what is the tension here? Scarcity drives capitalism because it's what gives resources value. But when a resource is renewable (solar, wind, geothermal), it loses all value once the capturing mechanism is paid for, and thus becomes maintainable at a minimal cost.
with current resources, because they are scarce they are controlled by a few and thus many people do not have access at a price they can afford. A resource like education, though, can be distributed exponentially - teachers teaching teachers - if the infrastructure is in place.
a big part of not being happy with what you have and always wanting more is vanity. Believing that your material wealth defines you as a person and therefore you become more important, which drives confidence and perceived happiness. but the foundation is weak because for living life from day to day, a self-image built on possession must certainly be shaky or susceptible to change, as all things change and perish eventually. But i think a lot of people go through life like this because everyone - or most - buy into it, which gives the belief so much power. When someone else believes you are important because of wealth, that reinforces your belief. And the economy reinforces it too because you have access to desirable activities and goods.
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My professor told us an interesting fact: up to 1975 studies showed that as income increased so did happiness, but after that income continued to rise but happiness dropped off. It is good evidence that we are beyond a kind of equilibrium where the necessary standard of living is obtained and are in fact quite overdeveloped. I think our society is in large part to blame for people's desire for wealth, although I think it is ubiquitous throughout time and a lot of other cultures. Our society is built to reward most those people who can make a lot of money: unique experiences like traveling, going to the best cultural activities, sporting events, etc. There is a natural drive to make enough to be secure in your needs and then also a certain level of wants, but we have done such a poor job of defining some kind of acceptable level of wealth. Surely there is a limit on the optimal level of wealth but for some reason we feel as though there is no need, that there can't possibly be a reason why we should strictly limit the wealth of some people. It's strange because even though we have so much inequality, even those in the lower brackets tend to live pretty well, relative to the rest of the world. That makes it hard to justify redistribution or limits. I guess wealth is not inherently bad but a love of it really distorts a societies priorities
yeah i guess it doesn't matter how it's distributed within a country if that country has 50% of the world's wealth. obviously even the poor in that country will be living "well" relative to the rest of the world.
having said that, you look at the poor in the US and you have low literacy, high infant mortality, crime, poor health, no health care, etc. where the education system is failing people and they have no choices to being to make. versus the poor in mexico who's QUALITY of life is probably higher, even though in terms of $$ they'd be way worse off.
the evolution of humanity has developed tumors all over. our species is just a runaway train, like a herd of cattle escaping across a field towards a cliff, where a few cows are yelling at the other ones because they know something's wrong but everyone is still running in the same direction.
but this is the result of so many years of evolution.
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