Costa Rica Guy

Freedom is the Unifying Concept

August 16, 2020 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
Alexander Hamilton

Most of us are principled to some extent. That is, we have things we believe in and will fight for, if necessary…

And that’s a good thing.

However, fanaticism can be defined (or, at least I would define) as ideological rigidity in the face of clear facts to the contrary.

However, these days “the facts” are in dispute…

What facts, you ask?

Well, all of them!

I remember back during the 2016 political campaign, I was more than happy to engage in heated debates (on social media, of course), defending my ideology as the “factual” one that had to prevail over all others…

In fact, it got so bad that it started messing with my peace of mind…

So, I decided to step away from the fray.

Oh for sure I’m still a consumer of politically related social network content. I just tend to stay on the sidelines as an observer, rather than a participatory combatant. It’s a whole lot less stressful that way…

I still tend to think my way of thinking is the right one. But am I SURE about it?

Well, no…I’m not at all…

So, I don’t feel the urge any more to impose or implore my way of thinking in an attempt to help others see the light.

And what exactly is “the light?”

That, my friends, is the question we should all be asking ourselves.

From an optimistic viewpoint, the light is that all-encompassing truth that we should universally embrace…

As if there could even be such a thing!

Most of us would probably agree that said light must have something to do with freedom…we all yearn to breathe free. In other words, freedom is the unifying concept, or at least it should be…

Wouldn’t you agree?

Conservatives are freedom lovers. And so are liberals.

In fact modern conservatism is a political viewpoint derived from classical liberalism, which promoted liberty from government oppression…

When you boil it down to that, liberals aren’t very different…

Conservatives would just put more emphasis on “economic freedom”, whereas liberals might tend more towards “social freedom” with economic equality.

Let’s just focus a bit on that word, freedom.

If freedom is the unifying concept that we can all agree on, then why are we at each others throats these days?

Simple answer is that we simply can’t agree on what makes one legitimately free…

Now that’s a legitimate thing to disagree about!

But can’t we do so in a way that doesn’t detract from the very thing that we all agree on – our FREEDOM?

Can’t we also agree that all people should enjoy a similar degree of freedom…that some should not, in general, be “freer” than others?

Granted, there are ways in which we can lose our right to be free, usually by illegitimately denying it to others in some illegal or violent way.

Haven’t we already evolved to the point of collective agreement about universal freedom, after witnessing the horrors that have been suffered, historically, as a result of disagreement on this now (pretty much) settled issue?

So, let’s not go there again!

If we can all agree on freedom as the unifying concept, then why can’t we also focus on solutions to our problems that promote that concept?

Couldn’t that be a point of alignment that cuts through the petty crap we are at each other’s throats about?

In other words, couldn’t freedom as the unifying concept be the point of connection that calms the waters?

And yet we’ve lost sight of this simple point of alignment. We’ve done so by making the less important points of misalignment drastically more important. We’ve elevated ideological rigidity, along with the tribalism that bolsters it, over the simple and straight forward truth that we all just want to be fucking free!

Admittedly, I don’t generally agree with anyone who supports Donald Trump. However, I can still support their right to be free to do so. And due to that support I can seek to try to understand their motivation for doing so…

I can seek first to understand before demanding that my disagreement be understood…

I can listen and agree to disagree, without the need to insult or defame…

Folks, I believe we are going through an evolutionary phase in which we’re either going to learn to embrace the freedom we all want, albeit in varying ways, and promote that connection over division, or else we’re going to suffer dire consequences…

In fact, the consequences flowing from our divisiveness are already beginning to rear their ugly heads, aren’t they?

As I sit here writing this on August 16, 2020, I have no idea what’s going to transpire…

with respect to COVID-19…

or the November 3rd election…

or the myriad of other potential calamities we face as a national and global society…

But I know this, that we are all connected as humans and desire the same basic thing…

FREEDOM!

And that includes both the freedom to _________ and the freedom from _________.

I believe we can all learn how to fill in those blanks without killing ourselves over the content!

