Poor making choices, or making poor choices?

A recent article reports on some results from surveying very poor people in Udaipur, where 65% of the men are underweight and more than half are anaemic. (The Economist April 28, 2007; http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_JDRDDQR.) The survey reveals that if these people spent less on cigarettes, alcohol, and festivals, they could eat 30% more.

To the Economist's writer, the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that the poor make bad choices. I think another conclusion is available and would evince more respect for the choices that the poor make. And I am not alone. I asked my wife, Lisa, what most folks would think about this survey. "That the poor make poor choices," she said. Then I asked her what she thought. "That they like a smoke, a cocktail, and a party, like anyone else" she replied. I think she's right.

A hungry man who buys cigarettes knows damned well that he could buy some rice instead. Does his choice, so long as it only directly affects him, not define what is good and useful?

This story reminds me of an argument that I make about bullfighting. Opponents of the spectacle ("art form," I would say) suppose that it is immoral to take an animal's life for "sport." Except when these opponents are vegetarians, they see a bright line between slaughter for bullfighting and slaughter for food. I tell them that they are grossly materialistic, because they will kill an animal to satisfy an appetite for meat, but they condemn killing it for loftier, aesthetic values.

But the busybodies always think they know what is valuable: Meat is valuable, even to a fat-assed consumer. The beauty of the bullfight is not valuable. Food is more valuable to the poor than are cocktails, parties, and tobacco, even though the poor prove by being hungry while smoking, drinking, and attending festivals that man does not live by bread alone.