Self-Improvement: Good For All or Zero Sum?

I wrote this yesterday:

Zohar Atkins @ZoharAtkins

Is good writing an absolute or relative standard? If it's relative, and everyone reads books on how to improve their writing, won't it cause content inflation? Or is a general increase in good writing the tide that lifts all boats?

We could extend this line of questioning to all forms of self-improvement, whether physical training and dieting, intellectual growth, meditation, or character development. How much do you think these are “peacock’s tail” phenomena and how much do you think they they are absolute goods? Can they be both?

Would you accept a world with massive relative inequality in any of these areas, if it meant that the worst were better off than in an alternative world of perfect equality?

We accept more hierarchy (and inequality) in areas where we expect competence. E.g., we submit to the authority of the plane pilot, rather than vote on how he should operate the plane. Why or why not should this paradigm apply to areas like “self-help”? Is there such a thing as being more authentic than someone else? The language seems paradoxical, and yet our culture has no problem hurling the insult, “ya basic.”