I wonder why wanting or having something in the “wrong” century allegedly makes you a morally bad person now; but when the thing you want arrives, works and enough people have or use it to make it socially normalized, they accept it as part of their current standard of living and don’t go around disapproving of each other for possessing it.
For example, I’ve noticed a ramping up lately of propaganda against those horrible people called “billionaires.” I would call today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards, assuming that we continue to have exponential economic growth. In a few centuries, people with the equivalent purchasing power of today’s billionaires would probably consider themselves “middle class.” We find this idea in science fiction, for example, where “middle class” people in imaginary future societies own vast estates, have staffs of robots to do their bidding, fly private space ships and so forth. The really wealthy people, by contrast, can buy entire planets as their personal property. A. Bertram Chandler provides an example of this idea in his science fiction novel, To Prime the Pump, though no doubt you can think of other examples. ′
I’ve noticed something similar regarding the public’s perception of cryonicists. They call us selfish and narcissistic, for example. (People even wrote this about Kim Suozzi.) We just want a standard of health care that doesn’t exist in our century, but we might have the ability to reach it via cryostasis to, say the 24th Century. How does that make us selfish or narcissistic, instead of, say, “visionary”? If the people in the 24th Century have rejuvenation, revival from cryo- and other forms of bio-stasis, radical life extension and so forth, and enough of them take advantage of these technologies to normalize them socially, then they won’t go around calling each other selfish and narcissistic for benefiting from what they consider the current standard of medicine.
In other words, people who resent today’s billionaires and cryonicists haven’t thought deeply on the timing issue. Though that makes sense if they expect to clock out any time now, and they don’t think they can do anything about it.
For example, I’ve noticed a ramping up lately of propaganda against those horrible people called “billionaires.” I would call today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards, assuming that we continue to have exponential economic growth.
I don’t think this is a good example of the broader phenomenon you are describing. When people criticize the very wealthy, they’re primarily making a criticism about relative, not absolute standards of living. I.e. “It is a sin to have so much when others have so little.” I wouldn’t say this is the only criticism, because I have seen, for example, criticisms of people owning mansions when they have small families (since it creates enormous upkeep costs and the unused rooms have basically no value except as a positional good). But that’s the exception; I don’t think anyone would consider owning a Maserati immoral (at least on grounds of wealth rather than environmentalism) if there weren’t also people struggling to pay for basic necessities.
I would call today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards
My impression is that what billionaires are resented and propagandized against for is mostly not lifestyle advantages like having huge houses, private jets, the option of not working for a living, etc., but two other things.
Power over other people. For instance, consider the Koch brothers, who are frequent targets of criticism. But what they get attacked for is not being rich but using their wealth for particular political ends (and unsurprisingly the people doing the attacking are generally political partisans whose political position is opposed to the Kochs’). The complaint here isn’t “boo, these people can buy yachts and mansions and planes” but “boo, these people can buy government policy”. (And of course the complaints mostly come from people who think the policies they’re buying are harmful.)
Getting rich at the expense of other people. For instance, consider the financial wizards of Wall Street—the original main targets of the “99%/1%” rhetoric, I believe. I dare say there was always some resentment of the financial elites, but there was an enormous change in how widely and openly and loudly they were resented—when there was a big financial crash in which lots of people lost jobs and savings, which was widely perceived as the result of reckless greed by those financial elites.
What these have in common is that the anger is aimed not at the lifestyle of the super-rich—at all the nice things they are able to have—but at its (alleged) negative impact on others.
If indeed the economy continues to grow exponentially for a few centuries, and if scientific and engineering progress continue strongly, then indeed everyone may end up with a lot of the lifestyle elements that only the very rich have now. But it won’t be possible (by definition) for everyone to have far-more-than-average influence on public policy, or for everyone to get wealthy by making people in general poor. And those, not the luxurious lifestyle, are what billionaires get attacked for.
Now, of course it’s possible that what really motivates any given criticism of very rich people is good old-fashioned envy (or, in the case of the financial elites, sometimes good old-fashioned anti-Semitism) and that all the stuff about buying influence and causing economic disaster is just an excuse. But it seems at least worth considering the possibility that the people making those criticisms mean what they say.
they call [cryonicists] selfish and narcissistic
I think it’s pretty safe to dismiss “narcissistic” on the grounds you do. But a case can be made for “selfish”—not really any better a case than can be made for pretty much everyone, but I’d say that pretty much everyone is in fact selfish :-). Specifically, suppose you choose for $100k of your money to be spent on cryopreservation at the moment of (what non-cryonicists would consider to be) your death. That’s money that would otherwise have been inherited by others. So you’re choosing to use that money to give yourself a (probably small) chance of surviving into the far future, rather than to benefit those others.
