Theories of Government, Part VI: What Do the Democrats Believe?

What unites the Democratic party is not obvious. Previously, I said only that they cannot be thought of as ‘socialists-light,’ as might be tempting, for this implies that the Democrats desire government solutions, which they do not. A better analysis is that Democrats are willing to use government as a way to make its citizen’s lives better.

To both the religious and economic conservative, the above statement is offensive. Religious conservatives see government and religion as engaged in a fundamental war for hearts and minds; we must either believe that religion can improve people’s lives, or that the government can. For the life of me, I do not see why this is an “either/or” thing. I believe strongly that local, personalized, religiously-based solutions are a better way to improve people’s lives than any government solution can be, when those solutions are available.

The problem, of course, is that those solutions are not always available. For example, in the health care debate, there were a few town-hall type debates where cancer patients who had been kicked off of their insurance publically asked Republicans leaders (Cantor and Boehner, as I recall), “What am I supposed to do now?” The answer was that “You should see what private charity/church resources are available.” So does Boehner expect us to believe that some local church is going to pay tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs as some kind of ministry to a single person? I’ve been to a lot of churches in my life, but I’ve never been around one that had an extra $100,000 lying around to help someone with their medical bills.

A similar analysis is available in the case of the free market. Free market solutions to problems are preferable when those solutions are available. But consider the above case. I consider it morally reprehensible that rescission (canceling someone’s insurance policy) is a legal option for insurance companies (rescission is appropriate when the person intentionally committed fraud on his application. However, the practice of rescission, before yesterday, occurred sometimes even when there was no fraud). Let’s assume that rescission is a problem (you’re free to disagree with me about this, but I am also free to think of you as a horrible person): is there a free market solution for rescission? No, there is not. Insurance companies are not going to keep sick people on their roles out of the goodness of their hearts. If they can legally dump someone, they are going to; furthermore, they are acting appropriately, for their only job is to make as much money as possible within the parameters of the law. The government’s job is to change laws when those laws don’t make a damn bit of sense.

Theories of Government, Part V: What do the Republicans Believe?

If the socialists believe in complete government control of the economy (and society, in the case of Communists), and true libertarians believe in a severely limited role for government, then what do the Republicans believe? It is tempting to say that the Republicans are libertarians-light, as I suggested in the first post in this series; that is, they basically have a ‘small government’ philosophy, but are more tempered about it. I no longer believe that this is true.

A better summary of the Republican philosophy is something like this: “We believe in small government, except for when we don’t.” For example, they believe in small government except when they tried to defeat health care reform by arguing that it would cut Medicare (I thought they hated Medicare?). Or take warrant-less wire-tapping. I am fine, as any normal person should be, with warranted wiretapping (let’s get those terrorists!). But warrant-less wiretapping means that the executive branch spies on any citizen it wants too, for any reason whatsoever, without having to explain those reasons to the legislative or judicial branches. All Republicans I know supported this, although it’s hard to imagine how the government could get any bigger and more intrusive than that.

Or some other philosophy busters: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the proposed federal amendment banning gay marriage, the jaw-dropping expansion of the federal deficit under Reagan and both Bushes (it declined slightly under Carter and actually turned in a surplus under Clinton), and a highly-desired federal amendment to ban abortion (not a state-by-state law, as it was before Roe).

We could multiply examples, but my point is that the idea that a ‘small government’ philosophy guides the GOP’s policy positions just flatly contradicts history. The truth is that, in the end, I have more respect for the strict libertarian. It’s just ridiculously frustrating to talk to a Republican, because they just keep making up the rules as they go along. For example, it was a complete waste of time to try to talk to a Republican during the heath-care debate, because as I alluded to before, they just kept saying how health care reform would cut Medicare. The libertarian, on the other hand, believes in principles, and it is possible to have a fruitful discussion about principles, even if those principle are, as I tried to argue last week, unrealistic.

Four Theories of Government, IV: When Freedom Fails

The truth is that there has never been a vibrant economy that it not managed to some degree by the federal government. By ‘manage’ I do not mean that the government controls the market in a rigorous sense, but that the government guides the market. But why does the free market need a guide? Because it is blind. The market is good at generating wealth, but generating wealth can be a dangerous thing if it is not done carefully. Somebody outside of the market has to look out for the market’s impact on the environment (eg: the feds forbidding companies from saving money by dumping chemicals into the river), for individuals who are exploited (eg: credit card contracts with impossible to read legal language for the purpose of tricking you), or for the free market creating inflation or deflation (eg: the Federal Reserve’s task of manipulating the interest rate).

