Persons as a Commodity
Many years ago, when I was still a university student studying Economics, I took an upper-level Public Finance course and came across the concept of “value of a human life”. At first blush, this seems sacrilegious, that one could try to put a value on human life. However, I found the concept intriguing.
The idea is that if each person’s life was truly of infinite value, we would treat it as such, and the fact is that we don’t. People drive too fast, take harmful drugs, smoke, and many other things which reveal that they don’t value their own life having infinite value. This includes those of us who profess Christ.
There are many ways that economists estimate the value of a human life, but back when I attended school, I recall that estimates of a human life were in the $250,000 - $1,000,000 range; today most values used by government agencies for things such as cost-benefit analysis put the value of your and my life at between $7.5 million and $10 million. Regardless of the value, we can be priced in the marketplace; we are a commodity.
An example of where this leads is never more obvious than in abortion. Many in our society place no value on the life of an unborn child, and you could argue that they actually consider the value to be negative, given that the child is considered to “intrude” upon the mother’s life. The child’s existence actually reduces the value of the mother’s life. The child is a commodity: something that was nonsaleable and did not (and should not) have a price, but is now saleable at some price.
That cost may be income lost through not having a full-time job because of child rearing, the general inconvenience brought on by having to take care of an infant, or loss of reputation in one’s community. As a result, you can eliminate this cost (i.e., price) by eliminating the source – the unborn child.
If you want another commodification of an unborn infant’s life, consider that an abortion costs anywhere from between $500 to $2,000+, depending on the type, gestational age, and other factors. Considering that a child can be bought and sold for that amount, he/she is not regarded as being worth much; certainly not the $7.5-$10 million estimate we noted, above.
We see a similar result with the practice of human trafficking. Worldwide, estimates of the value of a trafficked person average about $13,600, albeit with estimates ranging from $4,000 to as much as $50,000. Aside from the obvious issue of commodification of life, it is extremely sad that the value of a trafficked victim is hundreds of times lower than that of you or me. The examples of commodification go on and on, with prostitution, beauty, pornography, etc.
In the latest insult to our society’s perceived value of human life, our friends at Netflix® are airing a new series: He’s Expecting – When a successful ad executive who's got it all figured out becomes pregnant, he's forced to confront social inequities he'd never considered before. I can’t make this stuff up if I tried.
Netflix® obviously has its own rather transparent agenda and continues to show us that, just when we think it can stoop no lower, it rolls out yet more vapid content. That notwithstanding, a baby is once again shown to be a means to an end. A commodity to be used as an expedient route to push the LGBTQ agenda (and at the same time, insult mothers everywhere).
So, after all this, why does it matter so much if people are regarded as commodities? Very simply, because the core of who we are is eternal. As C.S. Lewis put it so eloquently:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
We may decide to smoke, drink too much, never see a doctor, or other ill-advised things. Humans do stupid things, there is no doubt, however the eternal lives within us. That’s why we are not worth $6,000 or $10 million. We may be a commodity in society’s eyes, but in the eyes of Him who gave us value, we are most definitely not a commodity. We are priceless.