dam economy

The Dam Economy

    The village lay in the shadow of a huge dam. The dam had been built to supply water for irrigation, drinking, and fisheries. The villagers were quite happy with it, on the whole. But lately, cracks had begun appearing in the dam, and occasionally large chunks of dam came tumbling to earth. This made some people a little nervous.
    One day, several of the villagers went to visit the elders to ask them to repair the dam. The elders welcomed them warmly.
    "We came to talk about the dam," said one of the villagers.
    "Wonderful!" said the headman. "Isn't it a boon to our little village?"
    "Well, yes," said the villager, "but there's just one tiny thing bothering us."
    "Oh, dear," said the headman. "What could that be?"
    "It's all those cracks," said the villager.
    "That's more than one little thing," said the headman, not unhumorously.
    "Um, so it is," said the villager. "To get to the point, we're afraid the dam thing will collapse and kill us all."
    "That would be unfortunate," said the headman.
    "Ok," said the villager, "so let's get it fixed."
    "Can't do that," said the headman. "Too expensive."
    "Too expen-," sputtered the villager. "But what if the dam broke, and it destroyed all our crops. Which would be more expensive, the lost crops or fixing the dam now?"
    "The lost crops," said the headman.
    "And what if the dam broke and wiped out every structure in the village?" continued the villager. "Which would be more expensive, the property damage or fixing the dam now?"
    "Without a doubt, the property damage," said the headman.
    "And what if the dam broke and killed or injured hundreds of people?" asked the villager. "Which would be more expensive, the casualties or fixing the dam now?"
    "Um, fixing the dam," said the headman. "People are cheap."
    "How foolish of me," said the villager. "Look at it this way: cleaning up the corpses or fixing the dam?"
    "Ok, maybe a wash," said the headman.
    "So you'll fix the dam?"
    "No way," said the headman. "Too expensive."
    "But what will you do when the dam breaks?" cried the villager in frustration.
    "It might not," said the headman. "Why worry about something that hasn't happened yet, as opposed to my profits from the dam? And if it does break, we'll just leave the mess for someone else to clean up."

*******

    "So, what's your story about?"
    "It's about greedy, short-sighted people who are ... too greedy and short-sighted to fix this dam. But that's really a metaphor for the greedy, short-sighted corporations who keep producing dangerously defective products because it's 'too expensive' to make them safe. They figure in human death and misery as part of their cost-benefit analysis."
    "Why the dam, then?"
    "Well, it's a reductio ad absurdum, a reduction to the absurd. You show an obvious case in which everyone will immediately see the stupidity of the character who symbolizes the vicious corporations, and maybe then the readers will make the connection with the less obvious case of the corporations that wilfully refuse to fix their products."
    "Yeah, I understand all that, but you could choose a lot better metaphor than a leaky dam. Think about this: Suppose there's a large, prosperous country with a lot of nuclear power plants. Then imagine that the power plants are degenerating dangerously, but the owners refuse to fix them because it would be 'too expensive,' and the government goes right along with the nuclear power plant owners. That's a lot more absurd than your silly dam! What moron could fail to see the lunacy of that?"
    "Uh, yeah. There's just one thing ... Maybe you'd better sit down ..."