For some time now my wife and I have been looking for a new home. It’s been incredibly frustrating because even though we are told it’s a buyers market, house prices are still very high. Essentially we face a choice of renting an appropriate home or buying one and living with significant and potentially crippling debt. It’s not much of a choice, but it’s one many New Zealanders are facing.
I’m no economist or property expert, but I am aware that a strange thing called the “market” drives the value of any commodity. Despite what the government or registered valuation may say about the value of a home, it’s only worth what someone will pay for it. We can hold onto all the bits of paper we like but true value is in the eye of the purchaser. When enough people say something is too expensive the value plummets.
Some years ago I was listening to an American business consultant who was discussing the monetary value of particular human beings. His point was clear – some people are worth a whole lot more than others! Why? because those individuals are of greater value to a larger consumer base.
For many years Bill Gates was Microsoft personified. To lose him from the organisation will have created a massive financial loss for hundreds of thousands of investors. So a simple mathematical formula reveals that Bill Gates is of greater value than me!
At one level I find this a little hard to swallow. Is my value in the world dictated by market need? Well, I hate to say it, but yes. Just talk to the many elderly in our society and they will articulate the same feeling. If there is no productive market value in my existence, then I am of little value to a consuming society.
Yet at a very raw level, we all question this kind of “worth” assessment. It is deeply flawed and we know it. Yet if we look carefully at our attitudes toward others it’s easy to see how deep the commercial value equation goes for all of us. How do we view those who have no “value” to us personally?
Those of us who have been around-a-while know that New Zealand’s violence and murder trends have pitched sharply upwards in the last twenty years. What surprises me is the benign sense of having been anaesthetised to it all. Violence happens with such frequency now that I tend to view it in the same passive way that I watch the sports results. Actually, the sports results can create greater consternation!
Yet I still believe that all people are created in God’s image. People are not “means” to any material end. All individuals are “ends” in themselves. But to live this kind of worldview is to critique my attitudes on a daily basis. How do I view my own worth and that of others?
Yes, there is an economy based on human consumption of goods. But people are not “goods” they are (all of them) of incalculable worth. In the words of a little known philosopher, “… ‘they’ are not ‘them’, ‘they’ are ‘us’”.
© Digby Wilkinson 2008