SOCIAL DILEMMA

How a Virus Unmasked Modern Day Slavery

The coronavirus pandemic sparked a philanthropic outpour as the world's elite splurged funds to help humanity

Bill and Melinda Gates, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and many others have donated staggering amounts of money to alleviate the suffering caused by the Covid-19 crisis.

Their generosity attracted much praise, and well deserved too.

That said, this pandemic has unveiled a profound social imbalance. The divide between the rich and poor in society.

Are we failing as a society?

Master And Slave

Consider for a moment whether you or not you would agree to be a slave. Pause there for a minute.

Now, let’s play a game.

If a kind benefactor offered you a high standard of living beyond your own, or one that you can ever aspire to, and promises to treat you exceptionally well, with respect. Would you accept it?

Oh, there is one thing, a condition, which is that this friendly benefactor would own you.

Would you accept the offer? Yes or No?

I can almost feel your eyes reading those words in horror. Discomfort.

My intuition tells me that you would not accept this. Slavery is wrong. Period. Right?

But why? Do we understand it?

Unmasked

The images we conjure up in our mind's eye when we think of slavery is one of cruelty. We repel it. Exploitation is inhumane.

This is not at the core of what’s wrong with ownership of another being, another human. If this was the case we’d all accept the generous offer I described above and move on, ignorantly happy.

The real problem is that it’s grounded in social structures and relationships. Fuck it, it boils down to a distribution of power.

Yes, power!

Just one word.

Philosophers think of freedom as the absence of interference. Certainly, the absence of arbitrary interference, or domination.

Slavery is depicted as cruel or exploitative, which is not the case today.

There is one similarity. That is the slave-owner has the capacity to interfere with choice and do so at will.

Are you a slave? A well-treated slave?

Admittedly, enviable compared to abused slaves, but many of us have no control over our owner’s power to interfere with our choices.

This is what it means to be dominated. This is the core of slavery.

So who are the masters of the masses?

• Governments
• Employers

Can you see it?

Freedom

Even if an owner is genuinely-caring, slaves are aware that choice is based on their master’s permission.

So as a species, if we're concerned about domination, then shouldn't we be worried about billionaire philanthropists.

In a crisis, this is all too acute, as it leaves matters of life and death at the discretion of a handful of powerful people. Many of whom lack constraints over their power other than their conscience. Their choice.

The fact is, freedom is threatened when such a divide exists, the imbalance of power and wealth are miles apart and it's widening.

This raises the question — Is it healthy that millions of people must depend on the generosity of billionaires to survive?

Cartel

Make no mistake about it, the provision of healthcare for billions of people rests on the goodwill of others.

They choose when, how, where, and what to give. And who gets it. They form charities, organizations with huge influence over public bodies. You could say they dominate them.

“In 2008 the WHO’s head of malaria research, Aarata Kochi, accused a Gates Foundation ‘cartel’ of suppressing diversity of scientific opinion, claiming the organization was ‘accountable to no-one other than itself” (Newint.org).

Pandemic

The pandemic has laid bare the raw power of each nation over its inhabitants. Millions have been forced into lockdown, quarantine, and isolation. We minimize this arbitrary power in our minds, with respect to the rule of law in a democratic state.

Yet we're less concerned about private, individual or organizational power. The truth is, lots of organizations are more powerful than many nations, yet lack accountability.

Millions of people must now rely on the generosity of philanthropists. Illustrating how wide the gulf between the obscenely rich and the extremely poor is. And the lack of freedom.

This is by no means trivial if power can decide who lives and dies.

That said, I’m certain that most billionaires have good intentions, but it's irrelevant if we analyze the distribution of power among humans.

Final Thoughts

If anyone can hold the power to interfere in the choice of others, then we are not free. The motive doesn’t matter, even if they choose not to interfere. It's about capacity, the ability to interfere at will.

It’s wonderful that the world has so many billionaire philanthropists. This is true, but it falls short of what society needs. Power cannot be beyond scrutiny.

When the pandemic has passed, we should take stock and ask why so many lives depended upon the choices of billionaire care-funders.

Is this moral progress or is our moral compass defective?