K: I will try to answer without getting too far away from your original premise…
the idea that morality is somehow fixed within us is an assumption…
the fact is we have see people blow by conventional morality…
psychopaths like IQ 45 don’t even notice conventional morality…
morality is something other people do, not psychopaths…
morality isn’t inherent within us… it is taught… it is part of the
biases and myths and superstitions and habits that I often speak of…
that we are taught when we are young… now, as we get older we think
that morality somehow was born in us… but look at children… I am parent…
and we have to teach them what is right from wrong… think George Washington
and his cherry tree… morality is inherited from our society, state, schooling,
our culture…it doesn’t exist as posited by thinkers like Descartes…
put inside of us by god…
now depending on the culture, your question isn’t even a question because
of the existing “morality”… Sparta or Rome for example, your question
wouldn’t even make sense because they don’t view morality that way…
the fact we can talk about morality in the fashion that you are speaking of,
is a factor where we put a great deal of emphasis on money…
your very question reeks of culture bias… how do we understand
morality in terms of money and what does our culture value
more then anything else, money………
so we see morality in terms of money and another culture would
see morality in terms of god and his values or another culture might see
morality in terms of honor or perhaps in terms of Arete… the Greeks thought
in terms of excellence…….Arete means excellence…
now will your statement have meaning at some future date, no…
because of changes in the culture that will change even the meaning
of the words you use and will also change what our words mean…
read Milton’s “Paradise lost” it is a morality play that no longer
means anything today because of changes in society since then……
it is simply a poem to read… not for its morality but for how
Milton approaches the subject matter……….
we no longer approach morality like Milton did, we have changed because
of experiences and those experiences have made Milton no longer accessible
and the morality he promoted, irrelevant…
your point argues from a very specific time and place and culture…
that we can see morality from a monetary viewpoint speaks to who we
are today… and it doesn’t say anything good about us…
it is not the question that you ask but the premise from which you can ask
that question… the underlying thought is that morality can be somehow
be monetary based is directly something our culture can work with because
we are a monetary based culture…
and our questions become monetary based… a life has X value in money…
think of a society that would even have dared asked that question…
certainly not the Greeks or the Romans or the Middle ages or any
age afterwards, not until money became the driver of
our thought process…not until the “Modern” age…
it is not enough to ask the question that you asked, but you have to
question the underlying basis of such a question…
what would Socrates have thought of your question?
Kropotkin