But if I had to come down on one side, I think it would be people. Being away at college has made me rethink relationships, because they’ve all changed–my friends from Dover are all long distance now, as are my family, and I had the opportunity to form new relationships here, not to mention Amherst’s constant emphasis on networking (kidding! kinda…). Obviously I’d draw the line at, say, torture or rape or murder, but I’m willing to tolerate a lot more now than I would have.

I’ve been pondering this question more and more, myself. I also value people very highly. In our culture, though, despite the lip service given to valuing people, people rank pretty low on the totem pole. Business, “the economy,” and money often rank higher, and the environment, international peace, etc. don’t even make it on the charts when you watch people’s actions. (A “Live Green” bumper sticker on your SUV doesn’t count.)

Let’s just consider the case where we agree that people matter most. What about situations where there’s no way to balance the interests of competing groups? How do we decide who wins? Let’s say that people matter more than the economy, so we’re willing to give away our resources to the third world to address the hunger riots currently going on. How much should we give? Who gets to decide?

And now, let’s extend that example through time. If we only have X billion barrels of oil, who chooses how many of those barrels my generation gets, how many barrels your generation gets, and how many barrels (if any) your children get? Right now, consumption is driven by market forces, and market forces only look at today’s production costs. They don’t factor in our children’s need for oil.

So even if people matter most, which people? How do we resolve zero-sum conflicts where one person’s gain is another’s loss? And how do we make decisions taking the interests of the yet-unborn into account?

Tricky stuff. Most of us opt to stop asking and instead we go play on Twitter…

- Stever