> You're not even considering the idea it could be different. Many people have lived in communities where they don't lock their doors because they were actually able to trust the people around them.

The trust in these tightly-knit communities is generally maintained by driving off predatory and criminal folks, and/or by harshly and promptly retaliating against them should anyone be victimized. Unfortunately, this is not something that can work beyond the scale of a fairly small town or perhaps a "gated" neighborhood in a larger city.

I disagree completely, trust is rare in gated communities and police states. The more harshly the law is enforced, the more clear the sign that people do not trust each other to follow it. Trust is most easily maintained by people simply having no need to steal because there is nothing they want more than they want the trust and respect of the people around them. Why would I steal from you if you're no richer than I am and I know you'd help me in my time of need if it came? Society starts to break down when there come to be things that people view as more valuable to them than each other's good will and friendship.

That is to say, trust is only possible under conditions of equality.

Whenever the talk comes to equality and so on, I actually do think about women, or mating partners in general. While you could perhaps try to distribute property to everybody in equal amounts, so that (in your theory) nobody would have a reason to steal anymore, what about mating partners?

It seems some socialist communities actually tried to make it mandatory for women to sleep with everybody, but I don't think that is a good solution (not sure if that needs to be discussed).

So mating partners to me show that that equality in society you describe is not really attainable.

And even if everybody would own the same things, it wouldn't imply that nobody would want other people's things. If you would steal stuff from somebody else, you would still have more things than before.

I also don't think it is generally true that only poor people steal. Many criminals seem to become rich and they don't change their mind afterwards.

And there would be all the other issues with socialism - some people would work more, some would work less, yet all would get the same things. That would be another recipe for dissatisfaction and social unrest.

Your story of "men preying on women that fulfill the standards of the rich" also doesn't ring true to me. Why would non-rich men find other things attractive about women than rich men? And why can't they have normal relationships with women, why is it preying if a poor man contacts a woman? It is also definitely not true that women depend on men to make a living these days.

Of course you can consider the long-term effects of whatever morals you want to instill in society. For example Christianity seems to have done quite well with their monogamy mandate, providing most people with a mating partner. In reality, presumably the few attractive men and women would be happier if the attractive men could mate with several women, and the women could get to only mate with the most attractive men. It would just leave many men (the majority) in the dust, again causing social unrest. Other societies try that model, and have problems of their own.

What is attractive in society is always aligned to the values of that society. Contrary to what evopscyh would have you believe, there is massive cultural variation in the standards of attractiveness. Wealth inequality itself is the most massive driver of inequality in partner selection; the entire reason a mandate to monogamy exists is because there is a huge incentive for all partners to flock to the richest person. If we lacked wealth inequality, we would have far less inequality in the factors of attractiveness, and less sensitivity to those factors which still existed. Being attractive in modern society is an incredibly time and resource intensive activity, and is composed of far more than raw genetics. And even then, those genetic traits are weighted in value by society. The reason all of this takes on so much importance for us is explicitly because we are constantly awash in the act of competition to climb the socioeconomic hierarchy.

I don't think that is true at all. If wealth was taken away, physical attributes would simply become more important.

It's true that culture has effects on what is considered attractive. That doesn't mean it is arbitrary, though. And I don't think any culture managed to make unhealthy people attractive, for example.

It's pretty common for societies to do exactly that. For example, if you look at the descriptions of beautiful women in the Victorian society, it overlaps pretty well with the symptoms of tuberculosis - obsession with unhealthy levels of thinness, or pale translucent skin.

And whenever you look at what underpins it, it almost always has to do with class and wealth - basically, physical traits that correlate with lack of need to perform hard menial work become a mark of belonging to the upper class. Better yet when it's physical traits that make it impossible to perform such work from birth, or close to it. When they didn't exist, they would sometimes be invented, such as foot binding.

All explained by signalling theory - signalling status, which is useful for survival of offspring. That's what I mean by it isn't arbitrary. And it isn't all about wealth, either. Walking in high heels proves a certain level of fitness, for example.

And most things that are seen as attractive in women are simply signals of youth, as young women can have more children than old women. You can't remove that with socialism.

As for descriptions of women in Victorian society, they may just be caricatures, or something like modern fashion photography might be going on - the women displayed in fashion photography (artificially thinned) are not actually the ones men find the most attractive. It might be more of an intersexual competition between women. And again status - in our world thinness proves status, because it is difficult to be thin. In scarcity worlds, some fatness proves you are rich and can afford to eat.

(Peacocks signal with their tails that they are healthy and strong, even though they have no society they live in, so no inequality and class struggles).

> (Peacocks signal with their tails that they are healthy and strong, even though they have no society they live in, so no inequality and class struggles).

And yet many animals have very little sexual dimorphism and exhibit very little sexual competition or selectiveness, so it would clearly seem to be a result of their evolutionary niche or environmental factors that lead to one behavior or the other. The most common example being the differences in form/behavior between the chimpanzee and the bonobo. The difference being that the bonobos live in relative abundance because they are not subject to competition with the gorillas. Likewise if humans did not face the intense artificial scarcity imposed upon us by strict social hierarchy and economic inequality, we might see our society shape itself much more like bonobos than chimpanzees.