fragmentation and bubbles, which are obstacles in context of establishing global egalitarianism JuǀʼHoansi-style.

and look at how much their egalitarian society achieved over the hundred thousand years that it has existed.

inequality is how evolution works. something becomes better and dominates. then the next iteration comes, and the next.

having a society that cares more about the distribution of wealth and power rather than its total sum is a dead end. as someone who likes achieving things i also find such a society just morally abhorrent.

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons."

What I find much more morally abhorrent than Ju/'hoansi's extreme egalitarianism is our society's inequality, greed, corruption, sociopathic derision of the concept of greater good and short-sighted disregard for our future.

If I were forced to choose between the extremes of living in an uninspired and underdeveloped society as described by Douglas Adams in my quote, or accepting this pathological glorification of rampant capitalism as the pinnacle of social evolution, I would rather choose to be a dolphin than human.

Yes. Having goals for the future is part of human nature. It's what motivates many people to get up each day. Perhaps these people's motivation to not be embarrassed overwhelmed that but it sounds like a more extrinsic goal to fit in rather than to do anything else that you want.

There's also the question of what's the meaning of life? Is it be comfortable today and not care about future generations who may be disadvantaged by your passing nothing more down to them than you inherited yourself? I've met people who are happy with that but what about those who aren't? How do they cope with the pointlessness of it all?

For some reason, your post is flagged even though it seems to be correct and reasonable. Are we not allowed to express ideas about other cultures on an article about other cultures?

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