It might seem that I have contradicted myself. I said that the market should be free, but also that it should be guided. How can something be free and guided at the same time? It is like an individual. An individual is free for the most part, but there are some actions that the government has told me that I cannot do. For instance, I am not free to drink and drive. Is this restriction on my freedom justified? Yes, because studies have shown that this particular restriction on my freedom is a good thing for society as a whole.

Fast forward to bailouts of 2008; most people hated them, and many think they never should have happened. First, they were terribly unfair because they saved already rich individuals who had acted stupidly or dishonestly, while many honest middle class people lost their jobs. Second, they were an infringement on freedom, because the federal government took away our private property (in the form of tax dollars) and gave it to people who we really didn’t like very much.

So what if ‘most people’ had their way, and the bailouts had never happened? Well, we would certainly be more free, and isn’t that a good thing? I say ‘no.’ Every reputable economist from the right and left was convinced that the failure of all the major banks would usher in a Second Great Depression that would have no foreseeable ending. Little House on the Prairie was a great book series, but I have no desire to live like that; not having enough to drink, watching my children die of curable diseases, freezing my butt off in the winter. The point is this: what good is freedom if we are all eating out of garbage cans?

If the bailouts had been orchestrated by a Democratic administration, can you imagine what Fox News and Rush Limbaugh would have said? “See, the Democrats’ secret plot to turn us all into socialists has finally come to fruition!” But in fact, they were done by the Bush Administration. But why? Was the Bush Administration part of some secret Commi plot? No, they were not. Here is the gist of what really happened:

Economic Advisors: “Ummm, sir, we’re going to have to give $700 billion tax payer dollars to private banks”

Bush: “But wait, I’m a free market guy who doesn’t believe that the government should do that. In fact, I wrote this really nice essay in college about how taxes are bad and that the government should let institutions fail that cannot make it on their own.”

EA: “Yeah, that theory sounds nice on paper, but unless you want to be remembered as the president who ushered in the Second Great Depression, we have got to do this”

Bush: “Well, OK…”

Last week I highlighted the fact that every society already limits individual freedom in the form of laws when that freedom is dangerous. I see the bailouts as adhering to the same principle. In the end, then, my critique of libertarianism is the same as my critique of socialism: nice sounding theory on paper, doesn’t work in reality.

Four Theories of Government, Part III: What Kind of Good is Freedom?

Freedom is a good thing, and everyone save a few old people in Russia and a few of the world’s dictators would agree with me about that. Since I’m pretty sure that none of those people read the Orthodox Heretic, I’m not going to talk about the benefits that come from freedom. Instead, I’ll ask a related question: “What kind of good thing is freedom?”

In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes a state where people are completely free in the ‘state of nature.’ By nature then, we have the right to do whatever it is that we want to do. Unlimited freedom – is that not a good thing? Hobbes correctly points out that it is not. He says that when everyone is free to do whatever they want, like stealing and killing, life would be ‘poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ His point was that for the sake of happiness, we should be willing to give up some of our natural freedom and enter into a social contract. This contract of laws, of course, places severe restrictions on our liberty; however, given the boost in happiness that we get from living in a society governed by laws, we should be willing to make the exchange. Hobbes’ ideas, via Locke especially, had a deep impact on the Founders.

This simple analysis reminds us what is true about freedom, namely, that it is not an absolute good. If it were an absolute good, it would be good independently of the circumstances or the consequences. But our Founders, like any founders of any society, reject the idea that freedom is good-in-itself. Importantly, when freedom will make us less happy, as is true in the case of the state of nature, we should limit freedom for the sake of happiness.

I’m afraid that our friends the libertarians gloss over this fact and instead think of freedom as an absolute good. I don’t mean to say that they are anarchists who want to overthrow laws and the government entirely, but rather that they have forgotten the principle that freedom must be limited when it severely conflicts with our pursuit of happiness.

Next week I will show how our Founders put this principle into practice not just by instituting laws against killing and stealing, but about bankruptcy.

