Human Dignity and The Market Part II

HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE MARKET

Part II

There is very old Arabic proverb that says: ‘money will buy you your favourite ice cream and desert whilst you are roasting, or being roasted, in hell’.  In other words there is nothing that money cannot buy even in the celestial or hell as envisaged in Dante’s inferno.  In a competitive market the price is determined by the forces of supply and demand or so we are thought in tertiary courses, and read in books.  We are also thought that the utility of a commodity subject to market forces is the ability of that commodity to satisfy want.  Therefore when the impoverished sells his or her kidney there is no question that want is not satisfied the real question: is he or she selling that transplantable kidney for its true market value?  In this setting that market value is inseparable from the market value of the longevity to the life of the recipient and presumed ultimate source of that transplantable kidney and presumed purchaser.  One’s immediate reaction is that surely such a sale cannot equate to or be comparable with one selling his or her car or used washing machine or fridge.  The simple and morally painful answer is that the two sales are inseparable in the amoral eye of the market! To further erode the issue of morality and the sacrosanctity of human values instead of an individual being identified as the purchaser of the impoverished sellers’ kidney a corporate entity - totally amoral like the market - can be used to do the purchasing.  In other words the recipient of the kidney need not think about the donor.  The transaction is simply commercial regardless whether the donor is a prisoner, or a missing person, or an impoverished individual in the Philippine, India, or Egypt.   

More and more these days corporate entities are becoming sponsors of major sporting events and the CEO’s of those companies set up their own private boxes watching those events in the comfort and luxury of nippling on caviar, and drinking champagne whilst the rest of the spectators, some of whom stood in a long line to buy ticket, sit or stand on rotting benches and get drenched!  Instead of being a get together of communities to watch and cheers for their favourite team sport is becoming amoral just like the market and the corporate entity. This is especially so when we all can bet on teams and watch the odds fluctuate up to the half time break! Nowadays we can do all the betting through our iphone from the luxury of our lounge room.  

In a discussion of this kind where the market is being used as means of eroding the moral fiber and ethical sanctity of human values one is reminded of the past, present and continual history of the slave trade.  This trade had been, and regrettably continues to be, the hallmark of every human civilization including the 21^st century.  In recent months the question of slave trade had been worldwide news item.  The Charitable Australian mining magnate, John Andrew Forrest (Twiggy), decided to setup some foundation/trust committee to monitor and hopefully reduce the volume of human slave trade market.  Human slave trade was a feature of Medieval Europe that peaked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when European powers were colonizing Africa.  Between the twelfth and fifteen centuries Florence and Genoa flourished on slave trade from Africa to the Arabs.  Those slaves became known as the Mamlukes (owned) and after the decadence of the great Arab Empires of Umayyad and Abbasid took over as Caliphate until the last of whom, was defeated by the Ottoman in 1516.  Forrest’s grandiose initiative was welcomed and warmly supported by the Vatican and the Imam of El Azhar Mosque in Cairo. A smiling, Forrest was shown with his wife signing the anti slavery document at the Vatican with Saint Peter’s Church in the background. 

No discussion of slave trade (topic for next blog) is ever complete without a mention of   Abraham Lincoln, and the American Civil War of 1860.  Whilst to most historians the cause of the war was the desire by the Northern States to abolish slavery that ‘cause’ may well be one of many, if indeed the main cause.  I guess one can take comfort in the fact that the medical profession in mid 19^th century America and Europe had not even dreamt of organ transplant.

In the last two years Slavery had been the topic of new breed of Hollywood directors with major films by Quentin Tarantino Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen.

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