But we know that we are no longer the same, and not only know that we are no longer the same, but know in what we are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep on adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or egg collection.
Something I've always wondered is, assuming a hypothetical perfect communist system, what would the standard of living look like? I've seen people try to make arguments based on taking the GDP/GNP then dividing it by the population, which works out at about $70k per person. But then they're picturing that within a current system of artificially constrained housing supply, for profit healthcare/education, and 10x price markups. Assuming a perfectly efficient system in which the only costs are resources + time, and 90% of society's labor isn't going to sustaining completely useless overhead, what does the average lifestyle look like?