19 July 2004
Let Not the Tail Wag the Dog
Protesting against child-marriage in Afghanistan is a clear case of attacking a symptom of rudimentary living conditions rather than acting to enhance them. When Afghan women have access to education and personal opportunity, they will defeat the features of their culture that we deem oppressive.
Attacking the symptoms instead of curing the cause—this is only a second-best strategy to which we must resort when it comes to diseases we don’t understand. However; it can be self-defeating, by allowing a problem to exacerbate, or self-serving. In the case of many humanitarian crises, the world is often very conscious of the real causes behind them. The AIDS crisis in Africa, for example, will not be resolved by calling on pharmaceuticals companies to reduce their “obscene” profits from the sale of drug therapies. How else could they finance the development of such stop-gap palliatives?
It is not the function of pharmaceutical companies to relieve human suffering. It is their function to make money, no matter what their advertising claims. Individuals who profit from the successes of those companies are the part of the world community that should devote its wealth to making the relief of human suffering more affordable.
Just as the IRS tax code prefers to charge individuals for the expense of government (corporate taxes are small compared to individual income taxes), so should the solution of global humanitarian crises be paid for by the individuals who profit from the commercial success of their investments. In particular, corporate executives who benefit through stock options are rightfully responsible for promoting the common good, not their enterprises. After all, enterprises are fictional creations; they do not have consciences.
More to the point, the community of nations needs to devote its resources to eradicating the economic reasons for the AIDS crisis. AIDS has been much more devastating in the least developed countries. Behavior engendered by low standards of living is at the root of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Information Technology has shrunk the distance between the world’s populations. Owing to the conflation this brings of peoples with disparate living standards, treatment of the disease has become an urgent imperative for outspoken critics. Perhaps that energy would be more effective if directed at creating the political changes in the U.S. that are needed to resolve the underlying causes of the AIDS crisis: economic development programs rather than military preemption. Exercising control over our own political process by insisting on such policies would also create conditions that bring child-marriage to an end in Afghanistan.
Protesting against child-marriage in Afghanistan is a clear case of attacking a symptom of rudimentary living conditions rather than acting to enhance them. When Afghan women have access to education and personal opportunity, they will defeat the features of their culture that we deem oppressive.
Attacking the symptoms instead of curing the cause—this is only a second-best strategy to which we must resort when it comes to diseases we don’t understand. However; it can be self-defeating, by allowing a problem to exacerbate, or self-serving. In the case of many humanitarian crises, the world is often very conscious of the real causes behind them. The AIDS crisis in Africa, for example, will not be resolved by calling on pharmaceuticals companies to reduce their “obscene” profits from the sale of drug therapies. How else could they finance the development of such stop-gap palliatives?
It is not the function of pharmaceutical companies to relieve human suffering. It is their function to make money, no matter what their advertising claims. Individuals who profit from the successes of those companies are the part of the world community that should devote its wealth to making the relief of human suffering more affordable.
Just as the IRS tax code prefers to charge individuals for the expense of government (corporate taxes are small compared to individual income taxes), so should the solution of global humanitarian crises be paid for by the individuals who profit from the commercial success of their investments. In particular, corporate executives who benefit through stock options are rightfully responsible for promoting the common good, not their enterprises. After all, enterprises are fictional creations; they do not have consciences.
More to the point, the community of nations needs to devote its resources to eradicating the economic reasons for the AIDS crisis. AIDS has been much more devastating in the least developed countries. Behavior engendered by low standards of living is at the root of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Information Technology has shrunk the distance between the world’s populations. Owing to the conflation this brings of peoples with disparate living standards, treatment of the disease has become an urgent imperative for outspoken critics. Perhaps that energy would be more effective if directed at creating the political changes in the U.S. that are needed to resolve the underlying causes of the AIDS crisis: economic development programs rather than military preemption. Exercising control over our own political process by insisting on such policies would also create conditions that bring child-marriage to an end in Afghanistan.
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