Ebola, Food Security, and Public Surveillance
Since this blog previously remarked on how mass media uses clear double standards to judge whether a certain case is more worthy of coverage than another, the public's fear of an Ebola epidemic, despite news of optimistic recoveries and winning battles, has been continuing unabated. More and more stories of lone travelers landing in other parts of the world, bearing fevers and other, more mysterious symptoms, have only served to stoke repeated feel of crisis among the general populace. The sheer unpredictability of where the disease may land next have kept the public concerned in ways that exaggerate the lethality of the disease.
By a similar logic, people has been fearing a resurgence of food concerns in the recent months, at least in this part of the world. Imported cooking oils from Vietnam have been tested as unfit for human consumption in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, causing major, and previously beloved local processed food producers to subjects of criticisms and boycotts. Clear cases of either neglect in quality control or intentional prioritizing of short-term profits over long-term conscience, such food scares have demonstrated the same unpredictable damages to the public psyche in the similar ways as Ebola mentioned above.
The topics above, in causing public unease, shares one common phenomenon, and that is the role of the authorities' failures in preventing unchecked illicit behaviors of corporations and individuals. In both issues, precedence already exist that bore damaging consequences, yet authorities have not stepped up efforts to monitor other actors who could do the same thing. Passengers on transit not in 100% health should be quarantined based on previous occurrence of cross-border infections, and local FDAs ought to double-check origins of food imports after previous food-related disasters. Yet neither are really being done.
Of course, to ask the government to monitor every person that pass through airports, and every company that produces and imports foodstuffs for public consumption is an impossible task. Instead, what is needed in place is a mental mechanism for the public to enforce government rules on their own, based largely on the self-enforcing (and ultimately selfish) beliefs that such rules tend to produce tangible benefits for every single person in the community. The nonchalance with which the public take rules in place is the primary cause of disasters that could have largely been prevented had the public not reacted too late.
As the author found out in his recent trip to Singapore, such self-enforcing mentality is highly subliminal if correctly established. A case in point is the idea of smoking in the island country. On this side of the border, Malaysians tend not to care so much about where specifically to go for a smoke, as they know that even with no smoking rules in place, no one will ever really go unpunished and no one gets hurt in the process. Yet, in Singapore, people do automatically seek out designated smoking areas, not just for fear of financial penalties associated with being caught but for fear of ostracism by other members of the community.
The latter would prove much more powerful in something as dispersed and widespread as sources of bad foods and epidemic-carriers. Mutual surveillance by people, at least in open public spaces, and proper alarming of authorities for any behaviors considered abnormal and illegal, can provide strong normative foundation for public safety. This is of course true for catching criminal activities such as using selling foods not suitable for consumption, but also for deterring people for daring to commit anything illegal in the first place. Singapore serves as an admirable (albeit over-the-top) illustration of successful public surveillance.
However, despite its effectiveness, such public surveillance does indeed become costly for the public on many fronts. One is the trustworthiness of the actors. When reporting others, what is the intention of a person/company and should be the authorities trust such reporting as genuine? The food scare can be greatly exacerbated by food producers taking advantage of public sensitivities by highlighting their competitors' misdeeds in order to stay ahead in the market. Too much information coming from also sides can quickly overwhelm abilities of anyone to judge what is correct and what is not.
And lastly, and perhaps more importantly, surveillance is justifiably associated with erosion of personal freedom. In both the Singapore and the Dubai cases, wealth and glittering malls distracted the public from the need for things as small as buying gum and smoking freely to big ones like free speech and political assembly. This is something one would not miss until something goes awry in the society. To bear such costs all in the name of security is simply too Big Brother-esque and unacceptable as a fair trade in the mind of many people like the author who grew up in individualistic societies of the West.
By a similar logic, people has been fearing a resurgence of food concerns in the recent months, at least in this part of the world. Imported cooking oils from Vietnam have been tested as unfit for human consumption in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, causing major, and previously beloved local processed food producers to subjects of criticisms and boycotts. Clear cases of either neglect in quality control or intentional prioritizing of short-term profits over long-term conscience, such food scares have demonstrated the same unpredictable damages to the public psyche in the similar ways as Ebola mentioned above.
The topics above, in causing public unease, shares one common phenomenon, and that is the role of the authorities' failures in preventing unchecked illicit behaviors of corporations and individuals. In both issues, precedence already exist that bore damaging consequences, yet authorities have not stepped up efforts to monitor other actors who could do the same thing. Passengers on transit not in 100% health should be quarantined based on previous occurrence of cross-border infections, and local FDAs ought to double-check origins of food imports after previous food-related disasters. Yet neither are really being done.
Of course, to ask the government to monitor every person that pass through airports, and every company that produces and imports foodstuffs for public consumption is an impossible task. Instead, what is needed in place is a mental mechanism for the public to enforce government rules on their own, based largely on the self-enforcing (and ultimately selfish) beliefs that such rules tend to produce tangible benefits for every single person in the community. The nonchalance with which the public take rules in place is the primary cause of disasters that could have largely been prevented had the public not reacted too late.
As the author found out in his recent trip to Singapore, such self-enforcing mentality is highly subliminal if correctly established. A case in point is the idea of smoking in the island country. On this side of the border, Malaysians tend not to care so much about where specifically to go for a smoke, as they know that even with no smoking rules in place, no one will ever really go unpunished and no one gets hurt in the process. Yet, in Singapore, people do automatically seek out designated smoking areas, not just for fear of financial penalties associated with being caught but for fear of ostracism by other members of the community.
The latter would prove much more powerful in something as dispersed and widespread as sources of bad foods and epidemic-carriers. Mutual surveillance by people, at least in open public spaces, and proper alarming of authorities for any behaviors considered abnormal and illegal, can provide strong normative foundation for public safety. This is of course true for catching criminal activities such as using selling foods not suitable for consumption, but also for deterring people for daring to commit anything illegal in the first place. Singapore serves as an admirable (albeit over-the-top) illustration of successful public surveillance.
However, despite its effectiveness, such public surveillance does indeed become costly for the public on many fronts. One is the trustworthiness of the actors. When reporting others, what is the intention of a person/company and should be the authorities trust such reporting as genuine? The food scare can be greatly exacerbated by food producers taking advantage of public sensitivities by highlighting their competitors' misdeeds in order to stay ahead in the market. Too much information coming from also sides can quickly overwhelm abilities of anyone to judge what is correct and what is not.
And lastly, and perhaps more importantly, surveillance is justifiably associated with erosion of personal freedom. In both the Singapore and the Dubai cases, wealth and glittering malls distracted the public from the need for things as small as buying gum and smoking freely to big ones like free speech and political assembly. This is something one would not miss until something goes awry in the society. To bear such costs all in the name of security is simply too Big Brother-esque and unacceptable as a fair trade in the mind of many people like the author who grew up in individualistic societies of the West.
Comments
Post a Comment