Super-healing plants and stuff

Suppose, hypothetically, a medicinal plant is discovered on a remote island in the pacific that would cure any disease known to man. When ingested, all conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, would no longer exist. The plant is readily available and easy to grow to the extent that it became virtually free. This would undoubtedly be approved by all societies and considered one of the most remarkable discoveries in mankind.

While this discovery may seem certainly good, there’s another side to consider. The health care industry in the United States employs roughly 15 million people and is considered one of the highest growing industries. The new medicinal plant would be so effective that it will nearly eliminate the health care industry by 95% (not entirely assuming injuries and other conditions still occurred). Additionally, companies, such as Pfizer, would be completely out of business because there would not be any need to invent or manufacture drugs. Health insurance companies would become extinguished. Even the FDA would be reduced. In essence, we now have more than 15 million additional people unemployed.

Not good. This means the entire wealth of the country would drop, GDP would fall, and economic growth would falter.  We could clearly be worse economically.

The point to understand is that the well-being of individuals in a society may not correlate with economic success. In fact, in can be the exact opposite as in this case. What we consider as a “strong” nation actually means more sick and dying people. We really need to reassess what we value and organize our societies in such a manner.  The notion of creating jobs actually has no bearing if people are happy or not. This also can be said about the condition of the environment. The more people there are employed in health care the sicker we are. The question becomes why we are in an economic system that is counter to what we actually need to value and what we can do about it. It’s something to think about.