A Better Life for All Humans

 A Better Life for All Humans

The following is a concept intended to promote thinking about what really matters in life (a person's end goal), how that end goal is common to all humans, and how focusing on this common fundamental goal could improve everyone's life.  An excellent book that describes a similar concept is Wellbeing, Science and Policy, by Richard Layard and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve.  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/wellbeing/B64B0CDF6266FB37FBE263B9F4A1BA57   

1. a) All humans now and in the future have an intrinsic desire for a better life - for a high quality of life (QoL),  and b) a high QoL is their sole end goal (the goal of which all other goals are sub-goals),  and c) all of their actions are, consciously or subconsciously, in service of (means to) this overarching impetus or urge,  and d) given a choice between alternatives, everyone will (consciously or unconsciously) choose the options that they believe (even if mistakenly) will most contribute to their quality of life (most improve their life), either in the short term or long term. 

2. How a person subjectively feels about their life is all that matters and they know how they feel. They, and only they, can assess their well-being - their quality of life. 

3. We can objectively measure a person’s assessment of their quality of life (their current QoL Score) by asking them one simple question (the QoL Survey): How would you rate your life on a scale of zero to ten, where zero is the worst life you can imagine and ten is the best life you can imagine? 

4. Therefore we should adopt as society’s only end goal (aka the QoL Goal) a sustained high quality of life (a QoL Score of say 8 or more) for every human current and future.

5. We should establish as society’s QoL Imperative the maximization of the rate of progress toward that end goal.

6. For each institution/purpose/societal role, we should establish a QoL Index (a mathematical/statistical formula using everyone's QoL Scores), which is the metric for assessing the effectiveness of our efforts at progress toward the end goal.

7. The QoL Index is a utility function of the QoL Score of all members of the population to which the index applies. The index would be created/defined by the population to which it applies, using a democratic method. Presumably it would give greater weight to those with the lowest QoL Scores. When deliberating on the best index to adopt, it might be useful to consider a population of just you and your best friend. If one of you has a score of 8 and the other a score of 2 (or vice versa), what weightings would you want the index to include?

8. When faced with making a significant decision (including deciding on rules/laws, morals, heuristics, etc.), we should do (to the extent feasible) a QoL Analysis which estimates/predicts the immediate and future impact on the QoL Index of each option/alternative including the null/do-nothing option. Choose the option that is most likely positive for the QoL Index.

9. We should periodically measure the current QoL Index using the one-question QoL Survey (to get each individual’s QoL Score), calculate the rate of progress, and the current point in our journey toward the QoL Goal.

10. No human wants a lower quality of life.

11. The goal of having a high quality of life (QoL) is an individual, personal goal, and is every person’s end-goal.

12. The conduct of human affairs is not a zero-sum game. There always exists win-win options that enable every human’s QoL to improve.

13. There are any number of things/factors that positively impact a person's quality of life, and any number that negatively impact their QoL. Their net quality of life is the "sum" of these - similar to a financial balance sheet that calculates net worth. Any persistent negative can always be outweighed by positives.

14. Given a choice between living in a world where everyone has high quality of life (QoL) or one in which some do not, there is no reason for anyone to choose the latter. 

15. Other things being equal, a person with high QoL will get at least some further QoL boost if others, especially those with low QoL, get a higher QoL. We all benefit from maximizing the rate of progress toward everyone having high QoL - it's win-win. 

16. The goal of every human having a high QoL is aspirational. We will likely never reach that ideal. But there is no limit to how closely we can approach it. 

17. The challenge is to identify and choose individual and collective actions that maximize our rate of progress toward that ideal. 

18. Maximizing our rate of progress toward a high QoL for all should be the sole goal of our governments and public institutions.

19. The social sciences can help in identifying the most effective individual and collective measures - what works best.    

20. We are all different and need to find our own mix of factors that most improve our life.  A society that maximizes the choices realistically available to everyone will likely have a higher QoL Index.  The last thing we want to do is unnecessarily restrict people's choices. 

       -oOo-