From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Sun Jan 04 2004 - 17:36:15 MST
Lawrence Foard <entropy@farviolet.com> writes:
> On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Randall Randall wrote:
>> Even a population made up of exclusively altruistic individuals
>> would require those individuals to pretend self-interest in
>> order to find an optimal solution to goods distribution, no?
>
> And why wouldn't a society where individuals worked only in others
> interests not work?
The biologist and Ayn Rand would both answer "parasites", though one
would mean it more literally than the other.
Once you construct such a system, the benefits of defecting become
overwhelming. FYI, that's just one of several reasons communism
doesn't work, but certainly the inevitable rise of the Stalinist elite
within the group is one of the serious problems.
> Imagine that the pleasure reward from service
> is proportional to the good done by the act.
The mutant who doesn't suffer from such wiring defects will then clean
up, effectively enslaving all others.
-- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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