Right

Right.
I think it's important to do both: compare within, and compare without. Within, it is a matter of significance
and political importance to understand the wealth gap and the drags it may be causing on the economy, to
consider options, to see what we can do to maintain stable, working, healthy economies and social policies.
Without, it is a matter of significance and political importance to understand how far we've gotten, how far
behind most of the world is, and how our own relative wealth compares and even comes in conflict with the
wealth of other living people.
In the same regard, the good has to be taken with the bad and for me way too many people search out the
problems without giving respect to the good things that are happening both foreign and domestically. In a
sense, it's a good thing that people are capable of making millions or billions of dollars providing services or
goods to people or the economy, the question becomes when that wealth comes at the expense of other
people OR unintentional consequences such as inequality disrupt social cohesion or even provide a drag on
future gains of the wealthy, create inefficiencies or reduce meritocracy in favor of nespotism or classism.
In short there is nothing wrong with being a billionaire, there's something wrong with being an unethical
billionaire (edit: I just realized this is tautological. I mean there's nothing wrong with acting in a manner that
increases your own gains as long as it doesn't intentionally harm other people, or where you discover you
are unintentionally harming other people, to at least attempt to reduce that harm). The money is relatively
beside the point, it's how you use the capital that people have a problem with.
So internally, the billionaire/shrinking middle class divide is worrisome because it creates a nontrivial level of
conflict and consequences; in the meantime, the developed world/undeveloped world divide is worrisome
because it creates a nontrivial level of conflict and consequences. But in the same way an American middle
class family of four living comfortably on $65,000 a year should not reject their lifestyle even though some of
it comes at the expense of undeveloped countries' resources and labor, a billionaire shouldn't be ashamed of
managing to make more money in a few hours with passive income than the American middle class family
makes in a year with two full time working parents. What either should be ashamed of is anything where they
look down at those below them as deserving of their lot in life for not being good enough, or refusing to help
or consider options on how to aide those who are suffering, or refusing to acknowledge that suffering exists,
or even (in rare but unfortunately occasional circumstances) directly choosing to profit in the suffering of
others. As long as you have empathy and awareness, and back it up with action and a willingness to help
other people, from there most of the issues we have are more unintended and circumstantial consequences.
And after having been abroad for a while and visiting a range of different countries with different
circumstances, one thing I can say toward humanity is that wherever there are people, people manage to
survive and manage to find joy in survival. The fact is that the entire world is a much healthier and wonderful
place than we can sometimes give credit to with all the issues. We have 7 billion people and we're increasing
the standard of living of all of them, if painfully slowly and incrementally, and with tragic conflicts and
consequences that we can't ignore.
Finally, our continual incremental increase in standards of living worldwide needs also to not be taken for
granted as a law of nature or inevitability, as any number of factors man made or circumstantial, including
anything from global warming to a giant meteorite hitting the earth, also needs to be taken in account and
prepared for in the event of. Luckily we have 7 billion people, a couple billion of them in developed countries,
to specialize in certain existential risks so that we can mitigate them broadly. In order to manage existential
risks to human consciousness and the ecology that supports it, we need as many hands on deck to be
capable of putting their minds to it rather than suffer. Starving people in undeveloped countries and stressed
out middle classes in developed countries are both hindrances to creating solutions, though in different ways
relative to and separate from each other, which have to be taken within their own frame of reference.
This is why I'm a fan of the term "Think global, act local." Find your specialism, your one 'cause' that you find
most significant in reducing suffering worldwide or mitigating existential risks to humanity as a whole, and
then figure out within your local agency what you can do about it, even if in small ways. Some of it is
recognizing that you can't personally go over to Africa and be a medical assistant for people fighting off


ebola, but that you can at least donate money to the cause or haggle your representatives in the US
government to fasttrack studies in ebola vaccines. Or whatever other issue-du-jour. And sometimes it means
recognizing that you can't help out in a meaningful way to one issue so you might as well give moral support
to those who do but you still need to focus on your own individual cause.
It also means that everyone needs to be aware of a few psychological influences that inhibit thinking about
these issues rationally. The three that strike me the most often are:
 Confirmation bias
Seeking out information that confirms your beliefs and ignoring or dismissing information that conflict with
them.
 Nirvana fallacy
Dismissing a solution completely because it doesn't resolve the issue completely.
 Hedonic treadmill
Realizing that no matter how good your life or other people's quality of life are, there will always be conflicts,
issues, and existential risks developed or imagined, so that even though a poor person in the US is living
better than a poor person in West Africa, that doesn't make a poor person's lifestyle in the US acceptable to
US standards, nor does it reduce the poor person's suffering; and in relation, understanding that all the
billionaires that exist are themselves finding themselves confronted with personal or external suffering and
existential threats.
The goal of wealth is to establish for yourself a comfortable life you can enjoy. Once that is established for
yourself (with self awareness toward hedonic treadmill imposition), the next goal is to seek methods of
establishing that lifestyle for other people who do not have it.
Once one has at least established empathy and consideration to people's relative situations and
experiences, and can at least think of ways in which one personally seeks to improve the lot of people the
world over, then at last we can take in much of the rest of the issues of the world with a Vonnegutian 'And so
it goes...'