Quote:
Originally Posted by NOBLE
Pretty much what Hastur was saying is what I was thinking at first. I thought if I opted to save a loved one, it could only be for personal and selfish reasons whereas being the richest man in the world can afford me the opportunity to help so many more people, including generations of my loved ones yet to come.
However, I think there's an even deeper question hidden within this: which do we value more? A single life, or the increase in the quality of life for many people? Money cannot create life, neither can it buy happiness. To help people through philanthropy through feeding, housing and educating them will increase their quality of life but it will not necessarily make them happy. If we brought back a loved one, there's no telling what their quality of life would be either and they are bound to eventually die again....but at least they'll have LIFE. I say LIFE is worth more than all the money in the world, and not just the life of my loved one. Just life in general. It's something we cannot make (without using some other life), whereas anything money can buy is something we can make.
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I agree with you on the idea that no amount of money is worth any amount of life, at least in an innate sense. If you told me I could live in a mansion, have a whole fleet of expensive sportscars, and enough money to buy anything I could ever possibly want, but I could not use any of it for philanthropic purposes, OR I could bring back my late grandfather, to live a few more years on Earth, I would take the second option without hesitation. Life > money, and I agree.
But, when you say that money can merely buy "an improvement" in the quality of life for many people, but it might not "make them happy," I think you are really missing the point, there. With such vast reserves of wealth, my capabilities would allow me not only to increase the quality of life for many, but also to save the lives of many more - thousands, perhaps millions - and still have so much money left over that I would never really run out. This is not just about bringing them modern convenience, or a nice place to live; this is about saving huge amounts of people from preventable disease, famine, and other suffering, which would otherwise undoubtedly bring them a slow, torturous end.