From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Wed Aug 16 2000 - 18:29:04 PDT
The point --- really the only point --- that I've been trying to make in this whole
shebang is this: it's awfully amusing and pointless for any of us to say "there's more
to life than money" (assuming money == uberwealth) because, AFAIK, none of us on the
list are billionaires. Yet, as Brian said. :-) (I could be wrong. If so, please let
the unhappy billionaires whose lives suck and for whom money is such a great burden
step forward; I suspect that the collective mental horsepower on this list can come up
with a few suggestions on putting all that nasty, tainted cash to work.) We're arguing
from a position of total ignorance. Sure, we understand the "life" part, but we have
no clue, really, what kinds of "life" we might be able to have without the financial
constraints and assumptions we're operating under. We might as well argue about
whether it's easier to live the good life around 40 Eridani A; AFAIK, nobody on this
list has been there / done that, either. ;-) (Vulcans, please speak up.) So
statements like "there's more to life than money" smack of self-consolation, of popular
romantic delusion, and cultural programming more than any sort of objective,
fundamental truth. Who knows if there's more to life than money? I don't. I assume
that to be the case, because I *appear* to be living a reasonably good sub-billionaire
life, but I have no way to judge and value the other side of the equation. All I know
is that it's demonstrably hard to think of things to have / see / do / accomplish that
wouldn't be easier to have / see / do / accomplish with a cool $1B in the bank.
Everybody on the planet should be able to have / see / do / accomplish whatever they
want from life that's possible w/o those types of constraints; if not, why not?
> So I do think some people would prefer to avoid the taint of the
> billion, either by ignoring it or taking it and then very publically
> giving it all away.
The point of the gedankenexperiment wasn't to bring up some messy, thorny, personal
values question; it was just intended to illustrate that, at some level, most (all?)
of us would probably jump at the chance to tackle the question from a more, ah,
educated position. It's always easy to attack a perfectly valid thought experiment by
introducing variables that don't really speak to the issue at hand, pointing out all
the edge conditions, etc. Does the fact that we haven't been able to accelerate human
observers close to C invalidate the A's clock / B's clock gedankenexperiment? Do the
questions of economics involved in same factor into the illustration that it makes?
> So I do think some people would prefer to avoid the taint of the
> billion, either by ignoring it or taking it and then very publically
> giving it all away.
The first I'll challenge; are you saying that you wouldn't like to be "tainted" with
$1B? If you wanna make that statement, Gojo, go ahead and make it. I double-dog-dare
ya. :-) The second is an invalid counter, as "giving it all away" --- indeed, any
charitable behavior --- is just as self-motivated at the end of the day as buying a
MiG. It's all about what pumps your nads.
jb
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