Atlantean Standards (Part I)
I am beset with images from my past as a young man in a world of crusades and crusaders. I remember the hymns: in one, exhortation to lift high the Constantinian standard; in another, to follow 'standards of worth, o'er all the earth'. In all of these, the idea of a standard is literally that of a rallying-point, a banner, a flag, a sign that will 'stand hard' against all enemies.
It was in the age of the moderns, from the 18th century or so, that the meaning of 'standard' finally fell into the sense of 'a definite level of attainment or achievement'. No more knights keeping watch on the mountain heights, no more banners unfurled o'er all the world.
Tonight I was with family, and not for the first time, the talk drifted into the realms of a curious statistic that all present had cause to track out of interest. It was something to do with standards, in the latter, weaker sense.
In Atlantis, split the healers into two groups. For every hundred, take fifty into the first group and put fifty in the second group. Call the first group 'private healthcare' and the second 'public healthcare'. This is the Atlantean healing ministry. Now take all those who are ill and unwell, who suspect their bodies are failing and who are sick in the organic sense. Divide them, for every hundred, into twenty and eighty. Put the twenty into the first group, the eighty into the second group. Yes, this is true; in Atlantis, half the healers attend to one fifth of the unwell — this is the private sector. It follows therefore that the healers in the second group work four times as hard, normally for about half the pay (or less). The main consequence of this is that healers in public service often want to move to the private sector, where their quality of life will improve eightfold or more.
It is the same in the teaching ministry, although the pay differential is not that great. Rather, the independent fiefdoms of education may sometimes generate gross inequities. There are idle sods in some of those fields who cultivate and nurture a bare fraction of the crops that others do, but yet earn twice as much for their clever neglect of the more difficult crops.
It is this which makes me pessimistic for the future of Atlantean standards. An infamous study shows that whereas the mighty mercantile arm of Atlantis generates a whopping GDP on par with some more-established mercenary economies, her people's prosperity payload (PPP) is more akin to that of some of the poorer pirate 'nations'. Atlanteans are mostly poor; it takes them decades to pay off the burden of their 'public housing' which once was a beacon of hope in that island of the main. As my mother pointed out (and as I have mentioned before), her salary in days of yore would have bought six thousand bowls of noodles a month, of which she only needed sixty or fewer (since they were BIG bowls) — for me, her poor firstborn, my far larger salary would not have sufficed for a thousand, and those rather scanty unless concocted by the generous couple at the noodle stall in the old place.
Our money, it seems, is not up to the standard it used to be. And neither is the quality of our striving. What is the point, then, of throwing inferior money at superior problems? Most of us have already surrendered to economic temptation and fallen into the ways of the dark side. Just consider how many professionally unqualified scum are out there making easy pickings from people who want their flab surgically removed, while the poor and sick get treatment of a much lower level than they would otherwise have got from these greedy louts called aesthetic physicians.
Free market? 'Faugh!' I say. No market is free when the information symmetry and the level of intelligence (and greed) are so disparate. We should string the self-advertising, pocket-enhancing buggers up to dry, from the highest of our standards, and let real surgeons do real work for those who need it. Perhaps the teachers should do their part too, so that the daft will know that sucking the fat out of the abused body confers no health benefit at all, but increases the chance of an ignominious death.
It was in the age of the moderns, from the 18th century or so, that the meaning of 'standard' finally fell into the sense of 'a definite level of attainment or achievement'. No more knights keeping watch on the mountain heights, no more banners unfurled o'er all the world.
Tonight I was with family, and not for the first time, the talk drifted into the realms of a curious statistic that all present had cause to track out of interest. It was something to do with standards, in the latter, weaker sense.
In Atlantis, split the healers into two groups. For every hundred, take fifty into the first group and put fifty in the second group. Call the first group 'private healthcare' and the second 'public healthcare'. This is the Atlantean healing ministry. Now take all those who are ill and unwell, who suspect their bodies are failing and who are sick in the organic sense. Divide them, for every hundred, into twenty and eighty. Put the twenty into the first group, the eighty into the second group. Yes, this is true; in Atlantis, half the healers attend to one fifth of the unwell — this is the private sector. It follows therefore that the healers in the second group work four times as hard, normally for about half the pay (or less). The main consequence of this is that healers in public service often want to move to the private sector, where their quality of life will improve eightfold or more.
It is the same in the teaching ministry, although the pay differential is not that great. Rather, the independent fiefdoms of education may sometimes generate gross inequities. There are idle sods in some of those fields who cultivate and nurture a bare fraction of the crops that others do, but yet earn twice as much for their clever neglect of the more difficult crops.
It is this which makes me pessimistic for the future of Atlantean standards. An infamous study shows that whereas the mighty mercantile arm of Atlantis generates a whopping GDP on par with some more-established mercenary economies, her people's prosperity payload (PPP) is more akin to that of some of the poorer pirate 'nations'. Atlanteans are mostly poor; it takes them decades to pay off the burden of their 'public housing' which once was a beacon of hope in that island of the main. As my mother pointed out (and as I have mentioned before), her salary in days of yore would have bought six thousand bowls of noodles a month, of which she only needed sixty or fewer (since they were BIG bowls) — for me, her poor firstborn, my far larger salary would not have sufficed for a thousand, and those rather scanty unless concocted by the generous couple at the noodle stall in the old place.
Our money, it seems, is not up to the standard it used to be. And neither is the quality of our striving. What is the point, then, of throwing inferior money at superior problems? Most of us have already surrendered to economic temptation and fallen into the ways of the dark side. Just consider how many professionally unqualified scum are out there making easy pickings from people who want their flab surgically removed, while the poor and sick get treatment of a much lower level than they would otherwise have got from these greedy louts called aesthetic physicians.
Free market? 'Faugh!' I say. No market is free when the information symmetry and the level of intelligence (and greed) are so disparate. We should string the self-advertising, pocket-enhancing buggers up to dry, from the highest of our standards, and let real surgeons do real work for those who need it. Perhaps the teachers should do their part too, so that the daft will know that sucking the fat out of the abused body confers no health benefit at all, but increases the chance of an ignominious death.
Labels: Economics, Education, Healthcare, Standards, Stupidity
etched with acid at 1:42:00 am
3 Comments:
My parents are both "healers", haha. Though I must make a comment regarding the private sector here. My mother runs her own clinic, but that does not free her from her duty to other affairs of the medical world, such as "Standbys" and/or "Accident & Emergency" duty. Privately-run as it may be, it is not by any means an easy life. She is often sleep-deprived, tired, and hounded after by paranoid patients. (Of course, there are wonderful patients, too; I am not stereotyping the kinds of people you meet in this job)
I do not mean to insult anyone by ways of this comment; I merely wish to say that while life in the private sector may be more rewarding, in monetary terms, it is by not means an easy life. Yes, it has its benefits, but the job has its hardships too.
Why, then, you ask, does she continue to work in this sector? Well, as she once told me, it's not for the money; it's because she loves doing what she does, helping people, healing people. It's about the service, one could say, not about the money.
If only there were more people like that in the world, eh?
/Sorrows
Sorrows: *grin* within the private sector, there are further differentials, both in health and in education; think about it. Take my example: I moved from public to semi-private to fully-private, and I'm earning even less now in some ways! But I'm enjoying myself.
Yes, it most certainly ain't that homogeneous; if either of us assumed it to be so, that would be far too stereotypical of us / too much of a sweeping statement.
Eh, anyway, it's really about the service, isn't it? To quote something random I once read, it's a "helping people thing". Or in some cases, a "saving people thing". Lol.
/Sorrows
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