To you both very well written. Great examples.
I tend to refer to the dark side of human nature, that Bastiat refers to as the ‘common tendency’ of ‘mankind’ to ‘live and prosper at the expense of others’.
To me the conundrum is how to keep ‘things from getting out of whack’.
I don’t know how to keep things from getting out of whack. But I do know that if we ever do figure out how, it’ll seriously curtail the production of science fiction. :-)
But seriously...For as long as mankind has progressed technologically, we have faced this very conundrum. From Icarus to Dr. Frankenstein, from bronze to gunpowder to the atomic bomb, we have had to address the perils inherent in our technological discoveries.
The balancing of individual and community concerns is a delicate one. Toss a big lump of technology on one side or the other, and things are liable to get out of whack for a bit. Sorting it all out is, well, like an occasional test of a people’s ability to govern themselves - natural selection on a national scale, you might say.