The Shocking Secret of Tuna!

The Shocking Secret of Tuna!

Food from the sea - it is something mankind has taken for granted for thousands of years. He has set out in small boats to cast nets into the cold deep waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans; into the Caspian, Black and Red Seas and countless other named bodies of salt water. Men have stood on sandy shores spreading nets in tidal surf hoping to drag protein out into the atmosphere where it could be dried in the sun's rays and sold or eaten directly to sustain human civilization.

Large boats troll the deep waters of the North Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea pulling tuna and other species of aquatic life out of its biosphere into ours. Even as the populations of fish decline in consequence to extensive fishing, changing water chemistry and additional heat from the sun, massive factory ships continue their mechanized reaping of the sea. Men begrudge the limits placed upon them by international regulation that cause them a loss of livelihood. They cannot fathom the reality of voluntarily not earning their living in order to allow what remaining fish populations to recover. This is especially when the recovery period may be longer than their remaining lifetimes and maybe a whole next generation, if ever.

Tuna is but one species of fish to represent all fish species. It is but one link in the network of who eats whom. No population of fish nor population of Man exists in isolation. So goes one population, so goes the others. We need to find the equilibrium. Over fishing is not just a commercial imperative, it is a biological imperative. Existing populations of Man need to eat. It is not like we are stockpiling fish bodies for the future. Fish is a highly degradable commodity that must be consumed quickly. Likewise it must be bought and sold quickly if losses are not to be incurred. This is where Tuna! as a metaphor arises.

Tuna is not merely a species of fish, nor is it merely a fictional town in Pennsylvania, Greater Tuna, where seriously goofy people live. Tuna is the metaphor for how we buy and sell everything without consideration of its intrinsic value nor any of the negative consequences the commerce brings. "It's All Tuna!" is the book title that describes this metaphorical nature of tuna.

People want and need drugs to stabilize their health and live happier. In the beginning, chemists sought to take on the maladies of human disease and find cures to make it possible. Ingenuous men mixed beneficial and toxic substances it hopes of finding that elusive cure to soothe the human spirit and heal its body. On the beneficial side he discovered anesthesia that made life saving surgeries possible. Somewhere along the development line he discovered that he did not need to cure the patient if he could merely soothe the symptoms. Somewhere along that development line he discovered that making a daily dose that sells for $1.00 would generate $1B a year if only 2.75 million people would take it. And if 27.5 million people took the daily dose, they would make $10B per year. A lot or people benefit from buying and selling the drugs not using them.

Crime must be punished. But must the act be a crime? We incarcerate 2 millions people in the United States. Although that amounts to only 0.67% of the population it costs over $40 billion to house them each year. Many jurisdictions have moved to privatize this function making it a profit-motivated enterprise. Now add it the interdiction functions, the prosecution, the judgeship and the defense lawyers and you have a hugely profitable enterprise.

The Governor runs on a platform of being tough of crime. The Legislature measures its performance with laws that make the streets safe for our wives 1 and children. They together create the raw materials for their enterprises - a crop of perpetrators who need to be caged. They make sure that certain activities remain illegal and highly profitable. The they buy and sell the human cargo that they hooked and yanked out of the metaphorical sea to be harvested and warehoused until they no longer create income for the system.

There are many other example of how this economy makes tuna. The shocking secret of tuna is that WE are the tuna. Humans and human needs are bought and sold on the open market so that merchants can make a profit on us. No investor ever put up his money so you or anyone else could borrow it to buy a house and make a home for the comfort of his/her family. He did it to make a few percentage points on the principle. Then he sells the mortgage to someone else so both of them can make their profits. No fisherman ever figured that the tuna or the sword or the pike or the cod needed to live on in a happy existence. It was there for the buying and selling.

1 Could equally be a husband or significant other just as well.