Most of us spend most of our money to benefit ourselves (or in some cases our close family) rather than others. Most of us could do a lot more good to the world by spending a lot less on ourselves. So I think the same sort of charge of selfishness can be levelled at almost everyone as is levelled at cryonicists. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
You can, indeed, characterize what cryonicists or billionaires are doing as wanting something that everyone will have in the future. But the complaint (or at least a complaint) isn’t that no one should ever have it, but that for one reason or another trying to have it now imposes a substantial cost on other people.
(Note 1. The following—highly fanciful—analogy may help. Suppose that instead of trying to live a 24th-century lifestyle in the 21st century, you’re trying to life an affluent US / Western European lifestyle in some desperately poor part of Africa. To this end you build factories and roads and things—but only for your use, the locals get no benefit. The factories are staffed with imported minions and supply only you, no one else is allowed on your roads, etc. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for your neighbours to resent you, not simply for living like an affluent Westerner, but for imposing noise and pollution and nuisance on them in order to do so, with no compensating benefit to them.)
(Note 2. The above analysis is not concerned with the question of whether the criticisms are correct. One could argue, e.g., that the billionaires’ influence on public policy is actually beneficial, that every cryonics customer benefits everyone by encouraging funding for research in relevant areas, etc. I’m concerned only with what the criticisms actually are.)
I think calling “today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards” does incorporate two debatable assumptions, but they’re implicit assumptions rather than the explicit one CellBioGuy called out. The implicit assumptions are that (1) future economic growth translates into real income growth throughout the income distribution, and (2) being rich in the future will actually allow one to mimic the lifestyle of today’s billionaires.
(1) could be false if economic growth just ends up being captured by e.g. the top 10% of the income distribution. If so, decades from now most people’s living standards might remain below those of today’s billionaires.
(2) could be false if components of current billionaires’ lifestyles become difficult to buy in the future. For instance, a billionaire today can buy pretty well any dwelling they like. But even in the future I doubt most people at the 20th percentile of the income distribution could do the same.
I would call today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards
That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it works well historically. At which point the lifestyle of hoi polloi started to resemble that of a Roman senator? Does today’s middle class live like medieval feudal lords?
We find this idea in science fiction
In the sci-fi from the 50s. Contemporary sci-fi is rather more dystopian (with some exceptions, notably Iain Bank’s Culture).
Having slaves two centuries ago was accepted, but having them now allegedly makes you a morally bad person. I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, though.
I wonder why wanting or having something in the “wrong” century allegedly makes you a morally bad person now; but when the thing you want arrives, works and enough people have or use it to make it socially normalized, they accept it as part of their current standard of living and don’t go around disapproving of each other for possessing it.
For example, I’ve noticed a ramping up lately of propaganda against those horrible people called “billionaires.” I would call today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards, assuming that we continue to have exponential economic growth. In a few centuries, people with the equivalent purchasing power of today’s billionaires would probably consider themselves “middle class.” We find this idea in science fiction, for example, where “middle class” people in imaginary future societies own vast estates, have staffs of robots to do their bidding, fly private space ships and so forth. The really wealthy people, by contrast, can buy entire planets as their personal property. A. Bertram Chandler provides an example of this idea in his science fiction novel, To Prime the Pump, though no doubt you can think of other examples. ′
I’ve noticed something similar regarding the public’s perception of cryonicists. They call us selfish and narcissistic, for example. (People even wrote this about Kim Suozzi.) We just want a standard of health care that doesn’t exist in our century, but we might have the ability to reach it via cryostasis to, say the 24th Century. How does that make us selfish or narcissistic, instead of, say, “visionary”? If the people in the 24th Century have rejuvenation, revival from cryo- and other forms of bio-stasis, radical life extension and so forth, and enough of them take advantage of these technologies to normalize them socially, then they won’t go around calling each other selfish and narcissistic for benefiting from what they consider the current standard of medicine.
In other words, people who resent today’s billionaires and cryonicists haven’t thought deeply on the timing issue. Though that makes sense if they expect to clock out any time now, and they don’t think they can do anything about it.
I don’t think this is a good example of the broader phenomenon you are describing. When people criticize the very wealthy, they’re primarily making a criticism about relative, not absolute standards of living. I.e. “It is a sin to have so much when others have so little.” I wouldn’t say this is the only criticism, because I have seen, for example, criticisms of people owning mansions when they have small families (since it creates enormous upkeep costs and the unused rooms have basically no value except as a positional good). But that’s the exception; I don’t think anyone would consider owning a Maserati immoral (at least on grounds of wealth rather than environmentalism) if there weren’t also people struggling to pay for basic necessities.
My impression is that what billionaires are resented and propagandized against for is mostly not lifestyle advantages like having huge houses, private jets, the option of not working for a living, etc., but two other things.
Power over other people. For instance, consider the Koch brothers, who are frequent targets of criticism. But what they get attacked for is not being rich but using their wealth for particular political ends (and unsurprisingly the people doing the attacking are generally political partisans whose political position is opposed to the Kochs’). The complaint here isn’t “boo, these people can buy yachts and mansions and planes” but “boo, these people can buy government policy”. (And of course the complaints mostly come from people who think the policies they’re buying are harmful.)
