[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'I')'m not taking literacy off the list.

I don't care if you can be happy and uneducated.

Societies in which people can read are always better places to live than societies in which people cannot read.

Who could be happy knowing that his/her children will be worse off in the future?

We can increase our quality of life without increasing our strain on the environment.

[MrBill]

And oiless you are continuing mixing up the 'concept of wealth' with the equally important 'concept of happiness'. They are not the same at all. Although they may be related.

The question is how can we measure wealth differently than simply measuring gross national or gross domestic product that says nothing about quality of life or indeed happiness?

The UN's Human Development Index does try to measure quality of life. It is a completely meaningless exercise to talk about closing the world's happiness gap.

Consumption is the disposal of wealth, not the creation of wealth. Wealth is created by creating a surplus of goods & services. How we use that wealth is what determines how happy we are.

Until you have food, water and shelter you do not have the basic necessities to sustain a society, much less a peaceful one. Some spaced out monk may be quite happy, but he likely relies on someone else to feed and clothe him. But we all cannot live in klosters.

Even a wealthy society may have unhappy people, as you correcly pointed out, if it is creating stressful living conditions where people are worried about the future. Specifically their own and their family's financial future.

True there may be little difference between $40.000 and $440.000 in creating happiness in America, for example, but if you and your family are living on less than $20.000 then you might have financial worries, too. You can adjust those numbers on a country by country basis based on PPP or cost of living. There is no absolute number.

And yet, those who complain about GDP/GNP numbers are usually trying to do exactly that. They take GDP per person in the USA, for example, and try to compare it to GDP figures for those living in the developing world. Then they implore us to close the wealth divide. To bridge the information gap. No child left behind. Do they ever stop to think that maybe for someone in a different culture, having 10 strong boys is a source of happiness because it bestows on them a feeling of well-being knowing that their retirement will be provided for?

So why should 'the rich world' transfer 'material wealth' to the 'developing world' when they may have different beliefs, values, cultural, religious and societal norms that means they value their free time more over money or larger families more over small ones. Sure we may do this because we are afraid of economic migration, both legal and illegal, or because we think it is a good thing to do, but is it right?

Also, in a rich country, GDP growth, like in America, may mean more conspicuous consumption. That is true. But it can also mean that the wealth is spent to develop first class schools and universities; for clean water and sanitation; to curb pollution and clean up environmental messes; and to sustainably develop renewable resources like lakes, rivers, forests and all the animal species that depend on these environments for their own survival. That is quality of life. And I think if done properly that this wealth transfer would make its citizens happier and more satisfied, too.

[oiless]

Yes, reading back over the thread I agree, I've wandered off to left field. That's me way over there by the fence, face down in the dandelions.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oiless', 'Y')es, reading back over the thread I agree, I've wandered off to left field. That's me way over there by the fence, face down in the dandelions.

[gg3]

I'm basically with Mr.Bill on most of this.

To which I would add:

A person is wealthy when they are secure in their basic material needs, safe from acts of violence and coercion, and free to engage in activities not related to providing for their basic needs.

The conventional definition of wealth includes the concept of being "independently wealthy," which means having enough capital to live off the interest and dividends, in such a manner as to be personally isolated from economic competition. This is very interesting because it basically monetizes my three-part definition in the preceding paragraph.

The problem with being personally isolated from economic competition, or with being materially secure and safe, is that it can tend to breed complacency. Competition drives evolution, and cooperation conserves the gains thereby made. (Symbiosis does some of each, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.) Thus there is need for balance, and the ideal case is to be sufficiently wealthy as to have room to make mistakes without fatal consequences, but not sufficiently wealthy as to be isolated from all consequences of one's mistakes.

This is not a condition that can be assured by any institution, be it the state or the market or the church, school, family, community, etc. The best that the state can do is establish a lawful order of liberty, equality, and justice, with checks and balances on the exercise of power by both the state itself and by para-statal entities. The best the market can do is provide transparency and informed choice, but not make those choices for each person or business entity. Church and school can provide guidance, family and community can provide a web of personal bonds, and so on. But ultimately there is no substitute for individuals making deliberate and conscious choices based on their best available information, good will, sound reasoning, and creative intuition.

Personally I will consider myself wealthy when I'm living on the land with the community and we have established our means of contributing to relocalized regional sufficiency. Those conditions will maximize for physical safety and material security. Beyond that, I've never had any trouble engaging in all manner of creative endeavors with whatever time and resources I have, and so long as I'm alive that will be the case. And of course, community and regional sufficiency in a rural environment will provide a vast new range of potential for further creative endeavors. (This is not to minimize the real risks we face this century, that might in fact wipe us out as a species. But community and regional sufficiency are the best foundations for maximizing one's probability of making it through the evolutionary bottleneck.)

BTW, I do have a definition of absolute good and absolute evil.

Absolute good consists of actions that facilitate the continued evolution of individuals*, one's species, and the organisms in one's ecosystem.

Absolute evil consists of actions that thwart or endanger the continued evolution of individuals*, one's species, and the organisms in one's environment.

*With respect to individuals, I use the term evolution here to refer to the process by which an individual gains and stores information and uses it to improve their adaptive or creative capabilities.

And the reason I can say with reasonable assurance that these principles are absolutes, is that evolution is the key point that distinguishes living organisms from nonliving matter. All organisms are subject to evolution; nonliving matter is not. Organisms and their ecosystems are dissipative structures* that evolve toward greater degrees of complexity and diversity; this is an inherently syntropic (negentropic, that is, counter-entropic) activity. Nonliving matter is governed by entropy itself.

The distinction between life and nonlife is the distinction between syntropy on one hand, and entropy on the other. Thus, actions taken to facilitate syntropy are good, actions taken to facilitate entropy are bad, and from there one can derive a comprehensive system of moral and ethical philosophy.

*Dissipative structures: physical entities that gain energy for increased complexity and diversity, by siphoning the energy from a prevailing entropy flow. For example Earth's organisms and ecosystems are dissipative structures gaining energy from solar radiation that is a product of the entropy of the sun.