Yup. 100%. I doubt you'll find an organism on Earth that's not ok with having access to more resources than it needs.
Can you describe an environment where this wouldn't occur? What would happen if an organism in that environment was able to hoard resources?
Sounds like you might want to also consider as well the iterative prisoners dilemma and the tragedy of the commons with respect to the evolution of groups and cultures (meta groups).
>> Can you describe an environment where this wouldn't occur?
One in which any amount of self-awareness of the negative effects of gluttony (see: Willy Wonka) temper the urge to accumulate and consume more resources above a certain point.
There is only so much French silk pie I can consume after Thanksgiving.
Ok. How exactly would you implement that? How can we get there from where we are now? What are the incentives? Why would people do that? What happens to people that don't do that?
> Can you describe an environment where this wouldn't occur? What would happen if an organism in that environment was able to hoard resources?
Only in a religious context where they see a benefit to vows of poverty or simplicity.
Wealth as we have it right now is a huge pain in the ass. You have to worry about what some idiot in the Fed is doing, what some senile old man in an office is doing, and what some old Boomer with a printing press is doing. You have to worry about a government that runs with the emotion of a Millenial and the depth of understanding of a TikToker, making that affect your personal freedom, your wealth, and your life. I'm talking about the US in this case, but it's really a mess everywhere. No country has good governance at this point in time.
By all means, wealth is nice to have, but there is a function between increasing wealth and increasing time spent preserving it. At a certain point of wealth you realize that the most valuable things cannot be bought, and it becomes a chore rather than a source of comfort. We are also clearly bad at preserving wealth, otherwise Mesopotamia would be the richest place on the planet.
Being rid of wealth can be extremely freeing, but the communities that see it this way also play by completely different rules than society does at large. You don't see a lot of religious being held up as successes by the current global standards for example.
This has problem been rolling around in my head and where I’ve landed is that humans are terrible administrators, mainly because we get bored administering something after it’s built.
We see it in software development all the time. People are less interested in maintaining code they’ve inherited and are more interested in building their own.
I don’t think this is a bad thing per se. We’re creative optimistic creatures. We prefer green field because when we’re working on it, we feel great imagining the possibilities. When it’s older, “played out”, and to the point where we feel it’s something that’s to be administered, there’s less possibilities and we get bored. Time to try something else.
Everywhere you look, this pattern is present. We love building stuff. We don’t love administering stuff.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I've been wary of wealth for so long that I've internalized that feeling, so I forgot to phrase it more like "people are ok with being wealthy while others are poor".
I could never be a billionaire or even a millionaire, and then walk around and not see the countless people suffering all around me, and around the world.
Now, I imagine many of them feel that they are making a positive contribution to the world by employing people, creating products that help people, making charitable donations, etc.
But that stuff stems from the ego. I believe that true wealth is in divine things like the love between a parent and child. Stuff that doesn't cost money.
This isn't just feel-good woo woo stuff. A society could be built around love as surely as it could be built around fear in capitalist societies. Science and technology's greatest failure is that there's still scarcity. A contrived scarcity now, that keeps people working so hard and distracted that they never get a chance to catch a breath and question the system. Just so that a chosen few can suckle on the priceless time of the poor, using them as human chattel.
> This isn't just feel-good woo woo stuff. A society could be built
In addition to my above recommendations you might also want to investigate your ideologies. It seems to me your view of the world and how it works, as presented here in your comments, is from a woefully low resolution representation of the extraordinary detail that goes into society and economic systems.
> around love as surely as it could be built around fear in capitalist societies.
No. Not at all, in any way shape or form. You'll probably want to investigate, as well, human psychology, neurology, and the history of civilization. But start with the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Yup. 100%. I doubt you'll find an organism on Earth that's not ok with having access to more resources than it needs.
Can you describe an environment where this wouldn't occur? What would happen if an organism in that environment was able to hoard resources?
Sounds like you might want to also consider as well the iterative prisoners dilemma and the tragedy of the commons with respect to the evolution of groups and cultures (meta groups).