Getting rich at the expense of other people. For instance, consider the financial wizards of Wall Street—the original main targets of the “99%/1%” rhetoric, I believe. I dare say there was always some resentment of the financial elites, but there was an enormous change in how widely and openly and loudly they were resented—when there was a big financial crash in which lots of people lost jobs and savings, which was widely perceived as the result of reckless greed by those financial elites.
What these have in common is that the anger is aimed not at the lifestyle of the super-rich—at all the nice things they are able to have—but at its (alleged) negative impact on others.
If indeed the economy continues to grow exponentially for a few centuries, and if scientific and engineering progress continue strongly, then indeed everyone may end up with a lot of the lifestyle elements that only the very rich have now. But it won’t be possible (by definition) for everyone to have far-more-than-average influence on public policy, or for everyone to get wealthy by making people in general poor. And those, not the luxurious lifestyle, are what billionaires get attacked for.
Now, of course it’s possible that what really motivates any given criticism of very rich people is good old-fashioned envy (or, in the case of the financial elites, sometimes good old-fashioned anti-Semitism) and that all the stuff about buying influence and causing economic disaster is just an excuse. But it seems at least worth considering the possibility that the people making those criticisms mean what they say.
I think it’s pretty safe to dismiss “narcissistic” on the grounds you do. But a case can be made for “selfish”—not really any better a case than can be made for pretty much everyone, but I’d say that pretty much everyone is in fact selfish :-). Specifically, suppose you choose for $100k of your money to be spent on cryopreservation at the moment of (what non-cryonicists would consider to be) your death. That’s money that would otherwise have been inherited by others. So you’re choosing to use that money to give yourself a (probably small) chance of surviving into the far future, rather than to benefit those others.
Most of us spend most of our money to benefit ourselves (or in some cases our close family) rather than others. Most of us could do a lot more good to the world by spending a lot less on ourselves. So I think the same sort of charge of selfishness can be levelled at almost everyone as is levelled at cryonicists. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
You can, indeed, characterize what cryonicists or billionaires are doing as wanting something that everyone will have in the future. But the complaint (or at least a complaint) isn’t that no one should ever have it, but that for one reason or another trying to have it now imposes a substantial cost on other people.
(Note 1. The following—highly fanciful—analogy may help. Suppose that instead of trying to live a 24th-century lifestyle in the 21st century, you’re trying to life an affluent US / Western European lifestyle in some desperately poor part of Africa. To this end you build factories and roads and things—but only for your use, the locals get no benefit. The factories are staffed with imported minions and supply only you, no one else is allowed on your roads, etc. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for your neighbours to resent you, not simply for living like an affluent Westerner, but for imposing noise and pollution and nuisance on them in order to do so, with no compensating benefit to them.)
(Note 2. The above analysis is not concerned with the question of whether the criticisms are correct. One could argue, e.g., that the billionaires’ influence on public policy is actually beneficial, that every cryonics customer benefits everyone by encouraging funding for research in relevant areas, etc. I’m concerned only with what the criticisms actually are.)
That’s one hell of an assumption.
Disagree. I think the data support exponential global economic growth as a reasonable assumption.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG
In fact, given the historical evidence, I think a very compelling argument is required in order to NOT assume exponential global economic growth.
I think calling “today’s billionaires the early adopters of future living standards” does incorporate two debatable assumptions, but they’re implicit assumptions rather than the explicit one CellBioGuy called out. The implicit assumptions are that (1) future economic growth translates into real income growth throughout the income distribution, and (2) being rich in the future will actually allow one to mimic the lifestyle of today’s billionaires.
(1) could be false if economic growth just ends up being captured by e.g. the top 10% of the income distribution. If so, decades from now most people’s living standards might remain below those of today’s billionaires.
(2) could be false if components of current billionaires’ lifestyles become difficult to buy in the future. For instance, a billionaire today can buy pretty well any dwelling they like. But even in the future I doubt most people at the 20th percentile of the income distribution could do the same.
Are you talking about the Bill Gates-rich or the Paris Hilton-rich? They are both admired and hated for totally different reasons.
Who admires the Paris Hilton-rich?
Scratch that, I’d prefer to continue not to hear about such people.
That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it works well historically. At which point the lifestyle of hoi polloi started to resemble that of a Roman senator? Does today’s middle class live like medieval feudal lords?
In the sci-fi from the 50s. Contemporary sci-fi is rather more dystopian (with some exceptions, notably Iain Bank’s Culture).
The ’60s? Widespread literacy (and cheap paperbacks), indoor plumbing, private gardens, the dinner party or similar gathering as a social occasion.
In some interesting ways. There are similarities in diet, and to a certain extent occupation. Of course there are also large differences.
Having slaves two centuries ago was accepted, but having them now allegedly makes you a morally bad person. I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, though.