exactly my point

How very interesting that Bitch. PhD is addressing the exact same argument I had with someone tonight - and I quote from her exquisite blog:

Children are not "goods." They are--are you sitting down? They are human beings. Actual members of society. Who, yes, happen to be in a dependent position. Nonetheless, inasmuch as they are members of society, they have a claim on society to help care for them in their dependence so that they do not starve....I am saying we have to deal with each other because refusing to do so is wrong, anti-social, anti-human. Everything else comes after that. Now, some of these issues are indeed economic ones. And it is totally cool to talk about the economics of children, the economics of families. It is important to do so, in fact. But boiling kids down to economics is wrong, just like it would be wrong to claim that society is a purely economic institution. There are human needs that are not all about the bottom line, and that is okay, and people should not have to choose between economic survival and their other human needs.

My argument actually revolved around the homeless, extending to the helpless (often one and the same), and finished up with children. Still, I was trying to make the same point: you cannot boil societal decisions that are often moral and ethical down to the bottom line on a spreadsheet. Yet, someone I am quite close to does just that, and it really puts a kink in our friendship.

I can't get past his insistence that some established board should have the right to determine medical treatment for certain groups (and by established board, he obviously means people who agree with him). For instance - and I pull from our lengthy conversation - people who knowingly put themselves in harm's way (by smoking, by riding a motorcycle without a helmet - perhaps for being born a dumb ass?) should not drain thousands of dollars of treatment away from more deserving people. Who qualifies as deserving, I'm not sure, as "Sam" is adamant that people, in possessing free will, are responsible for their lives, their choices, their outcomes. And because of free will, they cannot accuse society, television, parents, friends, mental issues, heavy narcotics, and/or stupidity for any mess they may find themselves in - they're responsible, so they should accept the blame.

As for medical treatment, what gives us the right to expect extraordinary measures? (My argument that too many people cannot afford practical medical care, much less extraordinary, and wouldn't it be great to expect decent medical care regardless of your need somehow supports his argument that we think only of ourselves and not the public good - I'm still working on that one.) We pour too much money into medical treatment for the elderly, for the incurably ill, for that one person rather than putting that same money into measures that would save dozens of people. But - and I think this is important - for those who have the money to burn, they are welcome to use their resources on those extraordinary measures.

So! Am I crazy or does this sound like an argument for fiscally-determined euthanasia? And didn't the Germans espouse something very similar when they started weeding out the "damaged" citizens of the Third Reich?

I'm tired, so I'm probably overreacting. And I know that I'm more likely to argue the emotional side of an issue than the - and again, I quote - rational side when I get into it with Sam. Still, there's something there that really bothers me, and I think Professor B managed to say it: we lose something essentially human when we start thinking of people as commodities.