By this reasoning everyone should give all their money and resources to charity (except to the extent that they need some of their resources to keep their job and make money).
People are motivated to do things that make money because the money benefits themselves and their loved ones. Many such things are also beneficial to everyone, either directly (inventors, for instance, or people who manufacture useful goods), or indirectly (someone who is just willing to work hard because working hard benefits themselves, thus producing more and improiving the economy). In a world where everyone gave their money to random strangers and kept them at an equal level of wealth, nobody would be able to make any money (since 1) any money they made would be accompanied by a reduction by the money other people gave them, and 2) they would feel (by hypothesis) obligated to give away the proceeds anyway). This would mean that money as a motivation would no longer exist, and we would lose everything that we gain when money is a motivation. Thts would be bad.
Even if you modified the rule to “I should give money to people so as to arranbge an equal level of wealth except where necessary to provide motivation”, in deciding exactly who gets your money you’d essentially have a planned economy done piecemeal by billions of individual decisions. Unlike a normal planned economy, it wouldn’t be imposed from the top, but it would have the same problem as a normal planned economy in that there’s really nobody competent to plan such a thing. The result would be disaster.
So overall it would be a better world if people kept the money they made even if someone else could use it more than they could.
Furthermore, the state where everyone acts this way is unstable. Even if your family would be better off if everyone acted that altruistically, your family would be worse off if half the world acted that way and you and they were part of that half.
Yes. At least as long as there are problems in the world. What’s wrong with that?
Everyone, including nonhumans, would have their interests/welfare-function fulfilled as well as possible. If I had to determine the utility function of moral agents before being placed into the world in any position at random, I would choose some form of utilitarianism from a selfish point of view because it maximizes my expected well-being. If doing the “morally right” thing doesn’t make the world a better place for the sentient beings in the world, I don’t see a reason to call it “right”. Also note that this is not an all-or-nothing issue, it seems unfruitful to single out only those actions that produce the perfect outcome, or the perfect outcome in expectation. Every improvement into the right direction counts, because every improvement leads to someone else being better off.
By this reasoning everyone should give all their money and resources to charity (except to the extent that they need some of their resources to keep their job and make money).
That’s not much of a reductio ad absurdum. It would be much better if people did that, or at least moved a lot in that direction.
People are motivated to do things that make money because the money benefits themselves and their loved ones. Many such things are also beneficial to everyone, either directly (inventors, for instance, or people who manufacture useful goods), or indirectly (someone who is just willing to work hard because working hard benefits themselves, thus producing more and improiving the economy). In a world where everyone gave their money to random strangers and kept them at an equal level of wealth, nobody would be able to make any money (since 1) any money they made would be accompanied by a reduction by the money other people gave them, and 2) they would feel (by hypothesis) obligated to give away the proceeds anyway). This would mean that money as a motivation would no longer exist, and we would lose everything that we gain when money is a motivation. Thts would be bad.
Even if you modified the rule to “I should give money to people so as to arranbge an equal level of wealth except where necessary to provide motivation”, in deciding exactly who gets your money you’d essentially have a planned economy done piecemeal by billions of individual decisions. Unlike a normal planned economy, it wouldn’t be imposed from the top, but it would have the same problem as a normal planned economy in that there’s really nobody competent to plan such a thing. The result would be disaster. So overall it would be a better world if people kept the money they made even if someone else could use it more than they could.
Furthermore, the state where everyone acts this way is unstable. Even if your family would be better off if everyone acted that altruistically, your family would be worse off if half the world acted that way and you and they were part of that half.
Yes. At least as long as there are problems in the world. What’s wrong with that?
Everyone, including nonhumans, would have their interests/welfare-function fulfilled as well as possible. If I had to determine the utility function of moral agents before being placed into the world in any position at random, I would choose some form of utilitarianism from a selfish point of view because it maximizes my expected well-being. If doing the “morally right” thing doesn’t make the world a better place for the sentient beings in the world, I don’t see a reason to call it “right”. Also note that this is not an all-or-nothing issue, it seems unfruitful to single out only those actions that produce the perfect outcome, or the perfect outcome in expectation. Every improvement into the right direction counts, because every improvement leads to someone else being better off.