I’ll close with this morsel, or, er, food for thought…

Government imposed equality is NOT freedom…

But neither is market imposed inequality…

Perhaps there’s a happy medium?

Fodder for a future post…stay tuned…

Individualism Run Amok

June 28, 2020 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

There are different ways I could express what, in my humble opinion, is wrong with the U.S.A. these days…

some more offensive than others…

So, let’s try for a potentially less offensive expression.

John F. Kennedy, Jr., our 35th President, implored the country, in his 1961 inaugural address, to…

ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

Perhaps unintentionally, what he did in that quote was encourage collectivism over individualism.

Hold on, now I’m sure that for some, I’ve already begun treading into the offensive!

Because any idea that connotes collectivism immediately, for too many, conjures up the boogeyman of socialism, or worse, communism.

Nevertheless, JFK was in fact suggesting individual service to the collective, rather that the more individualistic (and capitalistic) notion of the having the collective serve the individual.

What do I mean by that exactly?

Well, let’s first define what is truly meant by “the collective.”

In a word, “the collective” refers to us…the Big US, or as I will hereinafter refer, U.S., as in the “U.S.” of A…

Now, the collective expresses its will (or so it should) via government action. That is, when the government is operating the way it is supposed to operate, i.e., of, by, and for the people.

I have referred often in the blog to a concept that I call “capitalism run amok.” In this post I’ve changed that to “individualism run amok.”

See there, doesn’t that seem less offensive?

What I am getting at with that subtle change is simply a catchy way to refer to the current social and economic situation in our country. A situation in which the individual has gained, or seeks to gain, the ability to manipulate the collective will for his or her own individual ends.

That’s the unavoidable end result of capitalism run amok.

That is, a situation in which the government (U.S.) no longer is an expression of collective will, but of a handful of individual wills, those who have amassed the economic power, through unbridled capitalistic freedom, to manipulate the so-called collective will.

Of course, once government can be so manipulated for individual ends, it no longer represents the collective will, wouldn’t you agree?

We have come to the point in the U.S.A. where most seem to believe in a market solution to every problem…

That if the government (i.e., the collective will) simply steps aside and allows the market to work on its own, everything will magically work out…

But is it working out, really?

Right now the country is faced with problems the likes of which none of U.S. have experienced in our lifetimes…

Donald J. Trump, the poster-child of individualism run amok, tells U.S. to just “open up the market” and all will be well…

However, the facts don’t demonstrate that all will be well. In fact, the truth demonstrates anything but that.

America was built via rugged individualism…by those “rugged individuals” who rode on the backs of the less fortunate and powerless. It has always been that way.

Now, am I saying that individualism is bad?

No, I’m saying that individualism run amok is bad.

I’m saying that when we allow the collective will to be manipulated and to serve individual will, rather than U.S., then we run into problems. The longer we let that go on, the more severe those problems get.

Right now, they’ve gotten so severe as to threaten the long-term health and sustainable of our country as a whole.

So, what’s the solution?

What is a healthy degree of individualism?

Individualism rests on the ego-driven notion that the individual stands apart from his or her environment and that the latter exists to serve the former…

But that’s just not really true.

Now, I won’t get into a long-winded discussion of how the ego doesn’t even really exist at all…

Nevertheless, we are served by our egos to a great extent. After all, it’s the ego that motivates us to strain and strive for a better and more comfortable individual existence. It’s our ego that works to motivate action the lends toward the propagation of our species.

And who doesn’t want that?

I know I do! I work for it everyday…

And that’s a good thing.

But when we get so caught up with this notion of separate-ness that we lose sight of U.S., then problems with individualism run amok tend to arise.

Remember, U.S., or the collective, expresses its will via government action…

The type of action that actually serves U.S…

Lately our government has been doing anything but that!

And we make the mistake of allowing that situation to go on because we think that the market, which exists to serve the individual, always knows better, even better than U.S.!

But it doesn’t. Aren’t we seeing proof of that right now?

