In defense of the “superfluous”: because it is dangerous to let the government decide what is “essential” and what is not
The request to renounce the “superfluous” seems reasonable, because it is grafted onto a moralistic narrative of life to which we have always been subjected. But what escapes is that our "superfluous" is the "essential" of others: for the restaurateur, his waiters, fitness teachers, hoteliers or actors, our "superfluous" is life …
Of course, how “ugly”, how “inconvenient” to miss an aperitif or a session in the gym. And how "sensible", "reasonable", "moral" appear the appeals to give up the "vice" and "whims" in this serious phase of the Covid emergency.
While the substantial ban on "non-essential activities" represents a dramatic discrimination among citizens, which aggravates the status gap between "secured" and "unsecured", there is a good chance it will be digested without excessive protest. The argument brought by the government appears, at least superficially, high and incontrovertible: how can this or that "whim" be placed in front of "health"?
The fact is that the request to renounce the "superfluous" is all in all "easy" because it is grafted onto a moralistic narrative of life to which we have always been subjected – and which therefore to a large extent, even unconsciously, we have received.
The anathema against "consumption" and "luxury" has been, in many ways, a meeting point between socialist, environmentalist and Catholic cultures and any self-respecting intellectual has always stigmatized decadent habits and customs of modern society.
Of course, we continued to consume and desire what went beyond the essential, but on every occasion we were told that at least we had to do it feeling "guilt".
In short, since well before the coronavirus , there are libraries full of books and prolific strands of "opinion" that explain to us how the world would be better if only we recovered the more moderate lifestyles of an unspecified past, in which certainly no money was spent in expensive entertainment.
The typical argument of the "bigots" is that the more we seek for ourselves, the more we take away from others – and therefore the main road to social equity is to be satisfied with little.
In reality, however, things are not only different, but even the opposite. Our "superfluous" not only does not take anything away from others, but rather, it is the "essential" of others. Because all in all we can also give up going to restaurants, to the gym, to the ski slopes or to the theater – and maybe this helps us to feel more "moral".
But for the restaurateur, his waiters, fitness teachers, mountain hoteliers or actors – and for many, even less visible people who work as induced by prohibited "front-line" activities – that "superfluous" of ours is life. . It is the possibility of bringing home the loaf for oneself and for one's children.
Somehow the "search for the superfluous" by those who can afford it is a powerful vehicle for the redistribution of wealth, as it gives access to work and therefore to income to a wider audience of people.
A world "without superfluous" is a world with very low demand and therefore with very few possibilities of use. Ultimately, it is a world unable to produce minimum levels of wealth for a significant part of its population – or at least destined to regress towards a substantially subsistence economy.
Moreover, the disappearance of entire sectors of the economy reduces our ability to finance individually and collectively even the sectors considered “primary”, starting with the health sector.
Although it is not clear to many, fewer aperitifs and fewer discos means fewer doctors, fewer nurses, fewer health machinery, less money for cancer research, less chance for many people to pay for a medical exam that could be decisive.
The truth is that in an interdependent and complex economy like the one in which we operate, the "superfluous" simply does not exist. There are no “non-essential” activities. If we don't understand it quickly – if we don't understand the cause-and-effect dynamics that underlie wealth creation – we will soon wake up out of the "first world", without even realizing what happened.
The post In defense of the "superfluous": why it is dangerous to let the government decide what is "essential" and what is not appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/in-difesa-del-superfluo-perche-e-pericoloso-lasciare-che-il-governo-decida-cosa-e-essenziale-e-cosa-no/ on Tue, 27 Oct 2020 03:47:00 +0000.