The Way Things Are Does

I Think It Would Be A Great Tragedy To Devote Medical Resources And Genetic Technological Breakthroughs To Purposes That Are Not To Do With Health Or Medicine, But Instead Are To Do With Satisfying The Desires That Are Created By The Consumer Society.

I Find This In All These Places I've Been Travelling - From India To China, To Japan And Europe And To Brazil - There Is A Frustration With The Terms Of Public Discourse, With A Kind Of Absence Of Discussion Of Questions Of Justice And Ethics And Of Values.

One Of The Appeals Of Markets, As A Public Philosophy, Is They Seem To Spare Us The Need To Engage In Public Arguments About The Meaning Of Goods. So Markets Seem To Enable Us To Be Non-judgmental About Values. But I Think That's A Mistake.

I Do Not Argue That Nature Is Sacrosanct In The Sense That We Must Never Tamper With Nature. That Would Disempower, Really, All Of Medicine. That Would Mean That We Can't Combat Dread Diseases - Malaria, Polio, All Of Which Are Given By Nature, If One Thinks About It.

I Think The Reason We Might Hesitate To Pay Cash To Students For Doing Well On Tests Or Getting Good Grades Or Reading Books Is That We Sense That The Monetary Payment Is An Extrinsic Reward.