Things superfluous and things important
Bryan
I spent the last few days in London visiting an old friend who works in the city’s financial services sector. Most of our time together was spent arguing, and ultimately, those arguments boiled down to the fact that he sees individual freedom as the most important, or foundational value, while I’m not convinced.
Both of us are Zimbabweans who, as the result of some form of privilege, were able to attend the kind of academic institutions that allowed us to leverage hard work and ability into professional roles for which there is global demand. As a result, we both now live in a part of the world that leverages its economic advantage to ensure that its citizenry enjoys a much more comfortable existence than most. The structure of Zimbabwe’s education system, and society at large, was such that those opportunities weren’t available to everyone. In fact, they were only available to a small minority. Far more Zimbabweans were born into situations that meant an enormous risk of ending up in a virtually inescapable poverty cycle. And poverty in that context meant much more than being dependent on social welfare.
With that in mind, I just don’t buy the argument that my right to hold onto my wealth, or my freedom to do with my things whatever I see fit, somehow trumps an infant’s right to live. Either society at large, or ‘the state’ has the right to restrict some of my freedoms and take part of my wealth (or restrict my ability to accumulate that wealth) in order to feed that infant, or there is no such thing as a right to life. And if we do hold to the notion of a right to life, what do we make of the fact that the child born in Iceland is more that 20 times more likely to live to their first birthday than the child born in Pakistan? Is it any wonder that so many Pakistanis migrate from their country, legally or otherwise, to places where they feel their children are more likely to thrive?
According to a Department of Foreign Affairs press release, “Ireland is working with our partner countries to find ways to adapt to climate changes and reduce their vulnerability … Today we committed to strengthening our efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, increasing support to adaptation and to focusing on the poorest and most vulnerable. In all our negotiation, we are determined to focus on the human dimension of climate change, including food security, gender equality and women’s empowerment.”
That’s great news, but is it enough? When it was thought that the world’s financial system might implode, the ‘global leaders’ dropped everything and did what needed doing in order to keep that system going. Poverty doesn’t evoke the same response. But what if Hobbes was right when he wrote, “Seeing every man, not only by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed to endeavor all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation; he that shall oppose himself against it, for things superfluous, is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow?”
May I suggest that most things, stood beside an infant’s life, are superfluous, regardless of their monetary value?
Brian , I’ll start by positing that without concentration of capital , modern life would be seriously hampered, if you want computers or the latest piece of hi tech medical equipment, capital needs to be allowed to concentrate, any efforts to diffuse capital to such an extent that savings are impossible because of the marginal infant per your example would lead back to a form of dark age. If the logical conclusion is not desirable surely the premise is wrong?
Otherwise you are suggesting that there is some state solution whereby everyone in the west can be taxed to the point that they can only purchase “worthy” goods and services and after that a brilliant civil service will allocate the surpluses in an efficient manner so that the maximum amount of lives can be saved with no material unintended consequences? Again it is a logical nonsense. Water the premise down again and we are back to the ad hoc wasteful approach where one arm of gov. is funding an aid budget while the commerce dept’s are rigging their markets.
Liam, if we’re happy to sacrifice millions of babies in exchange for technological advancement, if we even tolerate that, then we’re already living in the dark ages.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are no easy solutions and that this issue is a minefield. That said, given the choice between a market and a commercial system that doesn’t particularly care about infant mortality in far away places, and a wasteful bureaucracy that does, I’ll happily put up with waste. But why are those two our only options?
Infant mortality is the result of too many babies being born into an unsustainable environment. The question should be, why do we tolerate millions of babies being born to die in squalor. Less babies means more resources for those that already exist. This notion gets practised in the first world , why is it such a difficult concept in the third world. Your answer is that the west should underwrite the existance of as many babies as the third world chooses to produce. What is asked of the third world. I would suggest the large scale distribution of contraception.
