Great follow-ups, thanks. I learned some stuff!

Aristotle’s answer, BTW, is the first one. Aristotle believed that everything has a purpose (Greek: telos) — a reason to be.

The purpose of a flute is to make music. The purpose of a knife is to cut. The purpose of a bed is to be slept in. If a flute is not making good music — if it is kept in a safe by a rich man — it is not fulfilling its purpose (its telos). Good flutes should to be played by good flute players. Houses are meant to be lived in.

My answer was the last one: we should choose the option that makes the most people happy. Good flutes should be played by good flute players.

* The title question is Aristotle’s BTW. Not mine.

But you can go even broader than this by choosing a different ‘good thing’. If there are a limited number of houses for people to live in, who should have the houses? Should the answer be ‘the rich people should have as many houses as they want because they are rich and poor people are not’?

What about education? Who should have the best physics education? Should it be the kids who are best at physics? The kids who love physics the most? The kids who are not very good at physics? The kids who hate physics?

What about healthcare? What about iPhones? What about a place in pre-school or gymnastics class? What about tickets to the FA Cup final?* Different kinds of good thing will result in different answer but I think Aristotle’s question is a good one.

Maybe the other clowns have a point.

* Tony gave me his extra ticket for the 1990 FA Cup final replay vs Crystal Palace because he thought the ticket should go to a Man United fan.

Flute Czar accepts no guidance, decides based on what whim strikes the czar in the moment. We must put it up to a popular vote each and every time lol

That or let the Meta algorithms just figure it out. Though to most of us the effect would appear to be no different from that of allowing the czar’s whims to dictate…

We could allocate the flutes democratically. Everytime a new flute becomes available, we could have a vote to decide who deserves it.

The Flute Czar would still need some kind of guidance as to how to allocate the flutes.

(The example that clarified the issue for me involved other things that aren’t survival related–tickets to the World Cup or the Metropolitan Opera, a really nice tennis racket or bicycle or table saw. No point in giving these things to people with relatively little interest compared to others, regardless of socioeconomic status. If we were talking about survival-level food, ambulance service, etc, I’d have to think about it some more.)