morti

edit: I feel for you, comrade. It is so incredibly frustrating.

I got in an argument with a friend of mine about human behavior. He is convinced that humans are greedy and will take a mile if you give them an inch. Even when I sent him a 40 page review paper citing hundreds of articles, which all discuss different ways humans exhibit altruistic and pro-social behavior, he still tries to argue you can more easily count on people to be greedy than you can count on them to be altruistic or cooperative.

He also tried to argue that people can't self-regulate. As if giving people an abundance of resources would cause them all to overindulge because, apparently, the only thing stopping people from eating themselves to death is the limited amount of money they have.

I'm not saying greed and self-regulate on issues aren't behaviors that humans exhibit. I'm saying you can pretty consistently count on people not being selfish, and self-regulation issues are better addressed by mental health experts than to design an economic system such that people are faced with a choice between moderation or death.

Okay. Thank you for the suggestions. I will look for organisations in my area, and look into forming some local support organisations.