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You make a good point about the social programs in your second paragraph. Efficiency and frugality are components of wisdom that emerge from scarcity and sacrifice. One has to 'endure' not-having to appreciate having, and that usually entails 'getting' the 'having' oneself.

The trouble with social programs is that, in much the same way that undiscerning parents can breed contemptible consumerism in their children, it gives for free what people require earning to appreciate. Regardless of what values a person might say they have, if their actions day in and day out suppose the government is a Giving Tree, the recipient will lose all sense for the Form of Life and its hardship.

If you are not punished for consuming, then you will consume. It's just nurturing the worst elements of the human nature. But some brands of politician use the resources of others to make themselves the Giving Tree.

Structuring an ideal society is a tough nut to crack. I can't say I know how. One thing I know for sure is that it would require that every citizen understands and knows how to 'ride the lightning', meaning the balancing act between the human impulse to out-perform his neighbors, and the objective cooperation the society necessitates. I think this comes down to how a society understands games, and what a society values.

This is one reason I believe religion plays an important role in an enduring civilization. Consider values as having some terminus, some end - so everything a human pursues has a teleological description: "I am doing this so that I can ultimately ___X____." If we say, yes, there is always a human impulse to out-compete his neighbors, then the only way to prevent that from becoming runaway, even in principle, is for the majority of people in a community to value something more than that particular rat race.

As a candidate, 'the common good' is inadequate in most cases to stifle that sort of runaway consumerist competition.

Any sufficient candidate, I think, is going to entail a worldview that includes concepts about the hereafter, a transcendent kind of observer and judge (however one wants to conceive of it) that adds an abstract layer of significance to how we conduct our lives (and our competing).

If not for this, all that there is, is the great pissing match. Key to whatever this abstract observation layer is, is that it must be powerful enough to coarse-grain to the level of the individual (this is the beginning of how we get God concepts). To see why only requires us to recognize why Godless worldviews fail at this.

Suppose some community has a prevailing concept about the common good. We can even suppose that everyone in the community believes that a common good is true, i.e. that it really is better for his community to fare better collectively.

Like in almost all cases of moral judgment in man, he will construe his own actions conceptually distinctly from the 'body' of actions he sees as resulting in the common good. Basically, hypocrisy. We're all hypocrites. If he acts so as to out-compete his neighbors and accrue disproportionately greater 'stuff', he will think that he is one from among, say, a thousand. It is OKAY for him to be that ONE. Just so long as this establishes a structured order that quite naturally precipitates the hierarchical levels so as to maintain a 'mean' for the Others that supports the common good.

Great. But who gets to decide why THAT guy gets to be the ONE. He's just a human. Fuck that, I only live once...it ought to be me. I have the skills. He's a dimwit.

The function of the abstract layer of supernatural observer that can coarse-grain all the way to the level of the individual person means that no such behavior can be justified on the basis of 'the numbers carrying it' (as in when the person who out-performs thinks to himself: this community can support just so much over-achievement). Whether or not the individual's behavior has CONSEQUENCES that hurt the community, the coarse-graining of the supernatural observer is not consequentialist, it will make his actions wrong whether he 'gets away with them' at the human level or not.

It's a simple matter to see how important this function is.

Because God created it.

Have fun in hell for eternity retard.