Tag: money

Why work if not for money: better economics

While meeting with a medical specialist last week, we discussed someone in another specialty one of whose family was also in that specialty.  “Yeah,” he said, “people in that specialty make real money.  None of my kids is in medicine.  What does that tell you?”

I am familiar with the fact that some specialists make more money than family practitioners in Ontario.  Given the importance of family practitioners and the dire shortage in Canada at the moment, and the fact that the government must negotiate with representative medical associations and colleges about these matters, I am unsure how they go about setting the relative value of the different medical areas.

I wonder whether it is primarily the money that attracts them?  Surely physicians of all types put in many years of training, which is very expensive (although somewhat offset by university grants, loans, grants, and work programs).  Both because of their inherent importance, and because of the work and study involved in preparing, they are surely deserving of what they earn, if not more.  But is that the reason they take this rough road?

What about other professions, such as law, farming and ranching, engineering, other medical paths, ministry, social work, etc.  What about running a nursery, artists, teachers, farming, plumbing, electrician, any occupation?  Would people engage in these occupations for the sake of the work, accomplishment, business and personal satisfaction, perhaps status without money?   If so, would there still be professional standards, accountability, education, training, professional development, organizations such as school boards and boards of health who would be responsible to organize such services to serve communities effectively?  Would professional, safety, and health standards be developed by the professions and guilds themselves or by government, to ensure safety of equipment, hygiene practices, and legal liability?  Would property insurance be needed or would needs be met simply because they were needs (e.g., destroyed homes and business buildings).

How would availability of resources for construction and maintenance of buildings and transport be provided in ways that did not exhaust the natural resources and pollute the environment?  Could that be done without money as such? Could not the obvious limits be recognized, the relative contribution to the common good discussed and eventually assessed (always subject to further discussion as new information becomes available, and new events happen)?

Too few alternatives:

It seems to me that we have been reduced to just two ways of understanding economics and how it governs or supports our lives:  capitalism, and the command economy1. Compare these with something I have discussed earlier2: two of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “four freedoms,” freedom from want and freedom from fear. Economics as we have it does not provide either of these freedoms for everyone, only those who benefit from competition, gifts, and inheritance.3 When someone proposes increasing aid for the poor and/or impaired4 the cry goes up “But that will increase inflation!”  One doesn’t hear that when politicians or executives or owners of property get raises.  Only the poor cause inflation, it would seem.

The need for ethics:

Just two alternatives.  Having twenty years as an ethicist, I know something was missed before we got to just two choices.  In any decision tree, when you come down to just two alternatives, some ethical considerations have probably been bypassed in the process.  Before the moment of only two choices, there was at least a third, and it usually included consideration of peoples’ different soul-values5 and principles of conduct. 

If we believe that capitalism means “everyone for yourself,” we bypass considering the environment which cannot protect itself from us, and we bypass considering those who can’t compete adequately because competition is not in their nature; or because of impairment, or because their value system does not automatically make them “priority number one.” 

Two recent examples of the problems caused by our current model of economics are these:

Real estate insolvencies in Canada set to surpass levels of global financial crisis – The Globe and Mail. 

Canada is in a housing crisis: current condo owners can’t sell their places at an acceptable price;  developers can’t afford themselves.  So they are not building what are needed, while office tower owners are unwilling to convert to residences because of the cost of changing plumbing, air distribution, and electricity, heating and cooling. The economic system is not working for them. The costs and benefits to them in classic economics are getting in their way, and therefore inhibiting the construction of the new housing that is needed.

We now know how dramatic the consequence are:  this study by Toronto’s Unity Health System Unity Health Toronto (for my American readers, this is an amalgamation of three public hospitals):  https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/torontonians-dealing-with-homelessness-are-dying-younger-and-it-s-getting-worse-new-study-finds-1.6995144

“People who are homeless in Toronto are dying younger than the general population, and the disparity is getting especially worse among younger generations, a new study has found.

“The study published on Friday by Unity Health Toronto found that people who are homeless in Toronto are dying, on average, 17 years younger than those who are not homeless.”

