41. What money can’t buy

This morning, on the day after only one of three policemen involved in the affair that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor, was charged, and not charged with her death but with endangering other apartment dwellers, people in Louisville and cities across the nation stepped up protests against police brutality. Breonna Taylor’s mother had already been awarded $12 million and the city had agreed to some police reforms. That money did not buy justice—or peace on the streets of Louisville or Portland.

Although the government has dished out billions of dollars to drug companies in hopes of getting a quick vaccine against Covid-19, it will take much more than money to make even a good vaccine effective in the world. The problems of manufacture and distribution will climb on the bigger problems of anti-vaxxers to make any kind of “herd immunity” a near-term impossibility. Looking back to the successful campaigns against smallpox and polio, it is broad public confidence and cooperation of national and international partners that made—and are still making in the case of polio—effective. It is also very important to note that Jonas Salk did not patent his polio vaccine. Edward R. Morrow interviewed its Salk and asked who owned the patent. “Well, the people, I would say,” said Salk in light of the millions of charitable donations raised by the March of Dimes that funded the vaccine’s research and field testing. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Billions of dollars are being spent to repair damages from today’s fires and hurricanes, but billions of dollars spent now cannot make up for years of mismanagement and neglect. The wrong-headed policy of stopping all fires has led to a huge buildup of forest fuels; the growth of housing in what is now called a wild and urban interface has put homes and people in fires’ natural paths. And the billions of dollars spent and still being spent in the global promotion of growth built on the use of fossil fuels over decades has helped alter the globe’s natural cycles with extraordinary temperatures, droughts, floods, and rising seas. 

Money cannot buy humility, respect for the world’s creatures, waters, trees, and savannahs, or the justice and fair treatment we owe each other as human beings in an interconnected world.

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