Four Theories of Government Involvment, Part II

I want to start by analyzing the two ideologically pure positions of the role of government: socialism (this week) and libertarianism (next week). Strictly speaking, those two theories are not real opposites, since socialism is merely an economic theory and libertarianism is the theory that government – particularly the federal government - should be absent in all or nearly all areas of social and economic life. So Communism may actually make a better ‘opposite’ to libertarianism, since Communism not only advocates government control of the economy, but also that government control all aspects of social life, such as mandating religion (or lack thereof), who you marry, how many children you can have, etc.

In regards to Communism, my criticism is basically the same as everyone else’s: nice sounding theory on paper, not so great in reality. Marx did genuinely begin his quest for a noble reason: compassion for exploited capitalist workers. It is hard for us to imagine exploitation; we may think exploitation is working an extra 2 unpaid hours a month or something like that. But In Marx’ day, there was no workman’s comp, no overtime pay, no minimum wage (and so workers kept undercutting each other), no unemployment insurance, no unions, no sick leave, no vacations, and no safety regulations. And young women in the workplace? Forget about it – have a baby, you’re fired! Still doesn’t sound so bad? Well, add to that the fact that most work was difficult and extremely dangerous. What you end up with is depressed, sick, and injured workers who can’t feed their families anyway. In order to remedy this, Marx recommended that there be no private property. The hope is that if there is no private property, then no rich person can exploit a poor person. We should never forget this when critiquing socialism.

But as most of the world has now admitted, a government cannot create wealth. Hence, economic equality ends up meaning that everyone is equally poor. My favorite example is from Cuba. Only after Raoul Castro took over were cell phones permitted. ‘What could anyone have against a cell phone?,’ you may ask. Well, remember in the 90s when everyone talked about ‘bling’? Bling, apparently, referred to such things as light reflecting off your gold chains, or the sound that a cell phone would make. Bling was significant because it meant that you had status – that you were more important than your neighbor. Easy solution for Fidel: no cell phones, no inequality (that’s not the whole story, but that’s a part of it).

Well, capitalism wins again. It turned out that after a few years of private economic competition working its magic, everyone got a cell phone. Now, everyone’s life is easier, competing cell phone companies have created a ton of wealth, cell phones are no longer a status symbol, and human beings are still trying to flee Cuba.

I intentionally started this series with an uncontroversial post (unless I have any Communist/socialist/Marxist blog readers I don’t know about), but I’m going to start getting controversial next week. Then, I will argue that a similar critique can be made of libertarianism: sounds nice on paper, but in reality it just doesn’t work. There has never been, is not now, and never will be a successful economy that is not overseen by the federal government. And yes, that does include early America: even the Founders intentionally left many ways for the federal government to intervene in the economy and to place limits on capitalism.

Four Theories of Government Involvment, Part I

[The Orthodox Heretic finally finished his dissertation. So finally, some more blogs!]

It is common to believe that the Republicans are ‘libertarians-light’ in the same way the Democrats are ‘socialists-light;’ that is, Republicans are generally in favor of small government, but not to the extent that libertarians are, and the Democrats generally favor large government, but don’t want to go to the extremes of socialism.

This is what I used to think. Now, I see things as significantly more complicated – so much so that it turns out my initial analysis was just plain wrong. I want to spend a few weeks 1) describing what appear to be the four major theories of government involvement – libertarianism, socialism, and whatever the Democrats and then Republicans believe, 2) arguing that a morally responsible person should desire a society that considers its most vulnerable members, and 3) arguing that this kind of society is the one that fosters non-state involvement but is willing to involve government when appropriate.

[If you are reading this on FB, there may be some advantages to visiting the actual blog]

Are You More Afraid of the Government or the Super-Capitalists?, Part II

Defining our political views as simply conservative or liberal is often difficult, but I think one important piece in the puzzle is identifying who we are more afraid of: the government, or the super-capitalists. I laid out some very basic reasons last week why we might be (and should be) afraid of the government, but for the next weeks I want to argue that we should be more afraid of the super-capitalists.

