I don't see how being a faster runner, or a better mathematician makes you 'deserve' access to a better life, or more influence on policy, in the absence of a social decision to play that game in the way it's proposed to be organised for some set of benefits.

Epicurus thought that friendship and conviviality, which require present attention rather than being in an alcoholic stupor, as well as trying to understand and explain things, were the greatest sources of satisfaction in life, so there go most drugs.

I think we do have a better understanding now of how moral thought and discourse function.

Aristotle saw nature as intelligent and purposive, whereas for the Epicureans, and the 17th century 'mechanical' philosophers, there is no intentionality in nature except where there are animal minds and bodies.

Maybe we will get to this point and reach a decision one way or the other with 'Human cloning is acceptable,' but I doubt that it is ever going to happen for 'It is morally permissible to eat shrimp' or with the general formula 'Adultery is wrong,' whose intended extension is again very unclear.

We use and need to use both systems in complex political societies, and we oscillate in our commitments, because both oligarchy and rule by the will of masses have their bad points, as the ancient philosophers all knew.

In the old systems, hierarchies emanate power from above to below through forms of line management and are ideologically supported by cosmologies and theologies featuring celestial rulers and their deputies - the 'rule of the best.'