Cool post, a couple of questions for you (or others):
1. Your footnote says:
I think this stands for as long as humans are similar enough to each other that our elite can’t conscience hoarding vitae when some people have <1.
In our current world, some elite (eg. billionaires) hoard vitae whilst many people (perhaps most people) have <1, and most seem to conscience it fine. So I’m sceptical that the “redistributive question” is trivial or likely to happen automatically. Agree?
2. Do you think 1 vitae is the same for everyone? For example, you suggest compute and communications bandwidth as parts of the unit. I think these are really important to some people (the average coastal elite) and really unimportant to others (the type of person who fancies living in an off-grid cabin). So is vitae equivalent for all people (you all need compute, whether you like it or not), or is vitae more like a substitute for ‘whatever you need to maintain a high quality of life for yourself personally’? If the latter, would a base level of income work instead of vitae, and then the income could be spent by individuals on whatever their preferences are?
3. How come you picked “average American coastal elite” as your bar for the minimum we should aim to move everyone towards? Why not double that quality of life, or half that quality? Off the cuff, I’d be fairly comfortable with something like 0.7 vitae as the bar to aim for (using your units).
Cool post, a couple of questions for you (or others):
1. Your footnote says:
In our current world, some elite (eg. billionaires) hoard vitae whilst many people (perhaps most people) have <1, and most seem to conscience it fine. So I’m sceptical that the “redistributive question” is trivial or likely to happen automatically. Agree?
2. Do you think 1 vitae is the same for everyone? For example, you suggest compute and communications bandwidth as parts of the unit. I think these are really important to some people (the average coastal elite) and really unimportant to others (the type of person who fancies living in an off-grid cabin). So is vitae equivalent for all people (you all need compute, whether you like it or not), or is vitae more like a substitute for ‘whatever you need to maintain a high quality of life for yourself personally’? If the latter, would a base level of income work instead of vitae, and then the income could be spent by individuals on whatever their preferences are?
3. How come you picked “average American coastal elite” as your bar for the minimum we should aim to move everyone towards? Why not double that quality of life, or half that quality? Off the cuff, I’d be fairly comfortable with something like 0.7 vitae as the bar to aim for (using your units).