Hi Platt, Lawrence, Marco, Gerhard and all,
I share Marco's aversion to valuing everything in monetary terms. There are
some things that money simply cannot buy, and some things money should not buy
To put it another way, the language of money is useful in relation to certain
aspects of certain things. However, it is immoral to use the language of money
in the mistaken belief that it truly represents the entire value of the thing
under consideration. This is misuse, or even abuse of a language to pervert
true quality.
I think this is exactly the same as Pirsig's ambivalence to writing a
metaphysics (as discussed in Lila). It seems that Pirsig considers it immoral
to use the language of metaphysics if one does so in the mistaken belief that
it fully encapsulates quality.
However, despite the dangers, we use these languages nevertheless because they
are useful. The language of money provides an extremely useful way of
assessing different choices and outcomes.
IMO it is morally legitimate to the language of money to rationalize the
choice of a moral outcome; however, there is nothing moral about using this
tool to support an immoral outcome.
Jonathan
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