It is Kinder to Assume Everything is About Self-Interest

Whenever you establish a single standard of correctness that applies to everyone, there will always be people who are placed beneath it. If strength is defined as good, the weak fall; if intelligence is defined as good, the unintelligent fall. Only the place where people land changes; the act of falling itself cannot be eliminated.

So, what happens if you establish nothing?

Placing Self-Interest

What we place in stead of correctness is self-interest.

By self-interest, I mean whether a person is convenient or beneficial to another. They are useful. They are pleasant to talk to. Work progresses when they are around. That is how it works.

There is no equally objective value to my love or your love. There is only the convenience it provides to the person involved.

I know this sounds cold. But here is the crucial point: convenience differs from person to person. Someone who is a bad fit for one person may be a perfect fit for another.

In a world with only one single standard of correctness, those placed at the bottom are looked down upon by everyone. There is no escape. Because self-interest has no common scale, it is impossible for everyone to simultaneously place a single person at the bottom.

It is far kinder to assume that everything is about self-interest. Since no one’s value is being measured, no one falls due to an appraisal.

The Implementation of This is Economics

Placing self-interest may sound like a mere way of thinking, but the implementation already exists. It is economics.

The market does not ask who the buyer is. As long as they pay the same amount, anyone can buy the same thing. Lineage, talent, and personality are not factored into the price.

Money may look like a common scale. However, it is not measuring the person, but the transaction. A person welcomed in one transaction may be ignored in another. This does not create a hierarchy of people.

In the Hokkaido arc of Rurouni Kenshin, a villain named Kanryu Takeda speaks about innate inequality and the equality of money:

Things that cannot be bought with money create discrimination.

Talent, lineage, family background, appearance—discrimination gathers around the things that money cannot buy. As for things that can be bought, the gap between those who have them and those who don’t is filled by money.

This is said by a man who sold opium, and he is clearly depicted as a villain in the story. Even so, I believe this point is correct.

The same thing was said nearly three hundred years ago.

In the Letters on the English published by Voltaire in 1733, there is a scene where he visits the London Stock Exchange:

There, Jews, Muslims, and Christians trade as if they were of the same religion, and only those who go bankrupt are called infidels.

This was an era when religion divided people. Yet, within the exchange, that division ceased to function. The only thing that mattered was whether one could pay.

Adam Smith took this a step further in The Wealth of Nations in 1776:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Do not rely on goodwill. Rely on the other party’s self-interest. Do that, and your meal arrives.

For three hundred years, the same thing has been said repeatedly. From the side of the Enlightenment and from the mouths of villains.

Which One Saved Us?

Up to this point, I have been speaking in terms of logic. Now, let us look at the actual results.

Morality has existed since ancient times. The teaching to help the weak has existed for over two thousand years.

Nevertheless, until the beginning of the 19th century, there was no country in recorded history where the average life expectancy reached forty years. The estimated global average was 28.5 years.

However, this figure is easily misunderstood. It does not mean that people back then died at forty. It simply means that infant mortality was so high that the average was dragged down. For those who survived to twenty, life expectancy even then reached the sixties.

In other words, the problem at the time was not the upper limit of lifespan. It was whether one could reach that limit.

And that was something neither money nor social status could change. Even in studies tracking British aristocratic lineages, the average life expectancy at birth was not significantly different from that of commoners. Even those living in mansions saw their children die just the same.

Something that did not budge for morality, status, or money has moved over the last two hundred years. Today, the global average life expectancy is 71 years. Extreme poverty, which affected 80% of the world’s population in 1820, has dropped to 10%.

What moved it were clean water, sewage systems, medicine, and food. All of these are matters of production, not matters of mindset. Furthermore, they were not created out of a desire to save someone. They were created because they could be sold, and they spread because they became cheap.

Even now, the maximum human lifespan has hardly increased. What has increased is the attainment rate. People who previously didn’t reach that limit now do.

It was self-interest that raised the floor.

Those who established standards of correctness created people to be placed beneath them. Those on the side of self-interest raised the floor. The numbers show which one was kinder.