Comment by nathan_compton
Comment by nathan_compton a day ago
It really depends on a lot of things, frankly. For one thing, we, as a society, aren't optimizing for short term material conditions exclusively. The abstract dignity of not letting arbitrary variables determine important aspects of our lives might outweigh certain material benefits.
I think abstract principles deserve extreme skepticism. Pursuing material improvements will yield conditions that improve dignity, but pursuing dignity will not necessarily yield material improvements. Dignity is a luxury for those who don't have to desperately scrounge to live. There's a long and sad history of ignoring people's immediate material conditions to pursue some utopian vision of what "ought" to be. Unless there's some argument that sacrificing immediate material improvements will (not may) yield large scale material improvements, we're right back at the perfect being the enemy of the good.