Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde
Agreed. I had to re-read this upon reflection to make sure you weren't saying the human race is trying to get ahead; PEOPLE are. People want to have a nice house, nice car, nice salary and their kids to grow up in a nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, that (and keeping the money coming in) is about the extent of philosophical thinking that the general population does. While there are obviously lots of people out there trying to save the world, there needs to be more...lots more, in order to divert an eventual disaster. It seems that humans just aren't wired that way in civilization today.
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Disagree completely.
The whole of human advancement, or at least the vast majority of it, is driven by self interest.
Everybody looks out for themselves, then everybody can get whats best for themselves; everybody looks out for everybody, everybody ends up having no fucking clue what is best for the other man.
This is essentially why the societies that have embraced free markets and personal responsibility are where they are, and backwards "tribal" people or even countries that lived for communism for any period of time are behind.
It all comes down to incentive, and "I want to" is always, always, always, always, going to be better incentive than "It's whats best for everybody." Better incentive gives you smarter people trying harder, better people trying harder gets you better results, which is the only thing that matters.
You can take your magnanimosity and shove it up your ass;
I want the greedy fucking pharmaceutical industry coming out with better drugs because they think it will make them filthy rich more than I want them doing it because they want to help humanity; I want that because
I know the guy doing it to get filthy rich is going to do it better.
When I'm dieing, I don't give a shit why the drug is there, I give a shit that it is there, and the greedy bastard will get it there, or another greedy bastard will beat him to it.