Editing Magnifica Humanitas: A Plain-Language Overview (section)

== The common good is more than everyone's private interests added together ==

Another recurring expression is the '''common good'''.

This does not simply mean finding a compromise among competing individual interests.

The common good concerns the social conditions in which people and communities are actually able to flourish.<ref name="MHCommonGood">Leo XIV, ''Magnifica Humanitas'', especially nos. 59–64, on the principle of the common good.</ref>

A society may generate extraordinary wealth while still failing the common good if that prosperity requires large numbers of people to become disposable, powerless, isolated, or unable to participate meaningfully in society.

Technology must therefore be judged partly by its social consequences.

Who gains power?

Who loses it?

Who gains opportunities?

Who becomes dependent?

Who controls the infrastructure?

Who owns the knowledge?

Who may participate?

Who is excluded?

These are not questions outside technology.

Once technology changes the conditions of human life, they become technological questions as well.