Capitalism is simply when the means of production are owned privately. My adjective ‘super’ is supposed to identify those private companies whose production methods have an effect on the lives a large number of common citizens. So for example, BP would be a super-capitalist corporation on my definition because they control a huge portion of energy supply. But while it is true that I use their products, that is not why I call them ‘super;’ what is important for my purposes is that the way they produce energy has an effect on my life. So a regular capitalist would be like a small-time farmer. He is a capitalist because he owns the means to produce food (the land, the seeds, the tractor), but he is not a super-capitalist because how he produces his goods has little or no effect on me (at least if I am not consuming his products).

Before I proceed with my argument, I want to propose an analogy. This analogy first occurred to me a couple of years ago, and since then, it has proven to be remarkably accurate and predictive of events. As a result, my economic and thus political opinions have generally been guided by it. Here it is:

I think that the free market is like a fire. One thing we know about fires is that they can seem like miracles to those who need them. You don’t have to go very far back in history to a time when an open fire was the only way to cook, the only source of light, and the only way to avoid freezing to death. Can you imagine how valuable a fire must have been to our ancestors? Similarly, the free market can seem like a miracle because it actually has the power to create wealth – just like that, out of thin air. I still don’t understand how this works, but it does. The free market can make the wealthy even wealthier it can make a middle-class family rich, and it can make a poor family middle-class. Importantly, it does this without necessarily ruining someone else’s economic prospects. There is no way for the government to create wealth; at best, they can print money, but this doesn’t actually produce wealth because of the immediate problems with inflation, etc.

But of course, we know something else about fires, namely, their destructive capabilities. Just like that, an untended fire that was providing light and heat to those who were cold and in the dark suddenly turns on its former beneficiaries, consuming them, its surroundings, and eventually itself. The clear lesson is that fires must be tended. I will defend the accuracy of this analogy in the next weeks.

Should We Be More Afraid of the Government or the Super-capitalists?

Most people, myself included, would call the government a ‘necessary evil.’ Anyone would love to be in a world where nations generally got along, where citizens and corporations behaved responsibly, and where basic public needs were easily met by our neighbors and religious communities. But of course, that is not the world we live in. As a result, we hand over a portion of our freedom to this entity called the ‘government,’ which is frequently corrupt and sometimes incompetent; but given the choice between subjection to this imperfect institution and a society without supervision, we choose the government. The difference between conservatives and liberals concerns the level of control that we are willing to hand over.

So while the government is necessary, we also recognize that it can be corrupted and thus should evoke fear. It is a fact that almost all of the major tragedies in human history have occurred because of bad government. So shouldn’t we all be political conservatives? Isn’t is just common sense that we should want our government to provide basic protections such as the police and basic services such as roads and then get out of our lives?

My answer is ‘no.’ Although I think that we always need to be vigilant and afraid of our government, there is an entity out there far more dangerous than the government; I’m speaking of the super-capitalists. My term ‘super-capitalist’ does not have a rigorous definition, but I am trying to pick out those in the private sector who control a disproportionate percentage of the means of production. There are lots of small and mid-size private businesses out there, but in modern capitalism, just a few dozen people own almost everything. Over the next few weeks, I want to argue that we should be more afraid of these folks than the government. As a result, we need a government large enough to control them.

American Politics, Part XI

Today I’m dealing with the fourth of five issues that I have identified as barriers to accepting ‘socialized medicine.’ One fear, perhaps the main one, is that if medicine is government-controlled, then doctors will lose their incentive to become excellent, and those who pioneer medical technology will lose their incentive to invent new medicines, etc. The capitalist idea (which I think is usually right) is that money motivates people. So the concern is if the free market is taken away, then the money will dry out, and thus, so will the motivation is taken away.

Suppose the government said things like this: “Each hospital will get the same level of funding, regardless of how well or how poorly you manage your facility,” or “Each doctor will be paid the same and keep your job, regardless of how well you do,” or “Each inventor of medical technology will receive the same compensation, whether you do a crappy job or whether you invent a cure for AIDS.” If this is socialized medicine, I agree with the conservative that this would be an unmitigated disaster.

Perhaps the easiest analogy is with public education. I almost regret mentioning public education, because of its well-documented problems and short-comings. Public education is perhaps the paradigmatic case of those who fear government control of institutions, so it is surprising that I am mentioning it. But I am not holding out public education as a shining example of how to do things right; rather, I am merely pointing out some features that a large institution that falls under government control might have. We simply can’t say, “Oh, public education failed in such-and-such a case, and so medicine probably will too.” This is because making sick people healthy who want to be healthy is much different than getting children to excel at math who hate mathematics. So I don’t think we can compare the two except to notice how the government runs large institutions that interface with the population at large.

