User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Character Sheet: Malcolm River/@comment-4867780-20161014010956/@comment-26322734-20161015093430

"I think the major flaw in your theory that the pursuit of self-interest is almost inevitably done at the expense of someone else's self-interest, so in pratice everyone is building their own happiness by gnawing at others'. Surely, you realize how viciously happiness-unfriendly such a system inherently is ?"

Proof? How exactly does persuing one's self-interest come at the expense of others? Your assumption seems to be based on the common misconception that the rich become rich at the expense of the poor, which simply isn't true. Economics shows us that the poor actually benefit from the rich getting rich, as in order for the rich to get rich, they must sell cheap, high-quality goods and services to the poor. As the law of Supply and Demand goes, if something is too expensive, people will stop buying it, ergo the person selling it won't get rich.

Unless you're implying that eating, an act of self-interest, comes at the expense of someone. Or buying a car, another act of self-interest. Sure, once you eat something or buy something, you deprive other people of that thing you're buying, but that only frees them up to buy other things.

And as I'd said in my previous comment, there are three market principles that make sure everything is done ethically, as well as placing a system of checks and balances (competition).

"It could work in a post-scarcity society like the DIN because everyone here can pursue their own interest without sabotaging others'. But in a zero-sum world like our own, how are you supposed to do that ? Isn't someone's victory someone else's defeat ? Isn't someone's gain someone else's loss ? Doesn't the wealth of a few imply the exploitation of many ?"

No. The wealth of a few is not the exploitation of many. Economics shows us this. In order for the few to gain wealth in the first place, they must derive currency from the "many". By the way, the "few" and the "many" aren't groups, they are each individuals with their own private interests. If a private business is to exploit its workers and its consumer base (just another group of self-interested individuals), then in a free society like the Coalition, the workers are fully welcome to quit, and the consumers free to stop buying from said business. As a result, the business will fail due to the lack of labor and revenue. This concept is called consumer sovereignty.

The problem with the D.I.N and the idea of post-scarcity in general is that everything was collectivized, so citizens weren't necessarily treated as individuals, but as collectives with whom are distributed resources. The D.I.N was largely Marxist in structure, in that sense.

Our world only seems zero-sum because markets (I'm using "markets" very loosely here, defining it as the basis of interaction between individuals in the presence of scarcity) have been distorted in the favor of the wealthy, thus making them less or not accountable for what they do. That isn't the market's fault, that's the fault of those who control it, which would be the State in this case.

"As for the ethics part, real-life clearly suggests that in practice it is more an obstacle than an asset in the pursuit of self-interest, because otherwise... ethics would have conquered the entire world ages ago, don't you think ?"

Incorrect. Social contracts, property rights, and other parts of ethical egoism are working concepts of most Western countries today. Capitalist practices (though more countries are leaning towards socialism in practice) have not only shown results that prove that ethics in the persuit of self-interest not only leads to prosperity for an individual in a stable society, but economics itself produces testable results that confirm this.

In the Coalition, ethics has conquered the world, and individual governments within the Coalition are putting free market principles in practice. The results aren't perfect, but nobody was asking for perfect in the first place, just a world where they can succeed unhindered by anything but the natural checks and balances of the free market itself.