When I think of the resources (including doctors and their paths through medical school) allocated to purely cosmetic surgery (I don't mean for something more serious like a burn victim with major disfigurement) and servicing human vanity in general (like dentists now focusing on teeth whitening above all other aspects of actually necessary dentistry) ... I wonder what other more pressing medical problems could've been solved with these same resources having been allocated more rationally and logically, and any deviation from that more rational allocation being prohibited by law
There's a baseline amount of collective narcissim and obliviousness society has to have to say, inaccurately, that servicing vanity comes without any cost to society ... that same collective narcissim and obliviousness of course manifests in multiple fronts in society, so the vanity issue is far from unique and far from the only drag on civilization