So, let’s address some of the fears I mentioned in the second paragraph. Has the government abdicated its responsibility to provide enough money for education? No, I don’t think they have. There is plenty of money out there (is it $6000 per child per year now?). Do teachers get to keep teaching even if they perform poorly? No, teachers are fired all the time. Is there a lot of competition for good teaching jobs? Oh yeah, it’s hard to even get a substitute job in some districts. Have education think-tanks stopped trying because the government funds education and not the private marketplace? No, there is a lot of money flying around in research and development of new pedagogical tools. If you invent a new method to teach kids math, or a new science textbook, then you get rich! Just because the money comes from the government does not mean it will be distributed equally regardless of performance.

I will say one more time before I am accused of being insane, NO, I do not believe that public education is a perfect system, even though I like the idea. But I don’t think you can make the analogy between education and medicine, because government control is a much, much more difficult thing to implement at the level of education. Kids just do not want to be in school, and so a lot of the money ends up being wasted. The reason that kids from private schools do (only very slightly) better on their ACTs is probably because kids from wealthy families often have lots of other advantages (like hiring an ACT tutor – just ask me!). There is simply no reason to believe that the field of medicine will no longer be competitive if the government funds it.

American Politics Part X

[The end of the “American Politics” blog series is in sight. I’m still working over the topic of ‘socialized medicine,’ which will take up three more blogs, and then I will move to a new topic.]

If you listen to conservative talk shows, you hear a deep disdain for the idea that medical care be controlled by the government. In an attempt to respond, I’ve tried to identify the different phobias that conservatives have, and I’ve come up with a list of five, organized into questions. I think that there are good responses to each of these conservative worries, and since this list of five questions is comprehensive as far as I can tell, I believe that an adequate response to each of these five concerns will show the fear of ‘socialized medicine’ to be unfounded. They are:

1) Isn’t competition between rival hospitals and health care providers necessary for the most effective medical care? (discussed in American Politics, Part VIII;
2) Won’t people become lazy if they get free health care, as is usually the case in a socialistic society? (discussed in American Politics, Part IX)
3) Doesn’t everyone need a personalized health plan? (discussed this week)
4) Won’t health providers lose their motivation to provide quality health care if everything is government sponsored? (to be discussed next week)
5) Hasn’t the government already shown its ineptitude in managing Medicare and medical care for the Armed Services? (to be discussed in two weeks).

But for now, we are treating the conservative worry that everyone needs to have a unique health care plan; just one ‘blanket plan’ will not do. When Bush restructured Medicare in his first term, he put this philosophy into practice by dramatically expanding the number of plan options that seniors had. I don’t have numbers on hand, but I seem to remember that the expansion went from something like four plan options to something like 80. His public defense was simple and straightforward. He said that the reason the system needed an overhaul was because different seniors needed different medicines and thus different plans. This would eventually (somehow – how?) lower the cost of drugs for everyone.

Well, the re-structured plan (like just about everything Mr. 28% Popularity has done) was unpopular. Seniors complained that there were so many options that they had no idea what plan was best for them. “Just go to the internet,” the Administration told the confused seniors. Unfortunately, not only do old people not know how to ‘surf’ the web, but they think a monitor is someone who stands in the hallway to make sure you don’t run or chew gum on school property. And even when they turned to their children for help, the younger generation was just as confused in some cases.

I have since developed an enormous amount of sympathy for this problem. When I was choosing between health plans before we had our second son, I really worked hard to figure out which of the two university plans would cost us less out of pocket. I settled on one, but once we had our child, I found out that the plan I didn’t choose would have saved us about $6,000 out-of-pocket. Why the difference? I have no earthly idea. The premiums were about the same, so why was the level of coverage so different?

There were many hidden technicalities. For example, under the plan that I choose, “circumcision” was listed as an optional procedure for a congenital condition, and thus was not paid for. Is an uncircumsized penis congenital? Yes, I suppose it is something about half of us are born with. But if Kerry would have won in 2004, he would have given everyone a chance to buy into the same insurance package as the Senators have. I would have done that, because I guaran-freaking-tee you that when a Senator has a boy, their insurance pays for the circumcision. I would also be willing to guess that Senator-insurance pays for more than one day in the hospital for those female Senators who arrive at the hospital slightly before midnight (Not a joke – if we would have checked in 10 minutes later, we somehow would have saved $3000).

