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PhiloMadrid - Pub Philosophy Meetings in Madrid
30 April 2020
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 3rd May: Essay links for the meeting
Work Does Not
Pay
We are the result of
our actions!
When we consider the facts, not everyone on
Earth came near a Coronavirs or infected by the virus. And in the context of national
populations more people were not affected by the COVID-19 than those who were
with or without the syndromes. And much more than those who were taken ill or
hospitalized. Indeed the major issues with the Coronavirus are its
contagiousness and by inundating the healthcare system when serious infections
in people are rising exponentially.
But everyone and everything
on Earth has been economically affected by the pandemic. The most important effect of all is the loss
of jobs and employment by millions of people. And this is the connection
between our two topics.
“Work does not pay” or
“not always pays” for many reasons but chief amongst them is being exploited
and human rights abused. Being cheated from one’s labour rights and
remuneration rights is of course a dastardly thing to do to people.
Unfortunately no one is exempt from this cursed fate even though some are
better off than the rest of the world. In other words it does not matter what
political ideology one subscribes to the present lot of “isms” cannot have or do
not have the right mindset to fight against labour exploitation. This does not
mean that all ideologies are evil, only some are evil, while other “isms” mean
well but do not solve the problem maybe because they try to solve the wrong problem.
A second reason why
work does not pay is when those whose duty it is to manage work decide to exploit
others somewhere else because the return on investment would be higher. Besides
the new people being exploited, they have have no sense of labour rights and they have no
voice to argue their case for reasonable remuneration. And when some try they
are swiftly put in prison. For every person who lost their job because their job
is now being done by someone else with fewer rights and remuneration, implies
that two people are now being exploited and not just one: there are now two
people whose work does not pay.
Today there is a very
sophisticated third form that makes work not worth the effort. The consumer society
means that we cannot just give up any work we have because it does not pay.
Sure many people get into excessive debt because they buy frivolous things, but
my concern is not with buying frivolous things. I mean a consumer society where
whatever we need for life involves debt and banking services. Banking charges,
including credit card charges, are an additional cost of living.
I totally agree that
credit creates wealth and innovation and most important off all employment, but
this is not the issue; and I’m not even going to discuss tax havens. The issue
about credit and debt is when our remuneration is not on par with the cost of survival
and living and we are forced to borrow money beyond our means. Today the average
worker does not earn enough to buy a house from their pay without borrowing
money. The second issue is that many
companies are motivated to increase profits, maybe because of the false
doctrine of Quarterly profits, and have no choice but to move to countries with
cheaper labour costs and even more lax regulations.
When work does not pay
it is not always because we are being exploited but because someone else is being
exploited more than us. This brings me to the second question.
The main issue with statements
like “we are the result of our actions” is that firstly we ask the question in
hindsight and secondly we don’t always have full access on how the future will
turn out. It is statements like “we are responsible for our actions” that
should give us the foresight or at least the rational prudence of what to do or
how we act. “We are the result of our actions” is not a universal or empirical
law for the very reasons that we couldn’t and cannot have access to all the
relevant information at the time of action. There are many factors that
influence who we are today that have nothing to do with how we acted in the
past: one of them is, of course, being born, but let’s not split hairs.
We must also separate
legal actions based on intention and action or omission to act and moral or
ration action. The statements “we are the result of our action” or “we are
responsible for our action” cannot be moral or rational universal statements if
we acted in good faith. An example will illustrate this point: if I order an ice
cream and I’m sick because the cream had been contaminated with something I can
hardly be accused of being the product of my action for ordering the ice cream.
However, if I order an ice cream knowing that I am intolerant to dairy products
then this wouldn’t be acting in good faith.
In the context of work
above, we can make some mistakes but not all mistakes determine how we are
today. There is always the matter that the way we act might lead to a situation
really better than what we imagined or things turned out badly when we had good
reasons to believe that things will be better for us. How many people have lost
a fortune because of the pandemic or a promotion or pay rise? Some people might
limit their actions and play safe and conservative, whilst others might take
more risks in their life. It would be inappropriate and ridiculous to condemn Galileo
for his house arrest simply because he stuck to his observational and empirical
knowledge about astronomical bodies.
David Hume and more
recently Nassim Taleb have warned us about the big issues of induction. I would
argue that when we act we act on pure inductive reasoning for the simple reason
that inductive reasoning is based on facts whereas the future is just an idea.
