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--- thoughts:philosophy:morality [2021/05/24 03:03] – Owen Mellema
+++ thoughts:philosophy:morality [2021/05/25 17:26] (current) – Owen Mellema
@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 Wrong. While the monetary cost is low, the overall psychological/"social opportunity" cost is quite high. Constantly thinking about politics induces a state of anxiety. This is mentally exhausting. Additionally, it inspires a sense of apathy towards the world, because of how bad things seem to be. Finally, and most alarmingly it introduces a faux opportunity cost to all actions that aren't advancing "the cause". If I take an hour off of Twitter to relax, that's an hour that the left/right are gaining ground in the nation-sized tug-of-war.
-The problem is that, despite expending a large amount of resources, the individual has very little power to influence national politics. So, the part-time political activist is eternally spinning his wheels to help. Meanwhile, the person could be allocating those resources to much more socially useful goals.
+The problem is that, despite expending a large amount of resources, the individual has very little power to influence national politics. So, the part-time political activist is eternally spinning his wheels to help. Meanwhile, the person could be allocating those resources to much more socially useful goals. For example, we all know that homelessness is a problem, and we would like for it to not be a problem. However, homelessness is something that the Federal government is not well suited to handling. Instead, this is the job of local governments. Therefore, focusing on national politics reduces our ability to handle these important problems.
+Now, let me be clear. I am not saying you should not care about national politics. You should vote and be informed about what is happening in the country. I am merely saying that we should temper how much we care about national politics, and not let it take more of a position in our lives than what it deserves.
+===== Objections =====
+This system is not perfect. I have a few problems with it, despite being the one who made it up.
+==== Regional economic differences ====
+The biggest problem comes when everyone applies this system. Some communities have more resources than others. For example, a city in America will likely have a much larger charitable budget than a village in Africa. Furthermore, even the poorest in America have a far higher pre-charity quality of life than poor people in Africa ((Please, do not try to tell me that Africa is actually thriving. Sure, there may be //regions// where it is quite nice, such as South Africa, but the fact is that many, many people are living in abject poverty. This is especially true in Central Africa, in nations such as Uganda and Chad)).
+If we apply the principle of helping those who are closest to us first, we may be spending our resources on problems that are trivial compared to the larger problems. One million dollars spent improving the education of inner city kids could be spent overseas to prevent thousands from actually dying of starvation or being severely malnourished. In this light, it seems almost psychopathic to follow my ideas.
+Frankly, I don't have an answer.