You say that my right to hold onto my wealth is trumped by an infants right to live. Well I say that I limit the number of children I have so that my scarce resources can go further. But to take your argument to its conclusion would be to say that an africans right to a 10th child trumps my right to have a second. My resources must go to that 10th child. I think that is nuts. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you.
Bryan
If that is how you feel surely you should be back in Zimbabwe working to improve the lot of your compatriots?
Brian, its not a sacrifice. The market if left to its own devices is the main reason why innovation occurs. Imagine if everyone had listened to your viewpoint in the 15th century, we wouldnt have had any of the developments that led to the Industrial Revolution. The whole planet would have an equally dismal life expectancy. One didnt cause the other!
Naturally I’m not going to defend the status quo, policies and actions by Western governments do effect the poor around the world but the answer is to root out the elements that lead to the self interest and dispense with the “economic hitmen”
I think the argument in itself is solid but guess it boils down to proximity and control.
We do many of the things you describe above to protect the most vulnerable in our immediate communities (though clearly not enough). The difficulty with what your suggesting is the same as that of duty in terms of ODA. The further away the infant child, the more difficult it is to maintain an argument and the policies relying on that argument which allow for the protection of that infant.
Control is also a factor, can we really, through state actions protect the lives of the most vulnerable so far away geographically? Can we really convince the population in the west that their quality of living comes at the expense of the worlds poor? I really hope so but fear that the distance (in real terms) is simply too great to convince the general public.
Unfortunately it would seem that though few would argue against the universality of the right to life in this situation, many do not see the link between the right to life in the west and the right to life in the south.
I must clarify something before I respond to specific comments. My main aim isn’t to advocate for any specific policy. It’s more to question our underlying collective values and value systems. I’d like to assume that the policies enacted by democratic governments bear some resemblance to the values of voters in those democracies. I’m trying, in this instance, to get some clarification on the prevailing values.
Margaret – No, I don’t think the right of someone very far away to have their 10th child trumps your to have your second. But honestly, I think the child born far away, through no volition of its own, has a right to life that trumps mine to a lot that I have and don’t necessarily need. I’m not saying you and I should give up all we have that’s not essential to life, but something inside of me suspects that we should be intolerant of the factors that are within our sphere of influence that make it more likely that we will have access to all sorts of treats while others lack basics.
Brian – Fair question. I like to think that I’m working at getting to a position that allows me to affect the lot of people in places like Zim for good and that at the moment, I am more able to do that from where I am. Hopefully, there is more substance that deluded self-justification in that thought.
Liam – Fair enough. I don’t think our positions are very different. We want the same things. only where you see some people as the problem, I’m sceptical of the the ability of the market to deliver just outcomes.
Michael – You’re right. My French teacher used to say I’d make a horrible lawyer since I got emotionally involved in the positions I would argue for (it was an interesting class!). Maybe my judgement here is clouded by emotion. But if your child happened to live in some horrible part of the world far away and you couldn’t repatriate her or affect governance there, wouldn’t you still try to ensure that she had adequate resources to survive? If doing that meant giving to the whole community or even country, wouldn’t the waste, corruption, or whatever other issues that would go along with that donation be worth the benefit derived from saving your child’s life? If the answer is yes, maybe this discussion boils down to the question of what we owe other people.
This quote came up on a discussion on the economist Paul Samuelson, Its from Hayek’s nobel speech. Seems kind of appropriate
“There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever-growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success,” to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
“According to a Department of Foreign Affairs press release, blah blah blah…”
“That’s great news…”
Ah, Lord save us, Bryan. That’s not news, good or otherwise. It’s business as usual, government whitewash. Part of the FF election manifesto for the bewilderable.
Who reads it? Never mind taking it seriously?
Your questions are relevant however, in spite of the cynical exploitation of hard issues by party hacks Most days, I would agree with your final statement. But that depends on our definitions of necessity, desirability, and superfluity. Qui bono?