The market serves as a way for the individual to manipulate the collective…to stand apart from it and transact with it in order to derive some individual benefit. One very important function of government action, i.e., collective will, is to make sure there are rules in place that prevent this form of manipulation from getting out of hand…

However, it has, indeed, gotten out of hand.

I believe a more healthier form of individualism is one in which we do strive for a better individual existence, but we do so in a way that is cognizant of what JFK implored…

That we should prioritize the impact of our actions, so that as a whole they serve to benefit the collective, over and above our own individual self-interest.

Isn’t that exactly what JFK’s quote is all about? Haven’t you ever been inspired by it?

A whole generation of Americans were!

Maybe we need to get back to that sense of inspirational impact…

That sense of inspiration that would never protest the simple and painless act of wearing a mask in order to protect our collective health!

That sense of inspiration that would cause all of U.S., of every color and creed, to stand in solidarity with those of U.S. who are being persecuted by a government that has ceased to serve as an expression of the collective will!

A healthy degree of individualism is one that wholly rejects the notion that the collective exists to serve any group of individuals who have been able to manipulate it via economic and political power…

Collective will exists to serve the powerless, not the powerful…

Individualism run amok is not the way it’s supposed to work folks…

But that’s the way it is working…

Isn’t it high time for a change?

A once in a lifetime opportunity will avail itself come November 3rd!

COVID-19 is Accelerating the Descent into Madness

May 17, 2020 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

A recent interaction on my FaceBook profile page leads me to believe that COVID-19 is accelerating the descent into madness among my fellow Americans…

I post a lot of stuff that interests me on my page. I post music that I like and find provocative, especially by the Grateful Dead (surely to the annoyance of many of my unenlightened friends). I post pictures of family and the beauty of my adopted country, Costa Rica. Occasionally, I will post a political meme, but I really don’t like those, as I find them lacking in nuance and usually intellectually insulting. I post books that I’ve recently read. I do that because I’m always on the lookout for good reading suggestions, so I like to offer a few myself for my friends to consider. And I post articles, some of them political, but only after carefully reading and vetting each. I try not to post anything that I find to be conspiratorial, or factually inaccurate.

I have FaceBook friends (some real and some virtual) with varying and often contrasting political ideals. I have quite a few friends who are conservative Trump supporters. After all, I hail from the Carolinas, which by and large is an area supportive of Donald Trump. So, a lot of my old friends from back home disagree with much of what I post. And I’m perfectly OK with that. In fact, I welcome the engagement of healthy and heated debate, as long as it remains respectful.

However, what happened recently on my page was definitely heated, but neither healthy, nor respectful, …

I posted a thoughtful article by Ezra Klein on the abject failure of the Trump administration in responding to the pandemic. I read a lot of Ezra’s stuff, books and articles, and I frequently listen to his podcast. I find him to be an intellectual worth listening to. However, he is predominantly of a liberal leaning mindset. And I don’t always agree with him. I would say that I’m decidedly more on the progressive side compared to Ezra.

Almost immediately upon posting this article I had a Trump supporter offer a comment on my post (I am quite sure without ever having taking the time to actually read the article). The comment basically said that by posting this article I would surely lose 50% of my real estate client base…I guess assuming that 50% of said base would take issue with the article to such a degree as to “fire” me over it…

If this “friend” was actually trying to “help” me by offering business advice…that ain’t the way to do it. And furthermore, if making money means that I can’t express my political views, peacefully and respectfully, on my own FaceBook page, well then I guess he’s right…I’m headed straight for the poor-house!

Suffice it to say that I responded to his comment in a way that I don’t respond very often. To paraphrase, I invited him to quickly exit my FaceBook page and go straight to hell!

I take political positions on my page. It’s my personal page. I think I’m allowed to do that. In fact, a quick perusal of my former friend’s (he unfriended me after this encounter) page confirmed that about 90% of the content is overtly political and usually insulting to anyone of a contrary viewpoint. Nevertheless, I refrained from any reciprocal trolling.

