[mvonballmo]

I think the morality he's speaking to is the scalability of using that strategy. If everyone does it, then the system overloads and breaks. If only a few individuals do it, then those individuals willing to arrogate more resources to themselves "win". What makes those individuals so special to society?

I'm using the word "morality" to mean what is beneficial to society, within reasonable definitions. Please allow me to just hand-wave that away for now.

It's thinking about what are the ramifications of your actions on others? Why should you benefit and not others? Because you thought of it first? Because you're better at using this technique? Is this the kind of behavior that society wants to promote to achieve its goals?

We tend to use "morality" as a shortcut for meaning "not actively destructive to others." ... or something like that. I know we have to agree on which goals does society have, does society actually have goals, etc.

Or can we just let individuals pursue what they think are their own goals and hope for the best? And what best are we hoping for? Are we hoping that the system stays the same enough so that you personally will move toward your own goals? What if this pursuits prevents others from achieving theirs? What mechanisms do we have for changing things if we detect pathological behavior that will lead too far toward a place that everyone would consider to be "bad" (e.g., no food being produced).

Dog eat dog OK with everyone? What if this behavior ends up being so destructive that it affects even those who were initially excelling? What obligation do we have to others to keep the system working for them? Do we only think about that in terms of the eventual benefit to ourselves?

Morality's a big topic. I've probably mucked it up, but I'll leave it there.

[georgeplusplus]

There’s a lot to talk about here for sure and I read all your post it was very thoughtful.

I think the tools he is using is available to everyone. So it’s not like the others are at a disadvantage inherently but are choosing to be at a disadvantage. Should there be some sort of award for not using the tools? and if so, why?

I think your example about the system collapsing is dead on. But that’s proof of a bad system and not the questionable morals of the ones contributing to the collapse.

Also I would agree there is some social destructive dilema that occurs when you take shortcuts to get ahead of others. I spent my childhood growing up in low income areas of nyc, and the saying was as long as you get your piece, meaning whatever you need to do to survive is ok because at the end of the day you gotta feed yourself and your family. Think like selling illegal drugs for income. Sure you can feed your family with that money but the damage you are doing to your community will come around to affect you or your future family at some point. Where do you draw the line of bearing a responsibility to others?

I would argue that if they feel the need to sell drugs or are allowed to is a failure of the system as a whole instead of putting the blame on the person for working around the constructs of their community.