Economical to pay me to do is likely not the same thing as what I or other people in my situation are/would-otherwise earn. I remember reading an expatriate remarking that one of the best things about living in Africa was that human labor was so cheap that he could do any bizarre thing that came to mind; a job just existing doesn’t say much.
(I’m interpreting your last line as saying that the market would create a job for me if I were rendered superfluous or no longer worth employing at my current job; if you mean by ‘can’ that something like the goverment could create make-work jobs using the wealth surplus, I’ll refer you to my reply to Alicorn—we haven’t done a great job in the past with helping people rendered redundant by progress or creating a ‘leisure society’, so I am pessimistic that this might change in the drug scenario.)
Yes, I agree. As I said, my better instincts tell me that for the good of humanity, if maybe not my own long-term interests (as I said, it’s plausible the drug would do me more harm than good), to be happy; but the rest of me dislikes being lowered in relative status & potential. Other people may incline more firmly one way or the other.
Economical to pay me to do is likely not the same thing as what I or other people in my situation are/would-otherwise earn. I remember reading an expatriate remarking that one of the best things about living in Africa was that human labor was so cheap that he could do any bizarre thing that came to mind; a job just existing doesn’t say much.
(I’m interpreting your last line as saying that the market would create a job for me if I were rendered superfluous or no longer worth employing at my current job; if you mean by ‘can’ that something like the goverment could create make-work jobs using the wealth surplus, I’ll refer you to my reply to Alicorn—we haven’t done a great job in the past with helping people rendered redundant by progress or creating a ‘leisure society’, so I am pessimistic that this might change in the drug scenario.)
All that is quite fair enough—I expect the rest of our disagreement amounts to conflicting intuitions.
Yes, I agree. As I said, my better instincts tell me that for the good of humanity, if maybe not my own long-term interests (as I said, it’s plausible the drug would do me more harm than good), to be happy; but the rest of me dislikes being lowered in relative status & potential. Other people may incline more firmly one way or the other.