I have another page dedicated to my real estate business and I do not post anything remotely political over there. I don’t think it’s the place to do so and fans of that page do not want to see political crap, but rather content related to Costa Rica real estate and expat living.

So, what gives a Trump supporter the audacious idea that he can attack a person in this manner just because he disagrees with a political post?

Isn’t the whole concept of democracy predicated upon peaceful political debate?

If you want to eradicate all political debate and do so by threatening opposing views with financial (or, worse, physical) repercussion, then aren’t we converting our system to something far less than democratic? Doesn’t that sound a lot like what takes place in, say, Russia, China, or North Korea? I thought conservative Trump supporters were staunchly against totalitarianism of that nature?

You see, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t make America great again and at the same time try to make it a place where everyone marches in lockstep (or “goose-step”) politically.

Is that really the world you want to live in, or want your grandchildren to be borne into?

And what does a virus have to do with all this? Why is it that COVID-19 is accelerating the descent into madness, as opposed to everything else that’s happened over the last three years?

COVID-19 is exposing some dark truths about American society. As we are standing out as the most exceptional nation on the planet, in terms of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the gross excesses of our overly materialistic society are rising to the surface like a plucked Phoenix from the ashes. This unseen enemy (as Trump likes to call it) has rendered our mighty and invincible economy incapable of even providing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for the essential workers on the front-lines, exposing themselves while fighting to keep the rest of us safe. Can you imagine a response like this in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, or 9-11?

When it comes to blowing up other people in far away lands, we always seem to find the means to do so. But we can’t seem to find those same means to provide adequate testing and tracing to try to contain this “Chinese” pathogen, or at least not for the most vulnerable among us.

And as the economy shrinks under shelter in place orders, the gloves come off and the AR-15’s are taken down from the truck racks. People are fighting mad and someone has to be blamed for this mess…

And while we are blaming and threatening each other, spitting mad, the virus spreads, people die, and the great American economy further collapses…

And the COVID-19 descent into madness accelerates.

Why is America Failing the COVID-19 Test?

May 2, 2020 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

Costa Rica continues to flatten out the COVID-19 curve for new confirmed cases. The death toll remains at 6. And the active cases curve is on a fast-track to zero, with recovered cases outpacing new ones by about 20 per day.

In fact, Costa Rica’s success in dealing with this crisis is starting to get noticed around the world. I keep seeing New Zealand touted as the world’s model in that regard and Jacinda Ardern certainly deserves loads of credit. But I think Costa Rica definitely deserves a very robust honorable mention.

My question is…what’s up with the U.S.A.? Why is America failing the COVID-19 test?

My home country is supposed to be known for its exceptionalism, but not this way…

The U.S. is leading the world alright…it has become the epicenter for this virus and has one of the highest fatality rates, as well as rate of deaths per million, in the world.

That’s not the kind of exceptionalism we Americans like to boast about!

So, why is America failing the COVID-19 test? Is there something specific to the American psyche that gets right to the heart of an answer?

Because, you know, we Americans love to place blame.

So, what’s (or who’s) to blame here?

In short…we are!

You see, Americans suffer from this compulsion towards a market mindset. That is, the mindset of the market being the solution to every problem. Granted, America has historically enjoyed the most prosperous market on the planet. We are (or have been) the envy of the world in that regard. Americans are therefore somewhat justified in their aggressive market-orientation. And we certainly are so oriented, compared to the rest of the developed world. Our reliance on market solutions for just about everything, from health care to war waging, is unique in this world, to put it mildly…

Good ole’ Bernie Sanders tried over and over to point that out to us. But his loud proclamations to that effect fell on death ears, for the most part.

