You Choose
The subject continues to be raised about sacrificing lives for the economy, likely because it was the American president who initiated the idea and everything he utters gets endlessly covered. By claiming, on March 22nd, that “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” he immediately shifted what was primarily an ethical consideration in a time of pandemic to an economic calculation. In so doing, he set off a fire of conscience throughout the country.
So, let’s just ask the question outright, in plain English, just as a general query: Are we fine with the idea that acute sickness and death are the price of business for any modern society? No doubt, the vast majority of Americans or Canadians would express deep discomfort with the subject even being introduced. It doesn’t help when we learn on a daily basis of business, hospital and health insurance executives fleeing from epicentres like New York to luxury vacation homes in the Hamptons or Cape Cod.
And while all this is going on, health personnel and hospitals are on their last legs, without sufficient equipment, remuneration or down time. But, in truth, the subtle starving of health, education and welfare systems has been going on for years and we were getting to the place as modern societies where we permitted such cuts, even at a time when wealth in the West was bounding ever upwards.
And there is one ultimate example of what this form of rationale has cost us. For decades, we have, despite endless warnings from scientists and ethical commentary, permitted the demise of Nature’s life-saving balance by ravaging its resources in favour of consumer economies. We know this is true – have known it for years – yet we tolerated the destruction every day in order to maintain our collective lifestyles.
And now we have arrived at a point of an environmental and a health crisis. Yet despite such lessons, some, including the American president, maintain we must keep up the same destructive practice during this present crisis or else the economy will suffer. In a strange and twisted manner, the health of our economy could ultimately ruin the planet and our own collective future, partly because that was already the practice prior to this crisis.
One of the greatest flaws of the market-driven economy of recent decades is how it removed its leaders from the lives of average workers and citizens. Yes, they paid wages and sometimes benefits, contributed to charities and produced countless remarkable products. But those same leaders withdrew from those very amenities that preserved the overall quality of life – the environment, social justice, healthcare, education, infrastructure of all kinds, and, indeed, government itself. In return, we got cheaper products and endless distractions. It has turned out to be a bad trade-off.
Now that we have arrived at this cliff-edge, when many capitalist leaders quietly maintain that cost of lives is often the price that must be paid as a cost of business, we begin to see just how ludicrous the decision between the economy and human life has become. It’ the law of the jungle and it will kill us if we aren’t careful.
We are our decisions, and it’s time to acknowledge that we made some foolish ones in the run-up to this crisis – just as Bill Gates has repeatedly reminded us. We spent manically on our present despite the warnings of the future. And now, in the midst of this pandemic, we are asked to continue our worship of the consumer economy over the lives of millions.
We are supposed to be smarter than this, making choices that help us escape our primal instincts. Jared Diamond, well-known author and no stranger to the subject of failed civilizations, notes: “Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.”
This is the point we are at, where we are willing to risk vulnerable seniors in order to maintain the same destructive economy we have tolerated for decades. It would be an interesting to test have those willing to sacrifice life for the economy be the ones to personally be on hand to pull the plug of life on the most vulnerable. They wouldn’t be able to hide behind systems, technology or ideology, but would be personally responsible for standing there, in front of the world, and ending the lives of so many. Would they do it? Could they? If the answer is yes, then they were never deserving of power and influence in the first place. Their first responsibility, albeit in a roundabout way, was the quality of life for all. If they are willing to end lives personally as a law of the jungle, we should learn from this pandemic that they should never be trusted again.
The true essence of any decision is that it never is based solely on the result, but on its motive for doing so. For any leader, any citizen, any legislator, if that motive isn’t for life and its essential qualities, then they shouldn’t have been given decision powers in the first place.