My point is that there are two things that happen when a system gets complicated: 1) vulnerable people get taken advantage of (as I was when I was not able to properly understand the confusing (because intentionally deceptive) wording in the 30-page brochure for the medical plan I chose), and 2) wealthy people are able to manipulate the system more easily, since a complicated system always has loopholes, and money can always navigate loopholes. There is absolutely nothing good that can come from giving seniors 80+ options for health plans. When everyone has the same health plan, regulated by the federal government, there will be no Plan 36JB7 that pays for circumcisions, while Plan 36JB5 doesn’t. In the case of health insurance, simpler is better. I would be happy to pay the higher premiums of the Senator-insurance-plan just for some peace of mind. I feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette every time I or one of my children visit the hospital. It makes me mad to know that at some time there was a meeting where the insurance company said, "How can we word this in such a way as to make the customer think that we will pay for procedure X when we actually won't?" There will be far less of this kind of deception if everyone had the same policy,

American Politics, Part IX

Last time I pointed to an important dissimilarity between health care and the rest of the marketplace, and this week I want to argue for another important difference. The concern of the capitalist, which I share, is that when people don’t own something, they tend to neglect it in a way that they would not if it were privately owned. Two cheesy, overused, and yet accurate examples: 1) we all know what happens when you get behind the wheel of a rental car. While you don’t trash it, you are harder on a rental car than your personal car, because you are not going to have to deal with the long term consequences of a rental car that needs repaired, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that. 2) If you are a homeowner, you know the amazing amount of work and care that you put into to getting your home to look nice and last as long as possible. When it’s your property, you know that its value will drop if not cared for properly, and so you go the ‘extra mile.’

Socialists, of course, advocate a society in which the government owns everything. In this ideal society, there would be no private property, which would mean that there would be complete equality. When Raul Castro took over for his brother recently, he lifted the long-standing ban on cell phones. Why did Fidel ban cell phones? Because if some people had cell phones and some did not, that would make society unequal. I hold the same line of reasoning that all people from capitalist societies hold: great idea, doesn’t seem very practical. I am a liberal, but I am not a socialist – I think private property, in most situations, is a good thing for the reasons that are underlying those two previous examples. Even the best of us just don’t treat things with the same level of care when we are not dealing with our own property.

So what about ‘socialized medicine?’ If we reject socialism, shouldn’t we also be opposed to socialized medicine, where health care and insurance is totally controlled and paid for by the government? Conservatives, it seems, make this association. After all, they may reason, if you are the one who has to pay for your broken foot, you will careful to put on work boots when you’re working with heavy machinery. But if the government pays for whatever maladies you develop, you will tend to be less careful with your own health. The government just “bails you out” of whatever situation you got yourself into. This, I think, is part of why conservatives get their pitchforks when they hear about government-sponsored health care.

But this reasoning doesn’t hold. I agree with the conservative that we should not let the government own, for example, houses. But I predict that the smoking rate, for example, will not go up if health care is free. Conservatives are afraid of a government bale out system, where people will just start lighting up and let the government pay for their lung surgery later on in life. My prediction is that something like this will not happen. Unlike a dilapidated house, which I can just walk away from and let it be the government’s problem, I cannot walk away from my body. My health is already something I care very much about (or else someone already doesn’t really care – like the chain smoker). Those of us who don’t think that socialism can be as effective as capitalism agree that people, because of their nature, need some kind of incentive to take care of something. That is true for my house, but I don’t need an extra incentive to take care of my health. This is yet another important dissimilarity between socialized medicine and anything else the government might control, and yet another reason to think more critically about how we could institute ‘socialized medicine’ in a healthy, creative way in our capitalistic society.