One only has to hearken back historically to see that the market is not what has gotten us out of deep doo-doo in the past…

We are living through historic times right now. You have to go back to 1918 for a time when a pandemic like COVID-19 has threatened the well-being of every American, as well as the American economy on the whole…

There are some trying to compare this crisis to the common flu that inflicts the nation annually. But this ain’t no flu. The flu has never come close to wreaking the kind of havoc COVID-19 has wrought upon us in only a couple months time…

However, compared to the suffering and hardship endured by Americans through the Great Depression and the ensuing World War, we ain’t seen nothing…yet…

And what exactly got us out of those messes?

Was it the market? Was the market the solution to the Great Depression, or World War II?

Of course not!

What got us out was collective action. By that I mean public action, initiated by the governments we the people delegate our power to, and executed by the blood, sweat, and tears of all Americans.

I’m talking about Roosevelt’s New Deal, the collective effort Americans at home engaged in to support our troops fighting fascism abroad, the GI Bill that helped those same troops and their families get a new start when the lucky ones returned home…

No, the market didn’t save us…we, the collective we, saved us!

Nevertheless and despite what history teaches us, Americans have become afflicted with this market oriented mindset. It’s a mindset that resides on the right and on the left (and in the center). It’s the one that believes we have to allow the market to work its magic and any attempts to interfere, via collective action, smack of socialism, or even communism.

Even now, Donald Trump says in order for us to move forward we’ve got to open up the market as fast as possible, health risks be damned. Of course, he is facing an election in a few months and bad markets don’t bode well for winning presidential elections. So, winning in November could possibly be where his true motivation lies.

Again, the market isn’t going to save us here. And if we move forward relying on it to do so, I believe America is doomed to fail. It’s doomed to fail not only the COVID-19 test, but quite possibly, doomed to fail and fall from it’s historic position as the greatest nation on earth…

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s still time to reverse course.

Mind you, reversing course doesn’t mean adopting socialism, or communism. But it does mean realizing that only collective action is going to get us out of this one, as well as that other (bigger) one looming on the horizon (in the form of rising CO2 levels).

I know what some of you are thinking…wait a minute, isn’t the solution a vaccine and won’t the development of such a vaccine be a product of a competitive market?

Well, with 3.5 million cases and 250,000 deaths, I can only hope that no one gets rich off of the development of a vaccine. After all, Jonas Salk never even filed for a patent for his polio vaccine. In fact, the very idea that someone, or some corporation, would get filthy rich off of a vaccine for this horrible disease gets to the very heart of my point…

If we can only save ourselves if there’s sufficient economic benefit in doing so, we’re f’ing doomed!

The nation-wide stay at home order, that we have collectively obeyed for the most part (well, at least until recently), is just one of the collective measures I’m getting at…

I’m also talking about collective effort to help the most vulnerable. The ones who have and will suffer the most from this crisis…

Those (like Trump himself) who’ve done well at exploiting the market, while it was still running on all cylinders, they’ll be just fine…

But that accounts for only a small percentage…Bernie’s 1%. The rest of us, we need help…collective help. Help of the kind that our government can and should be expected to provide…

If the market has been our magic carpet ride to greatness, well, that rug has been pulled right out from under us!

What’s our responsibility in this? Because we Americans, if we’re anything, we’re responsible, right?

Our responsibility is to turn from the madness of the market-as-the-only solution mindset.

Let’s face it, there is a clear and concise answer to the question, why is America failing the COVID-19 test?

We alone have the power to shift that paradigm and save ourselves…

Will we?

Agenda-based Science in the Age of COVID-19

April 24, 2020 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

When did we stop trusting in science?

Those of the fundamentalist religious persuasion stopped trusting around the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. And as far as that crowd goes, things haven’t changed a whole lot since then…

But how about the rest of us, who consider ourselves a bit more even-keeled?

It seems these days a healthy trust in, versus skepticism of, science always breaks down along political lines. The democrats seem to be much more accepting of the prognostications of science than are the republicans.

Why is that?

It seems to have something to do with the now decades long “controversy” surrounding climate change. Although, I believe the real reason goes a bit deeper than just that.

Climate change is accepted science…period. I’m not going to waste any effort here trying to argue that point. You can do your own research…just do it in the right places and avoid the crackpots. And these days there’s no shortage of those!