To a soft-centered liberal, every life is precious. To a hard social Darwinist, or a committed, unrestrained, free-marketer, some—many–lives are indeed superfluous. Recall Swift’s Modest Proposal. But in spite of the Swifts of the world, the wheel grinds on.
In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, a vast human population; fragmentation even down to the most local levels; the weapons of mass distraction and disinformation in the hands of big money, who can hope that an informed, mobilised populace will “rise up” and reclaim the earth?
And before someone yells that the internet is revolutionary, I point out that many posing as bloggers or posters on blogs are actually agents of governments or of right-wing “think tanks.” I long ago gave up reading the Guardian.com because its blogs were dominated by hatred and prepared scripts.
As for what doing the right thing might cost… The bill for the Iraq war will not be less than $1 trillion, and when the life-time medical and psychological consequences of that war are reckoned, the costs may be up to $3 trillion. Money tossed onto a neocon roulette table. Because it might benefit big oil and Israel, two birds with one turn of the wheel.
Perhaps there is no political answer to worldwide poverty, not in these times. China tried a one-child policy. I don’t think it worked. So individual efforts may be the only way forward for now. (Doctors Without Borders, for example.)
God protect us from religious do-gooders, but thank God for the really good people of religion. (I heard that an Irish priest may be the subject of a film—for his efforts to interest Kenyans in running, since they had to run to and from school anyway. And look where that took them!) A good story, but a drop in the bucket. Who can fill the bucket? Who can make it an election issue? None that I see in Ireland or America.
I am surprised that people dont get more upset about defense spending. An MP will lose his job for overclaiming expenses yet….
From my second favourite blogger on the interweb
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/11/hidden-cost-of-war.html
talking about Afghanistan
“The estimated $1 million a year it costs per soldier is higher than the $390,000 congressional researchers estimated in 2006.”
“May I suggest that most things, stood beside an infant’s life, are superfluous, regardless of their monetary value?”
Bryan, I would agree with you completely. When you save one life, you save the whole world. But… deciding what your value system is, is in some ways the easy part. The hard part is to create a plan to enforce your values in the physical world. How are you going to save that life or those lives? Liam is correct when he says that freedom is needed for innovation, and solutions don’t often come from centralization. Margaret is correct to ask why we tolerate millions of babies being born to die in squalor. To discuss your own relative wealth measured against some else’s relative squalor: If you have two shirts, give one to your brother. If you have a billion shirtless brothers, and you have three shirts, how do you clothe your billion brothers? How do you perform the 5 loaves and 2 fish miracle? The state perhaps has the right to perform humanitarian duties, but how exactly is it to do that? Africa doesn’t need charity. It doesn’t need cash handouts. Africans need to be educated, en masse.
To switch from parable to our example here, I don’t think you solve child mortality and the associated issues in the 3d world by a simple redistributing of wealth. I acknowledge that you’re not actually suggesting that. The 3d world tends to suffer from unsustainable overpopulation, particularly in Africa. If you want to solve that, you need to educate those people. A solid secular education. Especially for the women. Educated women are less likely to have large families. An educated female population would also short-circuit the cycle of macho backwardness in some of those societies, where each new generation consists of women who are practically house-ridden, and uneducated young guys waving Kalashnikovs. That would slash the birthrate and help them take advantage of the resources that Africa has, and also make them less likely to fall victim to one dictator after another. I’m speaking optimistically about the results of my idea, but I stand by it as a suggestion.
What does Ireland owe you Bryan?
Liam – It pains me to say this, but I agree with that particular idea from Hayek. But I don’t think the ‘control of society’ is what I’m striving for. The concept of entropy suggests that nature tends towards disorder. The reason we eat is so that we have the energy to fight nature and though ultimately futile, to sustain some sort of order, pushing against nature’s tendency to decay. I don’t see how attempting to put sufficient order to our social world to maintain some basic values is any more ambitious than trying to harvest energy from windmills or building houses to protect ourselves from the elements.
