Valuing All Human Needs

(An earlier draft of this comment appeared in my blog on Friday, 14 March 2008.)

I think it benefits each of us far more when the highest possible percentage of humanity consists of healthy, happy, productive individuals. For me, it's staggering to imagine, for example, how many of today's starving might otherwise develop into the intellectual equivalents of Einstein.

Even when individuals aren't that capable, however, with one another, frequently they can produce and trade. By doing so, they can massively contribute to our well-being in ways that they never could if their needs for food and shelter, for example, weren't met.