What Really Matters Most

As soon as articles about the Pandora Papers began to appear, I got into the Washington Post’s reporting . There will be plenty more. It’s an eight-part series. The next morning I was glad to see Heather Cox Richardson explicitly draw the connection between that and the need for Saturday’s Women’s March actions.

That said, there was a passing mention in her post that deserves expansion. “Today’s Republican Party would like to end government oversight of wealthy individuals [….]”

When we ask why the GOP wants the wealthy completely unfettered, the glib answer is because they (1) want to keep all their own money to themselves instead of contributing to the common good like the rest of us do and (2) the ultra-wealthy are their sponsors, so they are cultivating favor for more donations and sponsorship. That misses the mark. It’s too focused on politics when the root is bigger.

There are people who believe money and power are so intrinsically linked that they can stand in for each other, and that money/power is the paramount measure, the one most desirable thing. It is so important to them that it overrides everything else. This isn’t limited to the elite.

In the early 1980s I took a training course for first line supervisors. Everyone else in the room (they were all men) believed pay and promotion were the only valid choices for the top of a list of factors to motivate employees. I was the only one who thought praise for and acknowledgement of good work were more important. I did a lot of volunteer work and I didn’t rank as high as those men, so I had learned what motivated people when I couldn’t offer pay or a fancier title. In the USA, UK and many other capitalist-oriented countries, we live in a system that trains people to believe money is paramount.

The pandemic has made it especially easy to identify which governments and which public figures are driven by that philosophy. They repeatedly talk about doing what is best for the economy. Not the population, not the nation – the economy. Government in the UK is an example. The GOP in the USA is an example.

In that philosophy, the way the world works is relatively simple because all that matters is whether a mathematical model will show that a policy decision or an action leads to more money. These models tend to produce wildly inaccurate predictions for the far future. Things other than money that are being ignored in the short term often generate effects the models don’t anticipate.

In the opposite philosophy, money is only one of many things that are important. The world is a complex interplay of factors, some of which we have not found a way to measure and have to evaluate with judgement and context, which is much more difficult and fuzzier than a mathematical model. New Zealand’s government is an example of facing the pandemic with this philosophy, striving to protect the people and nation first, with money far down the priority list.

Despite the warping effects of the need for campaign funding, somehow the Democratic Party is mainly driven by the philosophy that tries to put the whole picture at the top, not just money. Yes, money pressures distort it, but the Party does not see money and power as paramount.

Looking at the scope and scale of what confronts humanity (and perhaps life as we know it) now, I can’t see any way for the money-first club to get us through the pandemic, climate change, mass extinctions, and so on. I can only see any chance for us from the other side of the philosophical divide.

The Pandora Papers unveil much of the top of the money-first club. As for what might be do-able with that trove of information, remember what was left stranded in Pandora’s Box when the lid slammed shut. Open the box wide and keep it open, and Hope can emerge.