As if people mattered

When someone talks about governance with metta, I felt a bit uneasy. Jealous perhaps—why should cronies for example get metta as a bonus when they took everything and got everything? But, I guess, a share of metta is unlike a share of the pie. Here everyone gets the whole of it and it will be something like the realization of win-win and level playing field dreams.

Before being rudely awakened from the day dream like the young glass-ware hawker of “building a brick house in the air” when he has just kicked his basket in his sleep and broken all his glass, I felt I should look for and try to understand some venture a bit modest. In no way it's a rejection of the metta idea, or was I taken somewhat aback by the lofty implications—rather, an inspiration to think about some humble building blocks for it.

Project-gurus warned us of the folly of setting up our objectives as the negation of current undesirable conditions. Yet that is exactly what we may like to do in this situation. First, just heap everyone or every groups we would like to deny—cronies and others and get their negation—the people. Then do everything “... as if people mattered”.

Obviously that is not so easy! Yet people has been thinking along this line for considerable time in the past. Personally this phrase has been laying dormant in my heart for a long time … . And yet I've never bothered to look up on it!

I don't know if it fits, but now I am hearing these lines from a Pulitzer winning poet:

Bad penny pendulum

You kept my constant time

To bob in blue July

Where gold finches fly

Over the glittering fecund reach of our growing land

Once more now, this second

I hold you in my hands

Well, you would have guessed that you in my mind's eye is no other than “as if people mattered”.

As last minute check I did look up that phrase on the web and the first result from Google gave all 10 entries on Shumacher's “Small is Beautiful” except the one on “Teaching Economics As If People Mattered”. What a surprise! I have completely forgotten that Sumacher's book carry the sub-heading “Economic as if People Mattered”!

The beauty of search engines is that they return short descriptions relating to what you are looking for and most of the time they are relevant and quite illuminating even for someone completely new to the subject. The second page of results for my search on “as if people mattered” gives:

• TechnoScience as if People Mattered
• Small is Beautiful
• Housing as if People Mattered
• Programming as if People Mattered
• Global Politics as if People Mattered
• Smart is Beautiful: low carbon cities as if people mattered
• Distributism: Economics as if People Mattered
• Law Reform as if People Mattered

To me it seems all of them could be useful to us now, some of them more urgent than others. Indeed, as we have so much to work on to straighten our society and our endowments, it would not be an exaggeration to think that everything you find with aiming for “... as if people mattered” will be desirable and applicable, may be with some prioritization thrown in.

The third page of results carries:

• Letters: Alternative economics – as if people mattered
• Economic Development as if People Mattered

Here, the entry on the description of the first bullet Political economy can be thought of, in EF Schumacher's phrase, as "economics as if people mattered" that appeared in the Guardian caught my eye. Well, the first and last thing I'd read about political economy was one on Burma by Furnival a long time ago and now completely forgotten. Until now it was a mystery to me why my Myanmar friend in Down Under has changed his specialization from agricultural economics to political economy. Now I can see his reason: he must have taken the vow afresh to practice economics as if people mattered! Please allow my respect and admiration for you, my friend.

And if you go on with your search results you are sure to find something that you are specifically interested in, such as these and more from about three million results Google could find.

• Writing about art as if people mattered
• Urban planning as if people mattered
• Housing as if people mattered
• Economic History as if People Mattered
• Capitalism: An economy as if people mattered
• Green Building Design as if People Mattered
• Employment Law as if People Mattered
• Social Business: Business as if People Mattered

The following result appeared on page-6 and it is of special significance to me because I have a friend running a local research unit who is obsessed with making government budgets fit people's needs:

• Budgets as if People Mattered.

Well, my findings here are surely amateurish and could even be dismissed as nothing more than sneers at the politicians, professionals, bureaucrats, cronies and others. At the same time adversaries to “as if people mattered” may already have antidotes and tricks up their sleeves. Beware.

Well, to my dumb fellows I say: you are (close to being) delivered; go and multiply!