> It's woefully naive to expect individuals to give that power up for social-positive goals, it practically never happened throughout human history.
I would disagree emphatically with this statement. Prior to the advent of capitalism (200 years ago) there was significantly more long term vs short term thinking in society.
We as a people and culture often engaged in massive generation spanning projects where the people who would see and benefit from the results could be generations in the future and the people who started the project would be long dead before it was finished. How much of this do we see today? The ROI cycle now is what a quarter, a few years...
While I don't disagree that power tends to accumulate and is seldom given away, the focus wasn't solely on the acquisition and hoarding of capital. You can see the change in architecture, city design, the arts, and almost every aspect of life. Even simple utilitarian structures were often built as monuments of progress expected to serve generations. We can't even expand existing highways to meet demand.
There always were and always will be the selfish in society but society as a whole wasn't always this selfish.
I would disagree emphatically with this statement. Prior to the advent of capitalism (200 years ago) there was significantly more long term vs short term thinking in society.
We as a people and culture often engaged in massive generation spanning projects where the people who would see and benefit from the results could be generations in the future and the people who started the project would be long dead before it was finished. How much of this do we see today? The ROI cycle now is what a quarter, a few years...
While I don't disagree that power tends to accumulate and is seldom given away, the focus wasn't solely on the acquisition and hoarding of capital. You can see the change in architecture, city design, the arts, and almost every aspect of life. Even simple utilitarian structures were often built as monuments of progress expected to serve generations. We can't even expand existing highways to meet demand.
There always were and always will be the selfish in society but society as a whole wasn't always this selfish.