You Are Panem’s Capitol
A reporter asked me how the world would be different if people took a year of leisure after each seven years of work, instead of retiring at 65, as I suggested in Why Retire? I guessed that young people would have more interesting stories to tell about what they did with their year off. More interesting at least than the typical retiree story of another year of golfing or organizing photo albums. As people get older they get more comfortable with set patterns, and less eager for adventure.
This might be good for their near needs, but less fits our far ideals about how we should live our lives. This is also probably why people tend to like marriage more than you might think from their youthful inclinations.
I thought of this while watching The Hunger Games. The book and movie express a strong sincere class and urban/rural envy and hatred. People from the heroine’s poor starving coal-mining District 12 are not allowed to leave or choose their laws, and are forcibly humiliated by the Capitol region, where folks live in lazy shallow luxury.
You might think this echoes your 99%er hatred of the 1%, but not only is the anti-urban-elite element strong here, on a cosmic scale you are more like Panem’s Capitol than District 12. Because unless humanity creates a strong permanent central government to control fertility, far future folk will return to very slow growth, and thus to near subsistence incomes. And you might consider what this vast horde will think of your rich ways.
Yes, you didn’t choose to live now, and you may have a right to spend your wealth any way you want. But future folk may have a right to hate or despise you, if they think you have mostly squandered the gift of living in our rare age of luxury. District 12 folks despise Capitol folk not just because their riches seem stolen, but also because they seem weak, shallow, selfish, and self-indulgent, with little sense of or contribution to larger possibilities. Future folk may think the same about you.
EMs could simply be outlawed: they serve no real purpose (unlike children, they don't even increase genetic diversity or come up with truly new ideas), in fact they are mostly a burden for the reasons you listed as well as the destruction of democracy (a rich person could get infinitely many votes if the EMs all think exactly like him).
District 12 folks despise Capitol folk not just because their riches seem stolen, but also because they seem weak, shallow, selfish, and self-indulgent, with little sense of or contribution to larger possibilities.It seems to me that it would be the Malthusian ems of the future who are more like that then the people of today. A person of today, even if they spend their lives in a generally monotonous existence, generates positive pecuniary externalities, overall. The work they do increases the availability of goods and services, lowering their price. Their existence, on average, makes everyone else better off. This is evidenced by the fact that the average person is far wealthier, and has an income far higher above subsistence, than does the average person of the Middle Ages.
By contrast the Malthusian brain emulators of the future will generate negative pecuniary externalities for the overall population. The work they do might make a few people richer, like the investors who loaned their em clan money to make yet another em. But because they live in a Malthusian world their work will not increase the availability of goods and services for others. Instead it will make those goods and services more expensive for everyone. Their existence, on average, will make everyone else worse off.
People of today, even if they do not accomplish much more personally than being an office drone, benefit many others by their existence and make at worst only a select people few worse off. Malthusian ems harm many others by their existence and make at best only a select few people better off. Which existence seems "self-indulgent, with little sense of or contribution to larger possibilities" to you. (If ems were the same as children you could argue that it's not their fault they make the world worse. But they're exact duplicates of the person who chose to make them, so arguably they should be held accountable for that person's actions)
You could argue that Malthusian ems increase total utility, which is good. But total utility, while an important and necessary value, is not the only value. There are many other values, including average utility and equality of utility. Malthusian ems increase total utility at the expense of those other values, which is a bad thing on the net.
I'm not sure how easy it will be to coordinate to prevent ems expanding to the Malthusian limit. On one hand it will be a new technology, and restricting copying people digitally will have different emotional connotations from restricting natural childbirth. It will probably be more like coordinating to restrict CFC production than coordinating to reduce fertility. On the other hand, unrestricted em growth has greater potential rewards to defectors than unrestricted CFC use. It could really go either way.