American Politics, Part VII

I want to address the hostility to “socialized medicine.” Why does the word “socialized” work people up into a frenzy? I think it is because of our deeply-held belief in the basic features of capitalism, which I would agree is the best economic system (although it must be contained by the government, as I argued a few weeks ago). Capitalism works because it throws a harness around each person’s desire to better his own economic circumstances. Here’s an example of healthy capitalism: if there were only one, state-controlled computer manufacturer, then we could expect that computers would become sub-standard rather quickly. There have to be several computer manufacturers that are in competition for my business, because the result of the competition will cheaper and more powerful computers.

Conservatives argue that medical care should work essentially in the same way. Hospitals should remain privately-controlled because in an effort to get me to come to their hospital rather than the other guy’s hospital, each hospital will do its best to control costs, provide a clean environment, and offer effective care. Health insurance companies should work in the same way: there should be many private insurance companies competing for my business, because then those companies will work to offer the better and more affordable insurance than their competitor.

Next week I want to develop more of an argument for “socialized medicine.” But for now, I will simply point to a glaring dissimilarity between the case of say, computer manufacturing, and that of medical treatment. The conservative has made the same capitalist analysis in both cases, but the cases are not the same. Let’s say I am making a decision to purchase a new computer. So I look at the selection, read some consumer reviews, and discover that the computer market is not to my satisfaction. I have other options: I can decide to refurbish my current computer, to do all my work at a computer lab or at a work computer, to share a computer with my wife or roommate, etc, etc, etc. The point is, the consumer has options, and he can decide to leave the marketplace if he does not find current market conditions to his liking for whatever reason.

This is when capitalism is great. Computer company A notices that sales of new computers are down to people in my socioeconomic demographic, and so the board members at computer company A get together and figure out how to make their computers better, faster, cheaper, prettier, etc., so that I will change my mind about buying a new computer.

The situation with health care is quite different. If I become dissatisfied my insurance company, or that the cost of a check up is too high, then I can look around for a new provider or new doctor. But I cannot reasonably be expected to opt out of the marketplace entirely in most cases. I know and you know that it does not cost $16,000 to bring a healthy baby in this world with no complications. Somebody is getting rich at my expense. Now, if this were like the computer situation, I would just decide tosuch as that of giving birth, it is just not reasonable to ask someone to forgo treatment entirely until costs come down. The insurance companies have you, because I can’t leave the marketplace. The computer manufacturers have to get you, because I can leave the marketplace, and so they have to work hard for my business.

I understand that I have not yet argued for socialized medicine. But I hope I have shown one difference between a company a hospital.

American Politics, Part VI

A helpful comment, followed by my clarification of my comments last week:

“The Indians dying out was not a "deliberate and systematic extermination of an entire race of people," which is what the word 'genocide' means. This is just another way that Leftists like to use guilt manipulation to make us feel bad about being Americans. Here is an article that does much more justice to the complex historical situation, which concludes that "To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history" (http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html)

We can't punish your ancestors as much as some would like to, but we can and should do our best in our current political circumstances. I do believe that we should be hospitable to the 'sojourner', but how long would you let someone stay in your house without paying rent, especially if they added a new family member (thousands actually) every day?”


The Orthodox Heretic responds:

I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about themselves, nor do I wish anyone to be punished. In fact, I have a lot of pride about what our country has been able to accomplish. I don’t feel guilty at all about living in America, and I don’t think you should either. After all, the ‘Native Americans’ were inevitably not truly ‘native,’ but probably won the use of this continent through bloodshed. That’s just kind of how nature works – “nature red in tooth and claw,” as they say.

But I insist on pointing to the moral inconsistency in saying that we, as legal residents, are morally justified in residing in America, while those who have recently come here are morally unjustified. My soul is disturbed by those who stand up in our country and argue that the Latin Americans broke the laws by sneaking over, and that therefore they should not be rewarded for their stealth with amnesty. Those sorts of conservatives look thoroughly ridiculous on their moral high-horse, because they also have no elevated moral status which would allow them to look down their noses at “illegals.”

I agree with you that there are some difficult practical issues that come with unrestricted immigration. That is why I mentioned that we, as the current legal residents of a country recognized by the United Nations, have the right to use our own cleverness to keep out illegal immigrants. In principle, I am not particularly disturbed by those efforts, although I have some concerns about the motivations of these patriots. Deep down, do they just want a “pure” society? How is such zeal, as demonstrated by the “Minute Men,” those self-appointed border-guards, in any way reconcilable with Christianity? But as I said last week, I don’t have any good answers of my own about how to deal with illegal immigration, except to insist that the “no-amnesty” folks either haven’t thought through this issue properly, or else are not much like Jesus.

