graph on the right depicts the United States (4.5% of global population) compared to the rest of the world. In this context, the 50% of “poorest” Americans are substantially richer than the average person alive today on Earth. The same feeling that the Occupy movement felt towards rich Americans is felt by billions that don’t live in America, about America.
But wait – we can extend this analysis further – much further…
There are almost 8 billion humans alive today, and it is expected another 10-15 billion or so will be born this century (shown in the light green triangle above). How is our wealth compared to those who will be born after the peak in fossil sunlight availability? And using an even wider boundary, what about ALL contingent humans to be born on this planet – what will their ‘wealth’ be, considering energy depletion and degraded carrying capacity? And we have an even wider boundary – already we divert approximately 35% of ALL planetary photosynthetic production towards human use 162 . What of the other 10 million (and ever-fewer) species alive on the planet? Naturally, it seems ‘fairness’ feels strongest to us, but the way that fairness manifests can be pretty self-serving. It all depends what boundary is used. TaaL: In my observation, very few protesting Americans in the 99% are spontaneously sending a significant percentage of their wealth to those poorer than they, which is most of the world’s population. In other words, they’re both in the 99% and, in some respects, acting like the 1% they’re protesting (even though only an alien could get away with mentioning it).
So, do I reject the notion of “fairness” entirely? Not at all. My kind and I
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