Rewind – Please Get Cancer So The Economy Will Improve
| March 11, 2010 | Posted by Issa under Think About It |
On rewind days, I bring you a post that has previously appeared at my other now-defunct blog, Right to Bleed. If you’ve read it before, skip on by, or go ahead and enjoy the rewind.
This one is from November 3rd, 2008, when I was living in a van.
Please Get Cancer So The Economy Will Improve
The “economy” is something I’m supposed to worry about. I don’t. Obviously, I’m a weird hippie who skims and mooches by on a few hundred dollars a month, so the economy means a lot less to me than other people. I understand why people are worried about jobs and homes and the price of food, even if I’m not.
That said, I don’t trust the entire concept of this economy that we’re supposed to worry about the health of. Presidents and reporters urge us to spend more, because spending more is “good for the economy,” and somehow if the economy is good, we’ll have more money to spend.
But what is this economy thing? Often, it’s talked about in terms of GNP, which is the total dollar value of final goods and services. We’re told this number is supposed to be big. In grade school, I remember hearing about the GNP of different nations. Ours was great. For other countries, we laughed at their little numbers.
In what way does this system measure the health of a nation? Since GNP only looks at things that have a monetary value, it seems possible that it risks measuring the non-health of a nation. The truth is that many of the things that indicate a quality of life, a richness and fullness of life, and a reflection of basic values simply cannot be measured by money. On the other hand, illness – both mental, physical, and spiritual – can be measured financially.
- If I garden for much of my food, contributing t o the my health through good nutrition, more leisure time, and physical activity, I’m doing a crappy job of contributing to my economy. On the other hand, if I eat fast food, magic restaurant calories, and overly processed grocery store food, the economy goes up-up-up.
- If I like to walk in the evenings, take a swim in my pond in the mornings, and hike on the weekends, the GNP doesn’t notice. If I work 60 hours a week, eat all that crappy food, and join a gym I never go to, yay economy.
- If I’m giving birth and have several supportive friends and family members by my side, the economy doesn’t go up as much as if I’m alienated and physically distance from any support group and instead hire a doula.
- Forget walking or biking, enabled by living, working, and playing in the same area. It’s good for the economy if you buy a house in the suburbs and then your family needs three cars to get around.
- Trees standing in a forest? Not good. Trees cut down and used for whatever? Good for the economy.
- And please get cancer. Cancer is GREAT for the econom y. Obviously, some people get cancer in ways we don’t quite understand or that relate to genetics. But for the rest of you, if you could please get busy smoking, gorging on straight-to-your-arteries food, laying in tanning beds, living surrounded by smog, and ingesting as many chemicals as you possibly can, your e conomy would really appreciate it. All those ways you can try to get there cost lots of money, and in the end you might get cancer, which is even better!
Buying things is good for the economy, and therefore maybe you get to be a good American. It doesn’t matter if it’s healthy for you – in fact, it’s probably better if it isn’t – just buy it!
On the other hand, reducing your spending, having a support network of close people, providing for yourself from the land, contributing to your health simply by not buying the things that deteriorate it, downgrading your drive for “progress”, and enjoying simple pleasures is often the antithesis of contributing to the economical health of your nation.
When I prioritize mental health, physical health, social health, environmental health, and spiritual health, the health of my economy ceases to concern me at all.
Tags: American, Cancer, Gardening, Health, Hippie, Politics, Rewind
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A general rule of thumb I use when deciding whether something is the right thing to do (or not) is to ask myself the following question: what would happen if everyone in my community/country decided to do X? If the consequence of everyone doing X is bad for the community/country, then obviously I think twice about doing X. This rule can and does apply to both micro and macro issues.
An example at the micro level (trivial as it is!): I am often tempted to leave my shopping trolley in the supermarket carpark rather than return it to the trolley bay which is invariably a considerable distance away. What a hassle! Plenty of people don’t bother returning their trolley, for whatever reason, so why not do the same? Too easy. If nobody returned their trolley there would be utter chaos in the carpark. And so I, along with most other thoughtful people, return the trolley to the trolley bay.
I’ll admit it’s not a perfect anaology, but I have to say that some of the ideas you advocate in this blog post are a bit like shopping trolleys left in the carpark. On their own, they are quite harmless. Applied across the board, however, some of your ideas would undoubtedly have some pretty horrible unintended consequences. Let’s imagine a world, for example, in which no trees are cut down (which you seem to suggest is a good idea). Aside from the enormous number of people who would be out of work because their livelihood depends (either directly or indirectly) on the logging industry, there is also the issue of what we are then going to make our houses, our public buildings, our furniture and our paper from, etc.
