FEBRUARY 16 — I react to economists the way I do to venomous snakes ― backing away slowly.

If you had to read all the stupendously bad takes from economists in the media and on social media, you would relate.

No one has exemplified the possible threat economics-trained people can be than Yusuke Narita, a Yale economist professor who said, on TV: "I feel like the only solution is pretty clear... in the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?”

Economics as the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes it is a "social science that seeks to analyse and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.”

Those calling themselves economists now weigh in on every aspect of human living, from public health to education, not limiting themselves to just financial systems or that expected thing we call the economy.

When has the economy started mattering more than what drives it, and what it was supposed to serve: people?

If we were to throw out things such as ethics and human rights and dispassionately consider what we must do to keep "the economy” alive then things considered abhorrent such as forced euthanasia and child labour become permissible.

Two US states are already working on legislation that strips back child labour protections and Canada has been over-aggressively suggesting voluntary euthanasia to the vulnerable and disadvantaged instead of increasing welfare spending.

It is not an acceptable norm to consider the wealthy, young and healthy, and the powerful more deserving of life.

It is a sickness.

We are not in some apocalyptic scenario of "survival of the fittest.” No matter what the population myth propagandists try to espouse, for now the planet can still sustain humanity.

What is still evident, and was particularly evident during the pandemic, is the unequal distribution of wealth and resources.

When we assign more value to companies than communities, and value businesses over workers, it is not an acceptable state of affairs.

How have so many of us been persuaded that capitalist chiefs are more important than the people who keep us alive ― sanitation workers, infrastructure maintenance crews and health workers?

Now of course I know logically not all economists are libertarian misanthropes who need to be exiled to the nearest caves for the good of humanity.

What disturbs me most is that those who are get their voices and awful opinions magnified online.

Is it more important for us to know that there are these horrible opinions that seem to carry a lot of weight (especially among neoliberals and literal Nazis) or is it more important that free speech be defended even when that speech is an affront to basic humanity?

It keeps me up sometimes, the question of liberty and the problem of hate speech.

Yet who is truly qualified to play gatekeeper, to arbitrate between harmful opinions and non-harmful opinions?

The answer is one that is discomfiting ― that like it or not, there will have to be either polite disagreement or outright war, and whatever mess in between.

Vladimir Putin is of the opinion that he is right in invading Ukraine.

Most of the rest of the world disagree.

Despite the wars, injustices and atrocities in this world, I can only hold hope that so long as we exist there will be people who will stand up for those who need defending and to speak up against ideas that bring harm, or are, essentially, evil.

There is no good in suggesting we kill off our poor, our disabled, our old and infirm. There is only malice, couched in poisoned arguments, driven by selfishness and cloaked in the lie that it is for the common good.

Good would dictate that we all deserve to live and there is value in all life, that cannot and must not be monetised.

Reject a god, or choose a god. Just never let that god be money.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.