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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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Apply the scientifc method. Look at places and times with wide economic disparity. Were/are those good stable places with happy healthy populations, or was it bad. If you decide it's a problem based on evidence, then look at solutions. If you don't have examples, try things out and record the data. What worked and what didn't. Don't let your values bias you. I think that welath inequality is a problem, but I'm willing to listen to thoroughly researched, peer reviewed, data backed conclusions.
You have two distributions of populations:
Distribution A has 50% of the population scoring 10 happiness, and the remaining 50% scoring 0.
Distribution B has 100% of the population scoring 5 happiness.
Your research has shown that these two distributions are the two options that allow for maximization of happiness, and you can achieve any of them at the same cost with exactly the same externalities. This data is confirmed with perfect mathematical precision to a point currently unavailable to our scientific institutions for the sake of this thought experiment.
There is no objective reason to choose one over the other; if none is chosen, a suboptimal distribution will be chosen for you.