KEY POINTS:
I don't suppose it will ever happen but I sometimes wonder if governments, politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, social agencies and others might one day wake up to the fact that the most serious problems we face as a nation can never be solved simply by throwing money at them; that the welfare of individuals and the community as a whole has never been and never will be simply a matter of dollars and cents; that there is much more to life than money, property and prestige.
I suppose it was inevitable that the rampant materialism which came with the early years of the economic revolution of the mid-1980s would corrupt our national psyche.
It has. We have largely turned into a mercenary bunch, yet the vaunted economic growth we are alleged to have achieved has aggravated rather than alleviated our most grievous social ills.
Which is why, even after eight years of Labour-led governments, there has been no improvement in, for instance, poverty levels, healthcare delivery, education, law and order, the dispensing of justice or home ownership.
In fact, in all those areas there is plenty of reason to believe that things have become worse.
Granted, unemployment is lower than it has ever been, but when you take into account the big jump in sickness beneficiaries and the vast increase in the number of public servants, you wonder just how many of the jobless have ended up in productive work.
And how many of those who have jobs are on wages so low that they barely exceed the dole, so that both parents and even their teenagers have to work to make ends meet - to the detriment of all.
Nothing better illustrates the bean-counting mentality that has led to this sad state of affairs than a statement made a month or so ago by the chairman of the Auckland District Health Board, Wayne Brown. He was quoted in this newspaper as saying: "We've brought very much a production-orientated approach to the running of the hospital. Making it like a big factory as much as we could. We've tried to remove the emotion, just run it as a productive unit."
Leaving aside that this statement proves beyond any doubt that Mr Brown really has no idea of what a hospital is, let alone how to run one, it raises a critical question: how do you remove emotion from a hospital - or any other part of the health system, for that matter?
Does this mean that those who run Auckland City Hospital have tried to get rid of mercy, compassion, commitment, dedication to duty, selflessness, generosity, fear, anxiety, grief, humour, gratitude?
Does it mean that patients are merely the raw material to be processed by the factory; physicians, surgeons, nurses and other health professionals merely automatons processing that raw material - while managers like Mr Brown dementedly do their damnedest to keep the cost per unit to a minimum while maximising production?
It must be - and it is an attitude that is hugely detrimental to our society because it treats us all as economic units and not as sentient, feeling human beings, every one different, every one unique and every one with something to contribute.
Don't you get sick of being blamed for just about all the bad things that happen these days - such as the high dollar and the rapidly deteriorating figures for home ownership?
We supposedly are to blame for the high dollar because we spend too much on real estate and don't save enough pennies to suit the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Minister of Finance, yet it's fiscal incompetence, prodigal government spending and increasing interest rates that are responsible.
We get the blame also for the move overseas of iconic firm Fisher & Paykel because we cost too much in wages, yet it is the greed of shareholders and avaricious investors that are responsible.
No one seems to give any thought to the fact that in all of this there are people involved - living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hard-working, hoping men and women - and that they are the richest resource we have.
Can you imagine the emotions that must be attacking the F&P workers, hundreds of whom face redundancy - the fear, the anxiety, the anger, the feeling of betrayal, the hopelessness?
Can you imagine the atmosphere in thousands of rural homes as the nation's farmers and all those who service them watch the bottom fall out of our overseas markets as bean-counters fiddle while our exports burn.
Until we begin to understand that the interests of people must come before the interests of profits, our intractable social problems will remain.
Meanwhile, Karl Marx will keep chortling in his grave.
