C. Bujes writes:
"Life is not an achievement contest. No one has more value than anyone else. An hour of my life is worth an hour of your life. That's the only sane basis for an economic-social system. Everything else devolves into self-justification contests, is a waste of time, and reinforces the worst aspects of being a verbal and calculating being.
An hour of my life is worth an hour of yours, and we support whoever for whatever reason can't work. If you keep it simple, it may even be doable."
This is a very good way to put the problem and of course the central contention is wrong. An hour of my life watching paint dry is not worth an hour of a surgeon's life successfully operating on somebody's brain. The difference is that while we may all be equal in a philosophical and political sense, we all are not equally useful to each other in all we do.
In an interdependent society we need to be useful to each other. Why even concern ourselves with some question of objective validity? If a person's work is useful to another person, he has strengthened our society and if not he has not. Yes, intent is important. We don't have to be cold-blooded. After all, intent to be useful to another also strengthens society. But in the final analysis societies live and die depending on how useful people are to each other. Humans are social animals.
peace,
boddi