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Strange7 comments on Not Taking Over the World - Less Wrong
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This is a great device for illustrating how devilishly hard it is to do anything constructive with such overwhelming power, yet not be seen as taking over the world. If you give each individual whatever they want you’ve just destroyed every variety of collectivism or traditionalism on the planet , and those who valued those philosophies will curse you. If you implement any single utopian vision everyone who wanted a different one will hate you, and if you limit yourself to any minimal level of intervention everyone who wants larger benefits than you provide will be unhappy.
Really, I doubt that there is any course you can follow that won’t draw the ire of a large minority of humanity, because too many of us are emotionally committed to inflicting various conflicting forms of coercion on each other.
Unless, of course, anyone actually wants to participate in such systems, in which case you have (for commonly-accepted values of 'want' and 'everyone') allowed them to do so. Someone who'd rather stand in the People's Turnip-Requisitioning Queue for six hours than have unlimited free candy is free to do so, and someone who'd rather watch everyone else do so can have a private world with millions of functionally-indistinguishable simulacra. Someone who demands that other real people participate, whether they want to or not, and can't find enough quasi-volunteers, is wallowing so deep in their own hypocrisy that nothing within the realm of logic could be satisfactory.