Acceptance of climate change breaks down along political lines, more-so than perhaps any scientific topic in modern history. You might have to go back to the Copernican revolution to find a more hotly debated topic surrounding settled science.

According to Pew Research, 90% of democrats believe the government is doing too little to combat climate change, versus 39% of republicans.

Why is climate change so hard for republicans to accept?

Well, one could point to the leadership, or lack thereof, by our current president. He is a staunch climate change denier (or, at best, skeptic) and he influences millions of his die-hard supporters to believe likewise…

And he has Fox News constantly backing him up!

Republicans tend to believe that the whole climate change issue is wrapped up in agenda-based science, or science in pursuit of a political agenda…

And what is that agenda, exactly?

According to republicans, it is to turn the U.S.A. into a socialist, or even communist, state. Republicans distrust big government…such distrust is the very sine quo non of conservatism…

Never-mind that in many ways Donald Trump has expanded government far beyond his predecessor(s). One need only look at the current federal deficit for proof of that.

When civilization is faced with big non-economic problems, like an alien invasion (of the “outer-space” variety), meteor strike, an out of control climate, or a world-wide pandemic, it’s usually science that comes to the rescue.

Science supplies us with the facts and the actions we need to take based on those facts. Then it takes collective action, i.e. government action, to execute those scientific-based solutions…

COVID-19 presents one of these instances where humanity must turn to science for answers, perhaps like none other in recent generations. That’s not to downplay the effect of climate change, but climate change is a creeping problem, whereas COVID-19 has jumped up and bit us in the ass overnight…to the tune of over 50,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, and counting.

Nevertheless, we have some out there, mostly on the right, who’re playing politics with a freaking virus, as if it could possibly be cognizant of political affiliation.

The truth is that science and politics, like religion and politics, make for strange bedfellows. In fact, there should be a wall of separation between them…

Oh wait, there is a wall between church and state…

How about between science and state?

It should not be up to republicans, or the republican president, to decide which science they (or he) will support. And the same, of course, goes with democrats. If science tells us that the only way to defeat COVID-19 is by collective action that will have economic repercussions, then that’s the solution we’re all faced with accepting, period.

Our capitalistic economic system is not science and neither is it decreed by the almighty. It’s just an economic theory that proposes a market solution to pretty much everything. But there’s not a market solution to COVID-19. Capitalism won’t save us here. Conservatism, with its belief in limited (or no) government, won’t save us here.

In fact, this crisis is dramatically exposing how capitalism, at least the kind that has run amok in the last few decades, is failing society.

The U.S.A. has surpassed all other countries in the world in virtually all statistics (i.e., the negative ones) related to COVID-19. The U.S.A. has the most cases, the most deaths, and one of the highest fatality rates.

This little bug has made a shambles of the mighty American market and of so-called American exceptionalism.

We must all immediately stop the madness of allowing political division to get in the way of doing the right thing. And that means doing the thing(s) science tells us to do, no matter how painful, or inconsistent with your political beliefs, it might be.

I’m afraid COVID-19 presents us with this stark choice between science and politics like nothing ever has, at least in my lifetime. This crisis is presenting us with hard choices. I can understand the tendency towards skepticism. But skepticism won’t serve us here. Playing politics with a pathogen won’t serve us here.

This tendency towards agenda-based science in the age of COVID-19 is going to show us how destructive the political division really can be…

Perhaps that’s the “agenda” of this virus?

The Cruelty of COVID-19

April 5, 2020 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Something that has dawned upon me as of late is the cruelty of COVID-19. I’m not talking about the fact that it’s a virus that makes us sick, as all those suckers do. I’m talking about this cynical and downright insidious cruelty that’s putting the human race squarely upon the horns of a moral dilemma.