Our system of economics is not only inhibiting and limiting peoples’ flourishing —it is killing them while they are still young.  Of course it’s not just the economics.  Government in Canada have consistently failed them since the 1990s.7

On the other hand, if we accept the command economy, we risk not considering rights and freedoms of choice, as well as the benefit of competition — improved processes, methods, and product. If we choose either of just these two systems we risk neglecting the talents of artists, religious professionals, musicians, writers, troubadours; and the livelihoods of people who make their tools such as paint, instruments, writing paper and pens, performance areas, and work areas.  Capitalism as we have it now may not offer these a decent living; the command economy may decide they are not needed services. Pausing to consider the ethical considerations helps us remain aware of rights and freedoms, the need to care for the environment, and for legitimate financial wherewithal for the impaired – they need to participate in economic, civic, and political life so that they can go to bed at night in a dry, warm or cool environment, not fearing being turfed out in the morning, and not fearing for where their next meal will come from. It is these which economics must serve, and our approval of an economic system should be based on how well all of us are served.

So we have a list: 
rights,
freedom to choose and decide,
providing basic livelihood,
providing for basic needs and opportunity for good physical, emotional, psychological, and social health from our beginning to our end, and
a social attitude that encourages improvement but not greed, and that promotes equal availability of these to everyone. 

There will continue to be some people who can achieve more than others among a spectrum of deeds and thought, and these abilities should be acknowledged. But they should not be able to dominate others as a consequence (leadership without domination).

The role of government:

In such an economic environment, satisfactory government will have to be organized to, and dedicated to, ensure the availability of these economic and civic factors. It must not assign greater privilege (not to be mistaken for greater freedom) to anyone, nor any power that exceeds the need for it.  The significance of personal property and appropriate agency to use that property should be a matter of continuous discussion and negotiation, not permanent rules.  We see now that absolute, specific rights and duties set some against others (think vaccinations), but so do boundless ownership, power, and greed. 

The values  “freedom from want and freedom from fear” encapsulate all that we have discussed.  It should be possible to navigate our lives together within those loosely- defined values, and for everyone to know for ourselves to heat ourselves in cold weather, and cool ourselves in hot, seek shelter in rain and snow, etc.  These are not really controversial or complex topics in themselves. Our sensitivity to these varies, but we get the general ideas.

How to go about this endeavor? 

I am going to step over the obvious problem of how to dismantle what we have now, in the hope that knowing where we want to be next, will also help to dismantle what we have now. We do not destroy our existing living quarters before procuring the next; we do not build a bridge over something unless we know where to build it to.

First we build the destination, then take down what it replaces.  Not doing things in that order causes revolutions to fail in the end.

Greed threatens to be a problem.  I suspect there are ways to discourage greed without making it illegal (although we know how to stop usury, for example, and we know how to tax the wealthy).  We can use education in early years of school, but that risks being mere brainwashing.   We can “nudge” (Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein)., but that may become manipulation.  Probably building intuitive public consensus by discussion and example will be the way.

Punishment, to which we resort so easily and quickly in this society, should have very little use:  unless you who are being punished accept the justness of the punishment, you will only resent it and try to find a way to justify your ways again when the punishment is completed.  Punishment does not necessarily educate or improve or convert anyone.  There must be a way for people to change their ways without losing self-respect or their sense of “place”.6  This will require a slow process of discussion, considering new views and information, thereby soothing the anxiety caused by conflict with current values (this applies to everyone on all sides of any issue). 

Making decisions based only on “evidence” is not necessarily the solution, because “evidence” is more subjective than we like to think:  if you want to convince me that a certain course of action or experiment demonstrates a particular quality, I must first be willing to agree that if the result of that experiment is what you predicted, it would be that predicted quality.  I must agree in advance that meeting specified expectations will be ”evidence.”  That’s still pretty subjective.

I think that we should try to build a society where people work for values (see the list above) other than money, and build with it the current standards and disciplines, but without the curse of economics to which we have bound ourselves.  If we can see what that society looks like across the river, we can build the bridge to leave behind the catastrophe we have now.  Whether we would have to come back to disassemble what we have now, is open to question.

It is a matter of continuously reconsidering.