Commodities may be defined as goods or services ready for exchange or trade within a market. Should healthcare,education, and some forms of cultural service be treated like other commodities in the free market? These are human services, but they are special and far different from many other regular human services. If not well managed and delivered, they may have serious and lasting effects for generations.
First, the healthcare or education service once received cannot be returned to the provider or exchanged for another one. Once the harm is done, it cannot be undone. A patient or a patient's family can sue a doctor, but the doctor cannot give back the health status (nor giving back life), the patient had before the damage. Similarly, misleading instructions or incorrect information from textbooks can harm generations of learners.
Second, healthcare and education have widespread and global consequences. They are completely different from getting a haircut, and even from buying a new house. Some diseases are contagious, and if a patient does not have good health coverage, and cannot afford a thorough treatment, the virus or bacteria can develop into a resistant strain, and become more harmful to many others. Similarly, the absence of education or a poor and substandard education system is often followed by the cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease --a cycle which may lead to slavery in one form or another.
What about culture?
Culture is a tricky term to define. It is inherent in one nation's life style, the foods and beverages its people eat, the ways they think, their social behaviors, and their expressions in literature, visual or performing arts, even in the manners they treat their ancestors or the dead, ect.
It is upsetting and also embarrassing to learn that nowadays in some places on earth there is an online service to help busy people to celebrate their parents' and ancestors' anniversaries. With money the child or grandchild can order online what kind of offerings s/he wants to have or display on the deceased's altar and tomb. The anniversary service providers are happy to do the weeding, cleaning, and decorating the tomb area, including putting candles into the candle holders, and burning the incense in the incense urn as long as such services are ordered and paid appropriately. What a convenience!
There are certain "commodities" that money cannot buy. Also history has proved that unfair distribution of social wealth and possession may lead to social discontent and upheaval. Needless to say, public safety (living and working environments), healthcare, education, and some cultural activities are among the areas which demand some law enforcement in order to maintain social justice, decency, stability and sustainability. Free market or laissez-faire does not mean money can control everything. If money controls everything, there will certainly be chaos and upheavals.
The role of politicians and policy makers is first and foremost to protect social justice and equal democracy, and to keep public security, health and education up to an acceptable standard. Governments must be responsible for a safe environment for their people to live in, and for fair and universal healthcare and education services to everybody in society. If incapable of accomplishing such responsibilities, what then is the government for?
