Stubborn Attachments
Great book. Short, sweet and dense. I think this is fundamentally the "right" answer to ethics and political science. The system ("Liberty Plus Sustainable Growth") is built on the intuitions of common sense morality (see Ground truth believe systems on which to base philosophy).
The overall framework is set by the ideals of Prosperity and Liberty. "Libertarianism × Economics" (Note: not advocating pure libertarianism: Libertarianism Limits)
The key idea is that Sustainable Growth is a Moral Imperative
- We have a moral imperative to lift people out of poverty (which tends to save their lives)
- Long-term economic growth is biggest factor in lifting people out of poverty.
- Therefore, we have a moral imperative to take personal actions or pursue political policies that promote sustainable growth.
- Its Intuitively wrong to discount future over long time frames
Corollaries
- Civilizational collapse is one of the worst things that can happen. Extra care should taken to avoid it. The other worst thing is basic rights violations.
- It is imperative to avoid tragedies of the commons that threaten the sustainability of the growth : eg: environmental collapse / societal collapse
Faith needs to play a key role in ethics and political science
- This is an UnpopularImportantTruth. The absence or rejection of faith in modern secular thinking has upside, expanded personal liberties, but also the downside of weakening our chance of fulfilling our moral imperatives.
Constraints on wealth redistribution.
Radical uncertainty of long-term consequences of our actions
This framework cuts across political lines.
The following questions are critical under this system:
- How to boost economic growth (conservative)
- How to make civilization more stable (conservative)
- How avoid environmental collapse (liberal)
The political left favors investment in the future for infrastructure, education, and the environment, but tends to favor wealth redistribution at the cost of economic growth. The political right tends to discount the importance of the far future.
In general, we can get better politics by getting the future right.
Links:
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