Let’s put this disease in perspective. If you’ll remember, when the news of COVID-19 first broke out, many were comparing it to the common flu. In a previous post I introduced a statistic called the reproduction number (or R0). The R0 of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (the disease that results from infection) is estimated at around 2.2, versus 1.3 for the flu. If you read my post, you’d know that R0 is the average number of people a given person with the virus will infect. So, it appears that COVID-19 is significantly more contagious than the flu.

It’s also far more deadly. It’s still uncertain, but most experts put the COVID-19 fatality rate at between 1 and 2%. The fatality rate for the flu is well-known to be .1%, so COVID-19 is anywhere from 10 to 20 times more deadly.

Now, we don’t put the brakes on the entire economy due to the flu. And granted there are virus-borne diseases out there, like Ebola, that are far more deadly than COVID-19. So, why are we eager to inflict so much damage to ourselves over COVID-19?

Consider what the results would be if we just let COVID-19 run its course. How many people would be infected? Well, the flu infects around 9% of the world population annually. We already established that COVID-19 is more contagious, so let’s say that if we just stepped aside and did nothing, 10% of the world would get infected and 1.5% of those infected would die. There are approximately 7.8 billion people on our planet, so if COVID-19 infected 10% of them, that would mean 780,000,000 infected and at a fatality rate of 1.5%, about 117 million people dead!

If what I just wrote seems outlandish to you, consider that the Spanish Flu of 1918 killed between 17 and 50 million (with some estimates as high as 100 million).

As alarming as the numbers I just presented are, the dilemma posed by the cruelty of COVID-19 nevertheless remains…

Why do we need to destroy the economy and do so much damage to practically everyone, when only a small minority actually get infected by COVID-19 and an even smaller percentage dies?

It’s the age-old utilitarian argument of John Stuart Mill versus the moral imperative of Immanuel Kant.

If you think about it, capitalism is largely justified by the utilitarian argument. That is, at least in the U.S. and other democratic regimes, we choose the utilitarian benefits of a capitalistic economy that flow to society at large, even though a smaller portion of the populace is damaged by it. And now you have Trump, a staunch capitalist, trying to make that same argument when it comes to COVID-19. He does this by arguing that we should open the economy back up even when doing so probably means a much larger percentage of the population will become infected and many more deaths will occur as a result.

Now, I’m no hard-core capitalist and certainly no fan of Donald Trump. But even for me this is a hard one. I’ve already been affected by this thing economically and I’m afraid more damage is yet to be personally experienced.

In Costa Rica 90% of the infections have occurred in the metropolitan area around the capital city of San Jose. In Perez Zeledon where I live, there have only been 3 confirmed cases and it’s been that way for going on 3 weeks now. So, why does the economy of the entire country have to be shut down? Why can’t I go to my favorite watering hole for a beer? Why can’t I drive my car on the highway today? Why are my real estate customers being denied entry into the country?

Why? Why? Why?

It just doesn’t seem fair!

The moral argument of Kant, his “categorical imperative”, tells me that I should judge a certain personal behavior as moral only if its universal application (that is, by everyone) would render an acceptable result. In other words, whether or not I should just go about my daily living as if this COVID-19 thing never happened, depends on the result that could occur if everyone did the same thing. And I believe we know the answer to that question…

The whole concept of social-distancing falls in line with Kant’s categorical imperative and is diametrically opposed to the anti-altruism espoused by the likes of Ayn Rand (the godmother of modern-day neoliberal capitalism). Rand was no fan of Kant, by the way.

COVID-19 presents a moral challenge for us. Do we go the more well-worn capitalistic utilitarian route, even if many of the older and weaker among us die as a result, or do we act, not so much for our own benefit, but for the universal benefit of the human race writ large?

I said before that this disease is going to test us and test our systems, especially those that are built around that Mill utilitarian argument…

I guess it really comes down to whether or not there’s some benefit to being compassionate that outweighs the benefit of being comfortable, materially speaking…

What do you think?

I’m pretty sure that viruses aren’t conscious, but this little bugger sure as hell seems to know exactly what it’s doing…

to US.

Image Credit: Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris / CC BY-SA

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