The Suffering Tax - A Philosopher's Take

Hokay- so...

I've been having this beautiful argument with a fella who supports the use of Pigovian Tax in determining how to account for societal pain and suffering caused by the individualistic use of products or actions that cause human suffering or societal/environmental damage.

Pigovian Tax system is the direct translation of pain/suffering/damage into monetary reimbursement, either to an individual or to the state, or what have you. Taxes on cigarettes, high emission vehicles, etc.

Now, to be clear, I don't think this system is something we can afford to get rid of at this time. We have no means of replacing psychological/physical health, happiness, or environmental stability. As such, we have to do something in terms of reparations and retribution. In lieu of a better, more human system, handing out money like candy isn't the worst backup plan.

With that said, holy crap, the concept of estimating such subjective values and diminishing their worth to mere dollars and cents is one of the most arrogant and flawed concepts I could ever begin to think of. (Fun story, I actually tried to do this junior year of college)

First off; your money to happiness ratio caps out at $75,000. Like... You can't buy happiness after that point. Your basic human needs and highest human wants have more or less been met. After that point, it comes down to experiences, psychological state, relationships, health and well-being.

You can't reduce a mental health issue like depression to a monetary figure. By the virtue of being an element of human experience, each person will go through it differently, each person would pay a different amount to be rid of it, and each person will have a different level of permanent impairment as a result of it; and this is true with any mental or physical disorder of any kind.

And yet, everyone thinks that they can throw a number at it to make the problem go away.



Now, I'd like to pause here to reinforce the purpose of this post and my intent here. I do not believe that philosophy has the appropriate resources to actually solve problems. I believe it can offer some guidance and underlying logic/principles to our thoughts, but it cannot actually address most of the more complex questions in life. Instead, it offers perspective.
I have taken this to mean that the place of philosophy is to halt movement in any direction, and to get those moving to re-evaluate where they are, the direction they're headed, and how they're doing it. Philosophy offers criticism, because nothing is without fault. (One of the many criticisms of philosophy being that we're useless without a bunch of practical people around to actually act.)

If, at any point, we forget why any idea or movement is problematic in its own right, we start to neglect the problems; we forge ahead, reinforcing the status quo.
In this case, the longer we go forward without challenging this Pigovian Taxation notion, the more ingrained it becomes in society that money is a universal language, capable of being translated into experiences, potentiality, health, relationships, and happiness.
Even if it's the only system we have to go by, we have to stop it and remind ourselves of how woefully inadequate it is at addressing the problems it attempts to address.

Moreover, our entire society is predicated on the idea that money is happiness, despite studies like the famous one I referenced earlier. This, along with other factors that reinforce materialism, function as a positive feedback loop in on the status quo. Money drives our thoughts and actions, so we set out to make more money, at which point we are convinced we don't have enough, so we work even harder; a never-ending ladder into the universe. When everyone who's successful is someone who has money, they're the ones who are in the spotlight, making them the people we try to model our lives after. So, our only conceptions of success and happiness revolve around physical currency. As a result, that's the only model we pursue, thus reinforcing the cultural status quo.

Even if it's the best system we have to go by currently, it's a spiraling system that will eventually implode in on itself when it reaches a critical threshold of suffering caused. Unfortunately, that's some time away, and will take an exorbitant amount of work to correct once it has gotten that bad. Hence, my attempt to give pause to the practice and at least re-indicate the unsustainable nature of the beast.

Life. She is complicated.

-Waddles