How much would it cost for you to….? Is a game played by adolescents and usually not a very pleasant one. Does everything have a price though? That is the question. I heard our time being discussed in this way once; to work out if your job or whatever it is that takes up you time was worth it. You must put figures on the various things you do so let’s say part of your job required climbing in drains or hurting kittens, what would you need to be paid to do that. You then throw in whether the time away from home is sufficiently recompensed, how much would it cost for you to not get home until after you children have gone to bed for example. In that case you are being asked to put a value on an element of raising the children. Do the benefits outweigh the costs. Ultimately that is how it equates to everything, do the financial benefits of climbing in drains outweigh the grim costs of stinking of shit. Something like that though we can get used to but can we put enough of a cost on never seeing our families and growing distant from our wives.
You can take it a step further. A fracking company wants to come into your community and hydraulically frack for natural gases. Now you know that will potentially cause damage to the local water and risk earthquakes, what cost would you put on those inconveniences. How about they offer you two hundred thousand pound, thats a decent sum of money, would it be suitable recompense for risking your water being polluted to the point you can’t even shower in it? It’s possible you may just use a fraction of that money to buy a rain water catcher and use that for showers, problem solved. How about if this company also pollutes the river which you use to catch your fish to survive on. What kind of price can you put on that? Is there a price to having one of your few sources of food and water damaged, life changing irreversibly. Does that price change when you have children and realise they’re not going to be able to catch the fish to survive off. At least you have cash in the short term, but really if it affects your whole existence then was that worth it.
If you had asked someone prior to the industrial revolution when work was less regimented and you did what was required while also having a higher level of self-sufficiency all round; whether they would sacrifice their time and freedom for the benefits the industrial revolution has created, there is no guarantee they would accept it. What is the price you put on you time. We work forty hours per week, if not more but for what. We may gain from many things but we also lose out on many others, all these things we have put or had a price put on for us. What price would you put on the continued destruction of this earth, and would it change if that was in regards to what price you put on that for the suffering of your children. If there is a price for anything then surely there is a price for that too. Can we really put a price on progress when it isn’t clear that we even know what it is.
Observations and Misunderstandings 