Comment by naasking

I think abstract principles deserve extreme skepticism. Pursuing material improvements will yield conditions that improve dignity, but pursuing dignity will not necessarily yield material improvements. Dignity is a luxury for those who don't have to desperately scrounge to live. There's a long and sad history of ignoring people's immediate material conditions to pursue some utopian vision of what "ought" to be. Unless there's some argument that sacrificing immediate material improvements will (not may) yield large scale material improvements, we're right back at the perfect being the enemy of the good.