Health vs profit

How could people better cope if they were to become able to be aware of the effects they have on the systems that provide them with life stuff? No sign that is happening at this point, of course; but maybe worth contemplating briefly. Thinking not just of our individual contributions to the "carbon footprint" and global warming's effects, which seems to be getting lots of attention these days, along with awareness of limited supplies of petrochemicals for world fuel and materials.

Actually, the arena type now being puzzled over in this digression, is that of a different sort of systems responsibility awareness.

For one example, consider human health. Presumably, including your own. What if people got aware of the systems which provide for their health, discovering that making maximum business profit is sometimes likely to block the most effective products and services they need to live healthily? Looking only a little bit further than they do now, people might comprehend that it is "sick" people that pay for major medical intervention, instead of chronically "well" people. Business is much better in the medical system when there are lots of sick people, face it, facts are facts, call a spade a spade. (Sick is good because it makes business the most money, what fun.)

And, people tend to not work themselves out of a job; people need steady income to pay the bills, and so this guiding principle is probably not too deep in the subconscious of all the staff from top to bottom of the org charts. Corporate management would lose their jobs if they chose product paths that brought less profit even if it brought thankless better health to the customers as a result. Corporate bottom line is all the investors see, and corporate staff see too, as it affects their salaries.

So let's fantasize unrealistically for a moment and choose an integrated "bottom line" so as to involve a wider database, that of overall human health and optimum life functionality for the whole of the American people. And that bottom line optimization then reaches back up to to shake the corporations providing the products and services.

(Remember, I said let's "fantasize a moment"; don't get excited.)

So, with maximum healthy well-being for all the population being the criteria, instead of maximizing corporate profit, health protocols then come into their own. And finding that the so-called holistic practitioners, the "alternatives," provide much of the missing data of how to stay healthy; like a people used to driving their car until it fails somewhere and gets towed to the doctor for repair, then maintenance for optimum health becomes the criteria, instead of criteria of maximum income for the repair shops AKA medical businesses and their regulators. Instead of about money, it is about long term productive well-being, quite a shift. Could the corporations be guided through such a transition so no one suffers, and how? And, would it be too big a bruise of "free enterprise" profit guided political ego motives, to be allowed to happen?

Since it is the larger system that would benefit, in this case the American people, then it seems reasonable that they ought to finance the changeover since it is in their best interests. For example, the tax base could be temporarily used to continue salaries and investor profits of a given corporation, while its staffs are re-trained and equipment changed over to to provide the less profitable but far more healthy forms of well-being maintenance... consider it a wise investment. And once the investors realize in the larger picture that while their income will go down but their economical well-being healthiness will go up at far lower medical expense, and be content with the better overall result. A good deal is a good deal.

Is this all sheer fantasy? If so, only because of the special interest groups forcing things to stay the way they are. Change is risky, the familiar is more comfortable right now even if the resulting dead end is abundantly proven to be sooner and more painful.

I have personally seen and tested some very promising health preservation modalities and they do work for what they do; is an overall complex set of technologies and protocols, of course; but if the health of oneself and of loved ones of all Americans is the "bottom line" instead of quick corporate profit bottom lines, amazing wonders could happen, and fairly quickly too, I imagine.

And a healthier population would make better decisions, I hope, and be far more productive resulting in much greater GNP. Retirees would choose to work part time; even also choose some volunteer work in new fields interesting to them with their lifetimes of experiences. Winners, all. Yet, be aware, that is not the way we do things.

I fantasize. As usual, everybody is heading off in another direction from mine, follow the leader; ignoring this raving lunatic over here by himself. I have been here done that, lots of times. Enjoy!