Of course, today we are better equipped to act successfully for certain types
of future. The French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace was one of the first to
develop the Bayesian interpretation of probability, Newton and Leibniz developed
the calculus, the masters of Quantum Mechanics, and more recently, Data mining.
Even still the future for most people is very limited. Hence, judging our past bona
fide actions by our present is certainly unfair. And although many experts did
indeed predict a pandemic during this period I am convinced that none were able
to predict how the Coronavirus pandemic would develop and evolve.
Unfortunately
politicians and big business are not as innocent as scientists because of the
limits in predicting the future. At the very least the scientists failed on the
details but were spot on the magnitude and timing of the pandemic. Politicians
and business, especially big business, are not so lucky because as the French
mathematician, Didier Sornette, successfully demonstrated through his Dragon King Theory (check Wikipedia and may
other documents and videos) that “…events are generated by distinct mechanisms
that intermittently amplify extreme events, leading to the generation of
runaway disasters….or extraordinary opportunities….” (Wikipedia: Didier
Sornette). An interpretation of the theory is that systems or organisations
have in-built failure points by virtue of the design of the organisation. For
example, the way the economy to set up today we know that at some point in the
future there will be an economic collapse: companies cannot base their
objectives on quarterly profits ad infinitum. All of a sudden the Coronavirus has destroyed
billion Euro businesses and created massive opportunities with matching profits
for humble businesses like high quality face masks or gloves. The issue now is
how can those who did not prepare for the big event act in a prudent way for
the future.
It seems to me that work
does not pay when others are motivated by profits rather than equitable and
fair employment conditions. And our bona fide actions are many times thwarted
by the bad judgement of others.
Best and take care
Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp:
606081813
Email:
philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com
28 April 2020
PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 3rd May: Work Does Not Pay + We are the result of our actions!
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23 April 2020
Is this an era of changes or a change of era? - essays
Is this an era of changes or a change of era?
Essays
Skype Meeting Date 26th
April 2020 – 18:30pm
(contact me for Skype
link – 606081813 or philomadrid@gmail.com)
Essay by Ruel:
QUO VADIS?
Ruel also sent a link to an essay by Zak Stein:
Relevant to the topic at hand, is a provocative essay by Zak
Stein that challenges us to read "the signs of the times" more
seriously as it prepares this generation to face the "new unknown" in
the context of a totally different paradigm.
The essay's title is " Covid-19: A War Broke Out in Heaven".
Here's the link:
Essay by Lawrence:
Is this an era of changes or a change of era?
telephone/WhatsApp:
606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com
Is this an era of changes or a change of era?
Is this an era of changes or a change of era?
In keeping with the general theme of the coronavirus
pandemic, this Sunday we are discussing: Is this an era of changes or a change
of era? The difference between our topic now and the question we discussed recently
“The good things that come from bad situations” is mainly two fold.
Any “good things” that are the result of a bad situation are
opportunities that benefit some people but this is not sufficient to imply that
everyone will benefit. And secondly any good things might not be beneficial or
remain beneficial in the medium or long term.
An era is a period of time usually within a chronology: for
example we find geological eras, political eras such as the Roman era or the Victorian
era, and of course calendar eras, the 1950s American dream, the The Beatles era
the Vietnam War era and so on. Eras encompass everything (within a context) of
the period of the era: the good, the bad and the ugly. For example, the
Victorian era in the UK spans the calendar period between Jun 20, 1837 – Jan
22, 1901 and although this is a long time the changes that took place affected
everyone.
In the context of our topic we are at a disadvantage because
the pandemic is still in full swing, and no scientific breakthrough is in sight
to develop a vaccine or to understand the virus especially its origin. We don’t
even know whether those who recovered from the disease are really immune and if
they are to what extent and for how long? But this should not stop us from
analysing the consequences of the situation we are in now and argue the moral
and ethical issues of the future.
For the purpose of our topic I would argue that we are
considering the political era given the ethics involved with the pandemic, especially
because of the politicization of the pandemic and that politicians are making
most of the decisions.
