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Written by: Kamran Mofid

Published: 01 May 2012

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"Valuing only work that generates profit is not just wrong, it's inhuman"

Money is just a cargo cult, one that has been wrongly and wilfully elevated to the status of a pseudo-science

What is going on in this supposedly Western democracy? Whose values are the political and economic elites promoting?

…“Workers from abroad are recruited to care for the elderly, because our wealthy democracy "works" under the assumption that patience, care and kindness are not economically valuable activities. It is not only that this work is poorly paid. It is also that taking time out from one's own work to care for a child, or a sick relative, can result in a lifetime of economic punishment, too…The real trouble is that everything has been monetised and any other currency is systematically belittled. If labour is not specifically valuable in a financial marketplace – ie profitable – then it is labour without "real" value.

How did we get here? How did we get to the point where the most precious thing in life, our ability to look after each other, nurture our families, protect our vulnerable, came to be governed by a system that affords it so little worth, that treats it, actually, with contempt? One sees the ghastly consequences of this inversion of human value everywhere. Take education, where "cleverness" is valued, and academic success, with the career opportunities it brings, is the only real goal.

Ghastly. But what if you were to suggest schools should be on the look-out for kids whose gifts lie in being empathetic and kind, then nurture those wonderful qualities and reward them with respected qualifications that promised well-paid, secure careers? You'd be scorned by the left for besmirching the egalitarian principles of comprehensive education, and by the right for filling people's heads with nonsense about the financial viability of rewarding people for such plainly unprofitable skills as decency. In this important respect, the so-called "right" and the "so-called" left sustain each other…Humans have allowed money and its acquisition to over-run and conquer them. The rule of money is itself a dependency culture. Like all dependency cultures, it's an ever-tightening trap, and a con. All you need to do with money is give it velocity – keep it circulating though as many hands as possible, as quickly as possible, going round and round. All people really need to know is that there's more where it came from. Which there always will be, as long as no one breaks the circle by sitting on their profit instead of spending it.”…

Read more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/27/deborah-orr-only-profitable-work