It seems that the flood has been receded. It is now somewhat safe to launch a slightly provocative quiz on the subject. Here it is.
Assume:
There are two types of area that has been submerged by flood in a city, X and Y. X is located in a riverbank and inhabited by low-income people, the ones who can only afford the cheaper almost-like-slum housing by the river. They get used to, and are better prepared to, annual flood. Yet, once the flood hit like this year, they have to face higher level of water, and danger, coming into their way. Despite little grumbling, they still can smile --as seen on TV.
Y area, on the other hand, has never been inundated, except this year. The population is relatively well-off people, middle class who can afford suburban housing in, supposedly, flood free residential area. By that, understandably it was really desperately shocking for them, unprepared as they were, to see the water swallowed their properties. When the shock ceased, they enraged, blamed the authority --any authority--, and some of them started to take legal action against the city government --as read in newspapers headlines.
Problem:
You are the city administrator in charge for rescue scheme. You are, however, only equipped with limited resources --personnels, money, boats, etc-- to be deployed, that doesn't allow you to cover both areas. Now, which area that you are going to intervene, X or Y?
To make things more complicated, your boss, the elected official, called you up. He wanted to make sure that the disaster would not obstruct his chance for running in the next election for his second term.
And your answer, please? And why?
The best answer will be awarded free coffee and cheesecake, specially prepared by Manager. She hates the flood, it reduces the cafe revenue.
p/s: This quiz is a modification of Amartya Sen's illustration on the problem of informational base for evaluative judgments and the theories of justice and social ethics, in his book Development as Freedom, page54-56.
Added
You may want to replace the flood with sharp rise of poverty level right after a massive economic crisis; people in X the chronic poor; people in Y new social climbers who just managed to escape the damned poverty line, --thanks for recent economic boom--, but are hardly too far away from it yet; and the call from your boss a democracy. And instead of a flood rescue plan, it's a poverty alleviation program.
Of course, the prize of a sensible answer will be increased accordingly. Perhaps, a ticket for Java Jazz would do, Manager?
social ethics | policy trade-off
OK, on the Java Jazz. At least they finally invite a good one: Joshua Redman. But then they make another mistake: Jamie Callum! This guy is terrible.
ReplyDeleteHalf of X and half of Y as reducing the degree of impact. Any kind of impact.
ReplyDeleteManager, Jamie Cullum, huh? :-). Joshua Redman's cool --and is even better without that stupid super expensive additional surcharge I guess.
ReplyDeleteAnymatters, I must say I'm bit startled with this "half and half" reply :-).
Talking about social justice, I think, dichotomy matters to the objects. Between X and Y; or within X and within Y. Considering economic proportion in development, half-half is a good call. The false dichotomy is that if we think that we, as the subjects, are either capitalists or marxists. It's a confusing mindset. Anyway, it's a good quiz for who's saving who.
ReplyDeletethere's a set of good photos and story from javajive about flood in capitalists area.
ReplyDeleteHmmm... probably half for the opinion leaders of X and Y, a quarter each. Some for my boss. The rest to fund a study to potentially-flooded areas like Amsterdam or cities with river transportation like Venice. And perhaps cities with large slum areas, like Rio in Brazil (it's near carnival time, isn't it?). Of course, I'll take my family too...
ReplyDeleteOh, this is, btw, to develop long-term, 5 year, plan.
When you're buying a motorcycle you need to know about bikes, but you also need to know about how to buy a bike, and that has nothing to do with engines and manufacturing. One important detail where a lot of people that purchase motorcycles go wrong is getting the right loan.
ReplyDelete