But as I’ve already said, I don’t think we necessarily disagree on that point but on how far we can go in that process. Similarly, I’m sure most climate change activists aren’t opposed to industrialisation per se, but to certain degrees of industrial activity.
DesJay – I’m normally toug on the government. In this instance, I chose to interpret that piece of news as generously as possible. But you’re probably right about it being no more than business as usual.
As for more substantive matters, I’m starting to think people don’t rise up against injustice because only very few things are seen by ost as being unjust, not because of disinformation. I’m starting to fear that disinformation only really works if you want it to – if you don’t want to see what’s really there. The idea that most people aren’t bright enough to see beyond lame propaganda just isn’t convincing anymore.
Steve – …deciding what your value system is, is in some ways the easy part.
I couldn’t disagree more. Look at what people are capable of when they put their mind to it. Were there the solid conviction amongst most people anywhere that starvation anywhere is unconscionable, that it’s a greater threat than terrorism, climate change, and the implosion of the financial system, there are plenty of very smart people who could easily work something out. The issue of global poverty is still stuck at the most basic moral, ethical and philosophical levels. We all assume that we think every life is precious because that assertion seems to go without saying. But do we really? I value the life of my immediate family more than those I only know in passing. Is it that much of a stretch to suggest that I couldn’t care less about the plight of some child who’s name or horrid story I’ll never have to learn? I don’t think I could sleep at night if I cared. But does my ability to not care absolve me of responsibility towards that person?
So yes, the Meyers argument has some merit. It’s not ideal to have a bunch of AK47 swinging hooligans procreating like rabbits (even if I think that characterisation is about as valid as the idea that the starvation of ‘a few drunken Paddies’ ultimately served some sort of greater good). Be that as it may, the death of an infant, a five year old, or even a teenager who can’t keep their hormones in check doesn’t become anymore tragic and indicative of a series of injustices just because they might serve some ‘greater good’ defined by people living in the most prosperous parts of the world.
Paraic – Nothing. I’m sorry, I missed the bit where I said or even implied that Ireland owes me anything.
Bryan, we’re on opposite sides of the debate, then. I believe what I do because I’ve learned through experience that talk is cheap, and convictions are worthless unless turned into concrete physical action. Are you seriously suggesting otherwise?
It’s why I believe that having convictions is easier than making and executing a proper plan. The biggest ideologues (talkers in other words) are often the worst planners because they keep indulging in what’s called in my business scope creep. They keep throwing more and more into their “plan” until it’s so utopian and far reaching it’ll never get off the ground, except like of those hilarious experimental aeroplanes from decades ago.
And what we end up with instead of a solid plan with a defined scope achieving a desired result, is an expensive meandering fiasco with a lot of finger pointing, blamestorming, and the aforementioned ideologues milking the project for every bit of self promotion they can get.
Admittedly my experience is in private industry. But since everything costs money, private industry is pretty much everything on the planet, for better or for worse. You just get more ideologues and beaurocrats in the mix when you deal with government agencies.
I have utopian ideas of my own. But until I can turn them into reality, I know exactly what they’re worth.
And also – the comment about Africa and the Kalashnikovs IS true, in the same way it’s also true to say that compared to many other countries, Ireland has a drink problem. Both statements are demonstrated by plenty of evidence. The only thing that’s under question is whether or not a person is comfortable when someone else airs their dirty laundry for them. Most of us don’t like it.
Brian “I don’t see how attempting to put sufficient order to our social world to maintain some basic values is any more ambitious than trying to harvest energy from windmills or building houses to protect ourselves from the elements.”
I’ve seen the entropy example of comparing say a natural lake ecosystem contrasted with a fish farm to explain our high energy consumption society and the risks thereof. The risk as I see it in terms of society, is that by regementing society from the top down you undermine the information system that is required to deal with the entropy we deal with every day. If life is about meaningful action in a world of uncertainty then how can third party agencies possibly know our needs and preferences if not based on free exchange?