Quote: Dave said: Its funny you ask this question. A friend of my wife's yesterday said that until you improve humanity's lot (eg. through charity or medicine or something similar), your only purpose on the planet is to breed.
Actually, an argument can be made that anyone who engages in legal commerce is creating wealth for everyone at one level or another. Which improves humanity's lot.
One could also argue that, in certain situations, charity or medicine are actually bad for humanity in the long run.
Oh, sure, there are the counterintuitives concept that charity increases dependence and makes people weak: medicines allow the weak to live and perhaps suffer instead of dying: lawyers are net creators of wealth, as opposed to say social workers, and as a consequence of trickle down economics I'm actually keeping a lot of people employed.
Flipping it back again, charities and medicien help the weak get strong, and I could be doing something which improves the lot of people as well as generates trickle-down wealth (diplomacy or human rights law).
Its hard to measure you own worth when there are so many angles from which to look at it.
