Why does “mundane economic forces” cause resources to be consumed towards selfish ends?
Because most economic agents are essentially selfish. I think this is currently true, as a matter of empirical fact. People spend the vast majority of their income on themselves, their family, and friends, rather than using their resources to pursue utilitarian/altruistic ideals.
I think the behavioral preferences of actual economic consumers, who are not mostly interested in changing their preferences via philosophical reflection, will more strongly shape the future than other types of preferences. Right now that means human consumers determine what is produced in our economy. In the future, AIs themselves could become economic consumers, but in this post I’m mainly talking about humans as consumers.
I tend to think that people’s selfish desires will be fairly easily satiated once everyone is much much richer and the more “scalable” “moral” values would dominate resource consumption at that point, but it might just be my imagination failing me.
I think it’s currently very unclear whether selfish preferences can be meaningfully “satiated”. Current humans are much richer than their ancestors, and yet I don’t think it’s obvious that we are more altruistic than our ancestors, at least when measured by things like the fraction of our income spent on charity. (But this is a complicated debate, and I don’t mean to say that it’s settled.)
It’s also possible that our future civilization uses up much of the cosmic endowment through wasteful competition, leaving little or nothing to consume in the end. Is that’s your main concern?
This seems unlikely to me, but it’s possible. I don’t think it’s my main concern. My guess is that we still likely fundamentally disagree on something like “how much will the future resemble the past?”.
On this particular question, I’d point out that historically, competition hasn’t resulted in the destruction of nearly all resources, leaving little to nothing to consume in the end. In fact, insofar as it’s reasonable to talk about “competition” as a single thing, competition in the past may have increased total consumption on net, rather than decreased it, by spurring innovation to create more efficient ways of creating economic value.
Because most economic agents are essentially selfish. I think this is currently true, as a matter of empirical fact. People spend the vast majority of their income on themselves, their family, and friends, rather than using their resources to pursue utilitarian/altruistic ideals.
I think the behavioral preferences of actual economic consumers, who are not mostly interested in changing their preferences via philosophical reflection, will more strongly shape the future than other types of preferences. Right now that means human consumers determine what is produced in our economy. In the future, AIs themselves could become economic consumers, but in this post I’m mainly talking about humans as consumers.
I think it’s currently very unclear whether selfish preferences can be meaningfully “satiated”. Current humans are much richer than their ancestors, and yet I don’t think it’s obvious that we are more altruistic than our ancestors, at least when measured by things like the fraction of our income spent on charity. (But this is a complicated debate, and I don’t mean to say that it’s settled.)
This seems unlikely to me, but it’s possible. I don’t think it’s my main concern. My guess is that we still likely fundamentally disagree on something like “how much will the future resemble the past?”.
On this particular question, I’d point out that historically, competition hasn’t resulted in the destruction of nearly all resources, leaving little to nothing to consume in the end. In fact, insofar as it’s reasonable to talk about “competition” as a single thing, competition in the past may have increased total consumption on net, rather than decreased it, by spurring innovation to create more efficient ways of creating economic value.