Saturday, June 13, 2009

Dimes and Punishment

There are different value systems. That which makes a work of art beautiful is aesthetic value. Ethical value informs good moral behavior. The so-called laws of supply-and-demand are said to regulate the value of goods.

Some people think that there is an underlying abstract "goodness" which crosses over from one value-system to another. In some ways I agree. My taste in music and my ability to determine what is "good" in a particular artistic style often informs my moral behavior.

The good in nursing practice consists of the same shadowy stuff as the good in a Lennon-McCartney song.

Having said that, there are of course problems in assigning capitalistic value to ethical, aesthetic, and other parameters of excellence or value. That perhaps is why capitalism cannot ever really work. It is in fact meaningless. Money is meaningless and in itself has no value. It's paper. It's numbers. It defies poetry. It is shit.

Precisely because it is itself worthless, incapable, and ugly; money is used as a medium of exchange.

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