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Tsunami and the Left's Disdain for Human Life

Luis Figueroa - 1/28/2005

In a bathroom at a restaurant in Antigua, Guatemala, [1] there is a graffiti that says: "All capitalists should burn to death!"; in the bottom, someone else added: "So much for socialist compassion". Years ago I read that the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), whose purpose is to protect animals and their rights, threatens with acts of intimidation and terrorism restaurants, laboratories and activities that they consider harmful to their protégés. [2]

Those who love mankind and nature -but hate humans- never cease to surprise me. They are always capable of outdoing themselves. Proof can be found in a report on the recent tsunami´s effects by Associated Press, published on January 7, 2005. [3]

According to the report, Greg Ferrando glistened with sweat and sea water as he went for a barefoot jog up the immaculate white sand beach, where the tsunami has wiped away almost all signs of humanity, said: "This whole area was littered with commercialism, there were hundreds of beach chairs out here. I prefer the sand. It looks much better now."

Phanomphon Thammachartniyom, president of the Phuket Professional Guide Association, said: "Nature has returned nature to us. I want it to be this way forever." Prime Minister of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra said: "The tsunami swept away unplanned and possibly illegal building, creating an opportunity to regulate growth." Moriel Avital, said: "Paradise should be paradise and should not become this civilized."

Can you believe it?! More than 150,000 dead human beings, and the lovers of the sand and the waves are having a blast! Maybe that is what Adam Smith meant when he wrote: "A stupid insensibility to the events of human life necessarily extinguishes all that keen and earnest attention to the property of our own conduct, which constitutes the essence of virtue". [4]

A friend who showed me the report said: "If people really wanted to help those afflicted by the tsunami, they should invest in those beaches and build hotels that attract tourists and the dollars they spend".

By the beginning of December, 2004, in Guatemalan newspapers appeared a couple of articles in which the authors tried to make us believe that if consumers buy cheap, consumers prejudice the quality of life of producers and their employees. [5] This additional example of love for mankind, and hate for humans, pretends to make believe that if we buy expensive, then we benefit others better.

Stories like that are so old that Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote the essay "The Broken Window" to prove that destruction does not bring prosperity. Stories like that are so old that the law of costs of opportunity (contemporary to the law of gravity) explains us that the cost of buying expensive is the excessive value payed for goods and services that we could have obtained with less resources. And that if we do it -if we pay a high price what we could have bought for less- there is a big loss.

Now, back to the commentaries of the beginning of these meditations, do you know which one gave me a bad nausea-like feeling? The one that said that "paradise should not become this civilized". It seems to me that it is very inhuman the pretension that some people should remain in poverty and at the margins of civilization, just because others want to enjoy the waves and the beach. It seems criminal, to me, that some people should not be allowed to find a job, just because others do not like what they can get.

Attitudes like such are not love for nature and the human species; but disdain for them - and for life itself.