Ethics over metrics: A Marysville writer's case for valuing people

Ron Friesen, a Marysville resident and retired music teacher, argues in a recent essay that prioritizing measurable efficiency over human needs has undercut public trust in religion, capitalism and representative government. He writes that he cringes when he hears the word metrics because, he says, the problems facing the country call for more ethics rather than more measurement.

Friesen contends that government should serve citizens before corporations. He writes that companies receive large tax breaks while schools lack funding, and that this arrangement serves corporations first and people second. He also argues that taking money is permissible as long as it is legal, and that the people who write the laws make such taking legal, citing the healthcare system as an example of a legal but unethical arrangement.

He connects his argument to specific cases. Friesen writes that Boeing's experience with its MAX airplanes shows that efficiency is not ethical when people's safety is compromised. He also writes that school systems focused on reading and math metrics do not promote critical social and life skills, and that healthcare systems built around efficiency can produce unethical treatment of people in medical need.

Friesen traces his concern about metrics to a broader argument about human value. He writes that Christianity, Islam and Judaism rest on a belief in human depravity rather than an understanding of each person's value, and that this belief leads to destructive extremist beliefs. He argues that a capitalism based on valuing people rather than using them for personal gain would address what he describes as the capitalism problem.

Friesen writes that government must protect citizens from corporate greed driven by metrics rather than ethics, and that a representative government recognizing people first and corporations second would solve government problems. He also writes that the founding fathers intended the country to change by listening to the people rather than suffering ruination before rebuilding, and points to the Civil War, the two world wars and the Great Depression as periods that shook the nation's foundations before recovery and improvement followed.

He writes that metrics can help determine whether outcomes are ethical, but that tying metrics to efficiency drives corporate thinking into ethical quicksand. Friesen argues that putting ethics first puts everyone's value first, and that this is rarely the most efficient way to do things but the right way to do things if people are valued more than metrics. He closes by writing that metrics puts people in their place, and that metrics must be put in its place.

Friesen describes himself as committed to community improvement. He is a community and church musician.