Also, I don’t smoke, eat fast food or spend money frivolously because of the respective health /financial risks. I don’t belong to a gym either. But if my neighbour chooses to smoke, eat Big Macs, go to the gym and spend money like it grows on trees, what business is it of mine? I don’t want to live in a totalitarian society that tells me what I can and can’t eat, and what I am allowed to do with my money.
A vibrant free market capitalist system is not perfecft (no system is), but give credit where credit is due. It allows you to happily pursue your chosen lifestyle and it allows others to be more actively engaged in the economy. It’s a win-win situation. I, for one, can’t see anything terribly wrong with that.
First, on the question of totalitarian society, I also don’t want that either, at least I don’t think so right now. At times, I smoke, eat fast food, and spend money frivolously amongst plenty of other things that are great for the economy, especially since I no longer live in a van. This post was less about whether a specific individual engages in specific activities and more about the general cultural narrative that we listen to. What does it mean (to our physical health, spiritual well-being, mental health, family stability, etc) to be told that the economy is very important, when, by definition the economy can measure our illnesses, but does a terrible job of measuring health or happiness?
Second, about the trees. I didn’t mean to suggest that any one activity mentioned here should never be done. There are great reasons to cut down trees, belong to a gym, hire a doula, drive a car, etc. But these things are easy to do – and are being done – to great, horrible excess at a very high cost to ourselves and the world. That some people might lose their jobs is not a good reason to go on doing something that causes great harm to people and the planet. I don’t imagine a world in which no trees are cut down. However, I also don’t imagine a world where what we’ll make our paper out of is the most important question on the table. When asking about what it means to support the economy, I’m wondering if there aren’t better ways to measure or more important questions than just how high is our GDP. That applies to other things you mentioned, too. It may not be possible to use wood the way we currently do and live sustainably on the planet. Jobs, furniture, paper, etc, begin to recede to the background in importance when I focus on that.
I don’t know what to call this system we’ve got, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a win-win. It’s an oppressive, abusive, exploitative system that ruins people, communities, and the environment in its wake. Ugh. Really. Like I said, I do lots of things that fit right in with our culture narrative (like my soft spot for McDonald’s), but I can’t pretend that the whole mess is good for me or for anyone else, really.
@Simone: If the consequence of everyone doing X is bad for the community/country, then obviously I think twice about doing X.
I think this moral metric depends heavily on the definition of “bad” for the community/country. I think that a lot of the choices Issa lists would be “bad” for the GNP if everyone did them, but would probably have lots of other intangible benefits. I think that’s kind of her point: what’s good for me (and us) is not always good for “the economy.”
I think that your example with the shopping trolley is unrealistically limited. If, as you suggest, everyone were to leave their trolley in the parking lot, it would probably not happen that the parking lot would be a mess. Instead, the store would probably hire someone to collect the carts, your prices would go up a marginal amount, and the parking lot would be fine. This might be seen as a welcome trade-off for the shoppers, who no longer bore the burden of returning their carts. I don’t say this just to pick on your (admittedly, simple) analogy. I think that, when considering real, complex, moral issues, people often imagine the worst outcome they can, then stop there, declare the action immoral or unacceptable, and move on. Creative thinking can reveal that seemingly-immoral or unacceptable actions may have unexpected outcomes. For example, if everyone left their cart at their parking space, then maybe there would always be a cart at the space, ready for the next person!
On their own, they are quite harmless. Applied across the board, however, some of your ideas would undoubtedly have some pretty horrible unintended consequences.
If I was able to grow my own food, raise my own meat, and otherwise provide for myself, putting industrial farms out of business would not be an “unintended” consequence. I suspect that’s true for many of the other things people think would happen if we all did things that were good for us and bad for the economy.
Aside from the enormous number of people who would be out of work because their livelihood depends (either directly or indirectly) on the logging industry, there is also the issue of what we are then going to make our houses, our public buildings, our furniture and our paper from, etc.
What I took from the post was not that we should not cut down any trees at all, but that the more trees we cut down, the better it is for the GNP. The GNP fails to take into account intangible factors, such as long-term ecological health. If we cut down all the trees in the whole country, we would have a hell of a GNP for one year, and then be totally devastated forever. So, when people say, “We must have X% growth in GNP or we are in trouble,” I’m unsympathetic. Lots of things that are bad for us all grow the GNP, and lots of things that are good for us all do not grow the GNP.
I don’t want to live in a totalitarian society that tells me what I can and can’t eat, and what I am allowed to do with my money.
Me neither. Can I assume you also support drug legalization and prostitution? Sorry… off-topic for this post ;-) Just being snarky.
A vibrant free market capitalist system is not perfect
Hey, can you tell me when we get one of those? Last I checked, the government was bailing out all kinds of businesses that had failed.