Contributed by Dr. Thomas B. Singh, Lecturer in Economics, University of Guyana
Though churches, temples, mosques and NGOs abound in Guyana, we think little about matters of morality. Yet amidst the palpable moral barrenness (violence, crime, corruption, etc.) in our society, which manifests itself in suicide and net migration rates that are respectively at 4th and 9th in the world,1 there is the less obvious type of immorality that causes us to behave in a crassly self-interested manner especially in social dilemmas such as pollution, in which individual and collective interests are in perpetual tension. In a presentation made at the 2103 Walter Rodney Symposium titled “National Unity in Perspective: 750K People, Many Nations, and No Destiny?” I had made the point that violence, crime, corruption and other problems of an ethical nature clearly have become widespread and very much a part of our culture, giving even them the character of social dilemmas that require a solution in the public interest. The key to that solution is national unity, interpreted specifically as an ethic of cooperation in our society because the pervasiveness of these problems is indicative not just of private ethical lapses but of an ethically bankrupt culture.
Now, 48 years after independence, our only achievement might be a lot of ‘law,’ and even very modern laws to boot; but little justice and perhaps even less morality in our society. The idea of standards, legal or otherwise, bereft of considerations of ethics, is so alien even to an economist like me who readily embraces the power of impersonal markets, that I have been rendered speechless even on those matters that concern me professionally. Adam Smith, whose Theory of Moral Sentiments is less known than his Wealth of Nations, would have spoken already.
From among the important recent examples in the news, I pick the ones that are less obvious as having to do
