It's not as if what I'm advocating for could simply just pop into existence and become predominant. It would exist within the pre-existing context of the institutions we already have, and to me it is more of a cultural shift than a structural ideological one.

I think duty based ethical/moral systems are in practice passed down through generational trauma. It's all about what you need to do to get by, or live up to an ideal (an existing precedent.) Pretty common story across cultures:

Fail to live up to expectations -> shame and insecurity -> stress -> emotional outbursts and unhealthy coping -> rhetorical justification for unhealthy behavior, which even becomes common at the cultural level.

So the idea of right and wrong as it relates to our positive moral duties actually creates unhealthy behavior and the conditions for people to be more insecure and defensive and less empathetic. Helping people to realize this is therapeutic at the individual level. It helps people to love themselves as they are. So why not promote it at the familial level, or the communal level?

I am not against a punitive justice system which enforces common negative moral prohibitions, don't kill people, don't steal, etc. I am mainly focused on critiquing positive moral obligations which in practice restrict peoples freedom more than negative ones, because they obligate you to use large portions of your time in a certain way, and they create people with an insecure sense of self worth. Which does not help them function. And we learn this all from a very young age when we are taking all our cues from our parents.

Now, at the end of the day, even if we are not morally obligated to make a living, we would much rather be financially stable than financially insecure or homeless. But wouldn't you rather live in a family and culture which was not full of finger pointing, shame, and inability to cope with things like sickness, mental illness or bad fortune? Our ideas about "duty" break down in the face of the complexity of life, but that doesn't stop people from guilting and berating each other in moments of weakness and vulnerability.

I do understand what you mean

That’s still missing the point of existentialist thought(which Camus falls under), Camus’s most important work on absurdism posits a singular question, “Should I kill myself” and argues that’s the most important philosophical question. Ethics in the face of this question are completely meaningless, as it’s a question that comes prior to questions of ethics.

Prospering, societal harm, destroying the ecosystem, none of that matters if we can’t answer the fundamental question of whether life is meaningless. That’s why greed doesn’t matter here and is irrelevant to absurdism. Negative consequences don’t matter if fundamentally life is meaningless. Absurdism is the seeking of meaning in a meaningless universe.

I have a feeling you’ve never read Camus? Or any Absurdist authors? Your making arguments, or observations that come after, which are essentially meaningless in the face of the Absurd condition.

Did you even read the article?

Edit: used a term incorrectly

And that can be traced back to survival instincts. Storing extra food and supplies for the coming winter.

It's like people forgot history and how literally every single Empire that existed was built on the backs of an impoverished underclass or slaves.

>You're honestly saying that people profiting from others' labor aren't excelling at the expense of others?

Outside of slave societies, this never happens. Why would someone labor to profit another when they could just profit themselves? People sometimes sell their labor to others, as one component of what that other person is making, but there the trades are generally fair.

>There is no such thing as infinite growth. The wealth of first world nations absolutely came at the expense of the resources and labor of less advantaged nations.

Nonsense. There's more to wealth than just resources. If you don't believe me, just smash up your phone and try to trade it for an unbroken one - after all, it's the same amount of plastic and metal either way.

People tend to disapprove of their own exploitation and they ought to.