Iniciado por Caos

La verdad que hay que ser UN COMPLETO IDIOTA para decir que una catástrofe ayuda en nada a un país.

While Japan struggles to recover from the earthquake, and attempts to avert total meltdown (both nuclear and societal) the world economy tries to feel its pain. As I spoke with a friend, who is also a hedge fund manager, about the quake he said, “Well, it’s good that a tsunami didn’t hit San Francisco. That would have made the market nosedive.” At first this doesn’t seem wrong, and certainly isn’t when placed next to Larry Kudlow of CNBC: “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.” Now, that’s obscene.

These quotes reveal a vital fact of capitalism and global markets: every event is an opportunity to make money. Sure, you can lose money too; but capitalism moves forward seeking the next opportunity. When people invest in products produced by countries that commit humanitarian atrocities some people become outraged, and justifiably so. Even when horrible disasters occur capitalism asks, “Where money can be made?” I simply reply, “Is this ethical?”

Personally, I find this type of profiteering at the outset quite abhorrent. But I can’t stop the capitalist system from looking for the “next big break” – or quake. Capitalism looks first to one’s self-interest, one’s money, by investing in things that will be utilized or might grow. Those companies win too. Win-Win. Mutual Self-Interest. Their profit margins increase, they can produce more, and they can create jobs. Yet this is what happens on the macro scale, not the day-to-day events that chronicle our lives. Economists aren’t investing in suffering; they’re betting that a product’s demand will increase because specific goods and services are demanded by the disaster – an earthquake in this instance.

If we wanted to subject capitalism to ethical scrutiny we have to ask about the consumer. While most people do not move the large economical scales called “the stock market,” we do participate in the larger capitalist system. People have used the economy as a source for political change, both for good and bad. In fact, the Montgomery Bus Boycott used the market forces of not participating to change the law. The most difficult aspect of asking about the ethics of economy, and especially within the context of the earthquake, is that we must ask about ourselves.

Concerning economy and the earthquake I have two issues of which I remain intimately concerned. First, economical questions should never be the first questions asked. Asking, “How can we make money?” before asking, “How can we help immediately?” denies the harsh reality of suffering and slows recovery efforts. Second, how do we hold in tension the demands of economy while standing on the moral high ground? As long as economic demands remain, moral high grounds will not be too “high.” Trying to make economists reckon with their morality while trying to make money off disaster simply fails. On some level we’re all implicated – even use the economy for retirement’s sake. If you’re retirement can be bettered by capitalizing on the devastation in Japan, I guarantee it will – and you'll never know it.

Our challenge remains focusing upon human interests, and holding companies accountable for how they profit. It brings me no amount of comfort knowing that people profit from disaster, but neither you nor I can put a stop to that. To be quite honest, I’m thankful there are companies able to meet the needs large-scale reconstruction demands. I’m thankful demand for particular products exist, not because of the earthquake, but that people had the ingenuity to create products that enable quicker recovery.

I’m not an economist, but I participate in the economy. I don’t have a horse in the race when it comes to making money off the earthquake, but I do. As part of the larger economy, and benefactor, I will somehow indirectly benefit from decisions made. It’s not pleasant to think that people will make money off suffering, but where there is demand, supply will be provided. And when that happens, there’s money to be made.

If there’s anything to take away from this quandary it is this: earthquakes don’t care if you’ve invested wisely, and natural disasters do not discriminate. They’ll blow you over, shake you to the ground, drown you, or freeze you. If you pull out your investment portfolio and flaunt it in the aftermath, those with deceased loved ones don’t care, and those with lives scattered across the ground will ignore you. Unless your investment portfolio comes with hammer and nails, gauze and water, or bricks and mortar nobody cares. Yet, we can be certain of this: someone, somewhere, knows you will need a hammer, nails, gauze, water, bricks, and mortar. You can guarantee they’re looking at the stock exchange and asking, “Who’s going to respond? Who’s product will be sent?” Let’s hope their investments make it easier to send supplies, and cheaper at that.

Perhaps, then, our best hope is that our economic ways do not become the Gospel of Greed, if that remains possible. To quote the oft-forgotten American Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced “purse”) from his essay, “Evolutionary Love,” “…the conviction of the nineteenth century is that progress takes place by virtue of every individual’s striving for himself with all his might and trampling his neighbor under foot whenever he gets a chance to do so. This may accurately be called the Gospel of Greed.”

It certainly was the conviction of the 20th century, and let’s hope it doesn’t carry on into the 21st century.

Iniciado por Pérfida Albión

Un poco de cordura entre tanta estulticia e inmoralidad: me gusto lo que este estudiante apuntaba en este su post, se llama Zac Bailes y es americano; también se muestra claramente indignado por la prioridad de lo económico ante la catástrofe humana, referente al lamentable episodio de Larry Kudlow en la CNBC, una buena reflexión (Aunque no tan visceral como la de Marai y Caos) pero igual de contundente:



Earthquakes, Economics, and Ethics - Those Crazy Liberals...and Conservatives

empiezan a cantar las bondades económicas de la catástrofe porque iba a hacer que Japón saliera de sus 20 años de estancamiento gracias a las labores de reconstrucción y mejora y tal y tal