>Ed Weick wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Where in our economic system are personal efforts given value? Why can't
>> >we place a value on caring for an ill relative or a newborn child or a
>> >wild animal.
>>
>> Why would we want to place a social value on something that is so
>> fundamentally personal?
>>
Brad McCormick responded:
>
>I would think the beginning of an answer
>to this question is fairly "obvious":
>To *fund* them. etc.
I believe it's a matter of perspective. It depends a lot on the relative
emphasis one gives to the personal versus the social, or the individual
versus the collective. Caring for other people or animals in distress is, I
believe, a very personal thing. If you intrude the social or collective
into it, it becomes "depersonalized". If the collective then funds it, it
becomes even more so. Rules get written around what you can do, who should
be involved, and how much of it is allowable.
Look at it this way: what is important is how people behave toward one
another because they want to, not because the market or the government or
the church, or whoever, has laid down rules and proscriptions. Because
there are many things that we have to transact at arms length, we must have
a market, an economy, and a public sector. But these things should not be
needed for transactions that are directly interpersonal and done out of
compassion - like caring for a sick relative or a new born child. I see the
market or the government as something that is superimposed onto our lives,
something that is necessary but which should not dominate us. I don't see
it as something into which we should subsume our ability to be compassionate.
When I was in Russia a couple of years ago, I saw a society in disarray.
The state had lifted the burden of caring for sick relatives from people for
seventy years. But the state had collapsed and the burden had been put back
onto a people who no longer knew how to carry it.
When I was in Brazil last November, I encountered a rather different
situation, one in which the state had everything on the books - free medical
care, welfare, free education - but was unable to deliver any of these
things effectively. No one bothered to try to access most of the services
that were supposed to exist simply because they weren't there in practice.
Because they never had been able rely on the state, the people of the slums
had created their own local support networks, often centered around a church.
I would not want the state to value the time and energy that I have put into
raising my children and to put it into some form of revised national
accounts. As long as I have not abused my children, what I have done with
them and for them is my business, not the state's. On the other hand, I do
want the state to value the time I have spent in my arm's length
contributions to the social collective via the market because that is
important to the shared welfare of the collective.
Ed Weick
