Inequality skews what money means to us all
Can money buy real value or happiness? (Humans have a value…, 14 June). Of course for an individual, money often can. But can prices spent in such market transactions enable us to measure these subjective outcomes? How far can GNP express the combined happiness or welfare of a society? The problem is not so much that some things cannot be bought – it is that inequality deprives market prices of any consistency as useful measures of subjective utility.
When economists calculate the monetary value of the economy, why do they ignore the discounting that should accompany diminishing marginal utility – where the second of anything gives us less satisfaction than the first, and the 10th cake or drink or car may even have negative worth? Surely another dollar to a billionaire cannot be counted in national accounts as having the same value as one to a starving pauper. But if so, should not inequality have a negative impact on calculations of the economy or of GNP?
Constance Lever-Tracy
Adelaide, South Australia
Time for social media to admit its recipe is wrong
It’s unlikely that any social media giant will admit that their online systems, by opening a Pandora’s box, have given the world’s meanest and most cynical a platform for their venom and untruths – as witnessed by the unctuous statement by the head of global policy management at Facebook that: “We are not in the news business. We are in the social media business” (7 June).
This is like a fast food franchise saying it’s not in the health business, it’s in the food business. But when a third of the US population feed on an easily available fat- and salt-heavy diet of processed food, so do a majority of social media followers feed on reprocessed and often fake news bites for their take on the world. This may not render them immediate harm, but over time a daily diet of anything harmful will.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Scientists must act now to combat threats to Earth
A 4C rise – this is how the future would look (31 May) paints a picture of catastrophic living conditions in many of the Earth’s currently habitable regions by the year 2100. Is it possible that climate change will be the mechanism that will confirm Thomas Malthus’s prognostication of 200 years ago? His thesis is indisputable; the demand for resources and the environment will precipitate a crisis. He thought it would take the form of global war or famine, but he was writing before we had developed the technologies that demand ever-increasing supplies of energy to support lifestyles undreamed of in his day.
If we keep on multiplying, one form of disaster or another will occur; the only doubtful thing is how soon. We have endless campaigns to stop climate change, pollution, desertification, loss of species, while completely ignoring the problem of population growth. That’s why they will remain endless.
David Barker
Bunbury, Western Australia
Royalty may rock in UK, but not in Australia
As an Australian subscriber, I glanced at your 21 June coverline (How Britain’s royals killed republicanism) and confess I got cranky, jumping to the wrong conclusion that you were talking about us.
Sorry, you weren’t, but let my voice ring out that after almost 250 years of Cook’s clever mapping of our east coast, I think Australia, with our own and venerable past, can and should respectfully come of age and “go republic”.
We have what it takes as much as any country or family, and at least any mistakes will be our own – from which we will no doubt learn and flourish.
Merrin Maple-Brown
Balmain East, New South Wales, Australia
Age has never been an obstacle to protest
The Spotlight section of 21 June features the Hong Kong protest marches (A new generation finds its voice) and quotes 75-year-old Mr Wu, said to be “marching despite his age”. It is suspected that a good proportion of your readers are older, regarding ourselves as physically and mentally capable of making us seen and heard when necessary.
Eighty-five, if not 95, is the new 75. Enough of the ageism.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