During the Spanish flu or, better, the 1918 Flu Pandemic the
era did not change much maybe because of the war. Incidentally it is called the
Spanish Flu because the countries involved in WW1 imposed a complete censorship
on reporting and writing about the Flu pandemic. Spain, however, was not
involved in WW1 and thus Spanish scientists were the first to report on the flu
pandemic. In effect despite the passing of many micro eras in the 20th
century, today in the 21st century, a hundred years later we still
don’t know the real causes of the coronavirus pandemic: how many people have
been really affected or died. Basically, in my opinion we cannot trust any
numbers related to the coronavirus pandemic, even if some numbers are more
realistic than others.
In effect I am more inclined to think that we are
approaching an era of changes than a change of an era. One of my main arguments
is that the failings we are experiencing during this pandemic and any changes
that need doing should have already been done many years ago even back to 1918.
What voters and politicians don’t want to accept is the
reality that the more society becomes based on science and technology the more
political ideology and dogma become irrelevant and dangerous. Compare the
present situation regarding the pandemic in say Germany or Taiwan and the
situation in Britain and the USA. The Prime Minister of the UK and the
President of the USA are handling the pandemic on ideological principles with
the expected negative consequences. Some countries give their medical experts
more freedom to act in the medical interests of the population (maybe Germany)
and other countries act on medical advice without delay (maybe Taiwan). In the
case of Taiwan they also happen to be more informed about events in China thus
they took early measure against the virus.
The question is not who is right and who is wrong, science
vs politics, but whose methodology is more robust to fight such serious events
as a pandemic. Political decisions based on ideology are neither transparent
nor relevant: how can ideology based on beliefs deal with nature and biology?
The advantage of science is that the methodology is based on empirical data, the
human reasoning involved in science can be verified/falsified, and the more the
conclusions are replicated by others the more solid those conclusions would be.
The negative side of science is that science is as good as the data, sometimes
the government have to do the data collection and finance has to come from the
government or from commercial interests. Thus science, and by definition
including medicine, might not be an independent neutral discipline.
One of the changes that needs to happen is for institutions
like the WHO to be completely independent of politics and political influence.
Maybe an organisation very similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency
model. Thus countries like Taiwan will be included as a member of the WHO or
future equivalent. This does not mean that the IACA or WHO do not make mistakes
but as models for international monitoring they are quite robust: as always the
problem is that these institutions are easily politicized and they are.
If the world medical institutions need policing like nuclear
power installations, it also follows that health care services must also be
available to those who need medical care. The bottom line is that medical care also
has to be available to everyone independent of cost. After all we don’t have to
pay directly to the manager of our local nuclear power station to operate it
safely. And we certainly don’t have to take out a bank loan to pay for the
missiles fired by our fighter bombers.
This means that high on the wish list for change would be
political accountability. What is obvious, and has been obvious for a number of
years, is that politicians seem to have lost their sense of duty and loyalty to
the electorate. When politicians push for policies that sell off lifelong
healthcare institutions that give free healthcare at the point of need to companies
based in off shore domains to avoid taxes, one gets a feeling that priorities
have been lost.
In reality what needs changing is the use of ideology and
dogma to indoctrinate the electorate and consequently misuse their national
assets and national stability. Ideologies such as capitalism, socialism,
neoliberalism, communism, theocracy, nationalism, and fascism have no place in
today’s era of fast moving pandemics and science/technology foundations. And false
gods such as Marx, Milton Friedman, Hitler, Mao, Margaret Thatcher, Lenin, and
many more have no relevance in the thinking and arguments of 21st
Century politics and society. We have to move away from today’s nationalism
(racism/fascism) that excludes other people to a form of nationalism that works
to include everyone, cooperate with everyone and looks after the well being of
everyone.
By definition any changes in the political system will
affects changes in other aspects of society. For example, changes on how we conduct
business, how to manage the economy, how to manage money, and how the facts and
news are reported. In reality applying the myriad of charters of human rights
won’t go amiss.
We are still limited by the fact that we are not privy to
the future, but planning for the future is something we can do if we know how. What
we know for sure is that through the scientific and philosophical methods we
can know more about reality and people in authority to have the evidence to
hold people to account. What the pandemic has demonstrated is that we cannot
stop the movement towards the reliance on science and technology. As I have
already said, the issue is not one of who is right or who is wrong or who makes
mistakes or who don’t makes mistakes but rather: whose methodology is more
robust to model the real world and nature?
Best Lawrence
telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com
20 April 2020
PhiloMadrid meetings by Skype 6:30pm Sunday 26th: Is this an era of changes or a change of era?
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