TBH, I’m blown away by the informed and compassionate responses to this thread.
Thanks so much Gabriel for letting me know something of the diversity of approaches for valuing labor. This is stepping in the right direction, but I still feel, though, that if we define worth by labor, however defined, we still miss the fundamental point: human life (or all life really) is the ultimate arbiter of moral value.
Kerala seems to support this. The Government is to all appearances genuine and works well, and the current Health Minister is a rock star!
I guess the problem is that any radical change creates opportunities for bad faith actors.
Ahhh!
Indeed. It’s a topic for another thread, but i am more and more coming to think that one of our basic mistakes is to assume that “science” is a universal method applicable to any field of human endeavor. In physics, chemistry, and engineering it’s been successful to an incredible degree, but in other fields, not so much; economics and psychology being two obvious example.
Well, tax is not theft, so there’s that. But sure, I am not thinking so much how to get from here to there.
Does there come a time, I wonder, when the harm done by extreme accumulation of wealth overwhelms our obligation to precepts?
Perhaps it would be better to say that “the capitalist system tries to value everything by the dollar”. By “dollar” I mean any currency, of course. Obviously dollar values differ according to time, person, and context, but the financial system still moves towards having one universal system.
Reading Suttas and meditating?
And I think there is a deep truth there. It is why those who know only transactional relationships are always so unsatisfied, so relentless in their need to consume more.