“if everyone decided to dedicate their lives to altruism while accepting full misery to themselves, then everyone would be miserable,”
How confident of this are we?
I mean, there are many tasks which can lead to my happiness. If I perform a large subset of those tasks for my own benefit, they lead to a certain happiness-level for me… call that H1. If I perform a small subset of those tasks for everyone’s benefit, they lead to a different happiness-level, H2, for everyone including me. H2 is, of course, much lower than H1… in fact, H2 is indistinguishable from zero, really, unless I’m some kind of superstar. (I’m not aggregating across people, here, I’m just measuring how happy I am personally.)
So far, so good.
But if everyone else is also performing a small subset of those tasks for everyone’s benefit, then my happiness is N*H2. H2 is negligible, but N is large. Is (N*H2) > H1?
I really have no idea. On the face of it, it seems implausible. On the other hand, comparative advantage is a powerful force. We’ve discovered that when it comes to producing goods and services, for example, having one person performing a single task for everyone does much better than having everyone do everything for themselves.
Perhaps the same is true for producing happiness?
Which is not necessarily an argument for altruism in the real world, but in this hypothetical world where everyone acts with maximal altruism, maybe the end result is everyone is having a much more awesome life… they’re simply having it thanks to the efforts of a huge community, rather than entirely due to their own efforts.
Then again, that sounds like a pretty good description of the real world I live in, also.
How confident of this are we?
I mean, there are many tasks which can lead to my happiness. If I perform a large subset of those tasks for my own benefit, they lead to a certain happiness-level for me… call that H1. If I perform a small subset of those tasks for everyone’s benefit, they lead to a different happiness-level, H2, for everyone including me. H2 is, of course, much lower than H1… in fact, H2 is indistinguishable from zero, really, unless I’m some kind of superstar. (I’m not aggregating across people, here, I’m just measuring how happy I am personally.)
So far, so good.
But if everyone else is also performing a small subset of those tasks for everyone’s benefit, then my happiness is N*H2. H2 is negligible, but N is large. Is (N*H2) > H1?
I really have no idea. On the face of it, it seems implausible. On the other hand, comparative advantage is a powerful force. We’ve discovered that when it comes to producing goods and services, for example, having one person performing a single task for everyone does much better than having everyone do everything for themselves.
Perhaps the same is true for producing happiness?
Which is not necessarily an argument for altruism in the real world, but in this hypothetical world where everyone acts with maximal altruism, maybe the end result is everyone is having a much more awesome life… they’re simply having it thanks to the efforts of a huge community, rather than entirely due to their own efforts.
Then again, that sounds like a pretty good description of the real world I live in, also.