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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The problem with this is that the beneficiaries of the gains are in this circumstance "new entities," who need not exist and are not harmed by not existing. On the other hand, existing people are harmed by those new people existing and taking away their utility.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

In the “long run”, the average human will have only produced subsistence levels of goods and services.

Some will produce more, some will produce less (i.e. will actually destroy goods and services), but the average will be subsistence with no surplus.

The reason I can be so confident of this assertion is that the alternatives are not realistic. We know if the average falls below subsistence levels then humans will become extinct. If the average is above subsistence, then each person contributes (on average) to an ever increasing store of goods and services.

What form does that accumulating surplus take? What accumulated surplus is left from times past? What is the value of that “accumulated surplus”? There are very few artifacts left from the past. Most artifacts have a useful life, when that life is over they must be disposed of at some incremental cost. Once disposed of, there is no accumulated surplus.

What kinds of goods and services could humans produce that would retain value in perpetuity? The Pyramids? Even the Pyramids will eventually wear out.

The only way the average can be positive is if new humans continue to produce more incremental goods and services than they consume. If the average is positive, then eventually humans will be born into a world where the per capita accumulated surplus is many times what they could possibly produce or consume in their lifetime. How do we expect such people to act? Do they only do positive sum transactions where the net accumulated goods and services only increases? Or do they do zero-sum or negative-sum transactions to increase their personal supply of goods and services by exploiting goods and services away from others?

A big problem is that generational transfers can be both positive and negative. There is much concern (actually faux) about the US debt burdening future generations. That would be easy to eliminate administratively. However that is not the only negative transfer to the future that can happen. When global warming melts Greenland and sea level goes up 7 meters, all the assets that are flooded are lost. If there is a spill of toxic material, the spill has to be cleaned up, which has a cost.

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