American Politics, Part V

The illegal immigration issue is a difficult one. This is clear simply by observing that Bush and Ted Kennedy have at times been on the same side of this debate, and that there is nothing recognizable as a standard ‘party line’ for either party, as there is for perhaps every single other issue. I have to confess, I don’t know exactly what kind of policies I would support if I were in the government.

But one part of the debate is clear to me, and that is that the “no amnesty” people are hypocrites of the worst kind. Liberals sometimes make the argument that “This is a country founded by immigrants.” That is partly right and partly wrong, for the full truth is that this is a county founded by illegal immigrants. In 1776, some Europeans, who were not invited to this continent, signed a piece of paper declaring that this country belonged to them. As far as I am aware, no Native Americans were invited to this ribbon-cutting ceremony, which declared that the land upon which those Englishman stood was the legal property of the United States. With one stroke of the pen, those men went from being English citizens to being citizens of the United States of America.

No, our ancestors did not break any actual laws by coming here and butchering the Native populations. There was no extant piece of paper that described the illegality of countinent-usurping. But I am sure that if the Native Americans would have gotten around to codifying some laws, one of them might have included a “no-genocide” clause. I don’t know any educated people who are proud of all the sordid details of how our founding fathers came to be the sole possessors of the United States of America. But I also don’t know any Americans, myself included, who are willing to move. The one and only reason for this is that moving now would be a pain; we are already settled and comfortable here. We have bestowed amnesty upon ourselves! So to deny amnesty to Latin Americans currently residing in our country only because they came into this country without our permission, and yet to extend amnesty to our founding fathers and thus to ourselves, seems altogether morally absurd.

If you don’t want anymore illegal immigrants in our country, then build a wall, fine employers, or increase border security. I personally feel that these measures are a little much, but I also believe that it is our right as current legal residents of the USA to stop illegal immigrants from coming. But to oppose a path to citizenship for those already living here on moral grounds is perfectly ridiculous. Surely certain Latin Americans got into this country by using deception and stealth; but now, here they are! At least they did not commit genocide against those of us legally residing in America, which is more than I can say for my ancestors.

American Politics, Part IV

[In the two previous posts, I argued on moral grounds for the necessity of an economy that strives for equality. The Orthodox Heretic’s sister, who is getting a PhD on these sorts of issues, commented, and I wanted to post her comments and then respond to them.]

Anna says: “There is sociological literature regarding the benefits that socioeconomic equality bring to both governments and local and global societies. This literature argues that it is in governments' and societies' best interest to ensure productivity of the market SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH socioeconomic equality within the polity (and sustainability of the environment, too!). Oversimplified, the argument suggests that inequality and insecurity (inadequate food, water, disease, etc.) is directly related to conflict and war, the effects of which extend beyond national boundaries. As such, these interrelated components of poverty are a universal concern and require international attention.

Moreover, conflict and war threaten the stability of governments, societies, and consequently capitalist institutions. Therefore, it is not only right and just to ensure socioeconomic equality, it is also rational and self-interested! This argument, then, appeals to the religious and secular alike.”

The Orthodox Heretic says: “Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I happen to agree with every word of your response. Like you, I also believe that that there is often a happy coincidence between doing what’s right in the moral sense and doing what’s right in the business sense. However, I think we should be careful to keep the moral argument and prudential argument separate. I have always been a little uncomfortable with the “and besides” argument. For instance, people sometimes argue that torture is wrong in the moral sense because it causes harm to a defenseless person, and then quickly add something like, “and besides, the intelligence you get from torture is unreliable.” Those arguments need to be carefully pulled apart and evaluated separately, the first being a moral argument (it’s not right), the second being a prudential argument (it’s not smart).

We must recognize that there has always been and will always be controversy about whether it makes more economic sense to stimulate the economy by stimulating the lower class or by cutting taxes on the upper class. The world needs people like you and your colleagues who are able consistently to present us with compelling arguments that favor the democratic philosophy of economics on prudential grounds. But unfortunately, for every argument you present, there will always be an intelligent, well-worded, and persuasive argument from the other side (actually, there will probably be two, since those folks are better-funded).

As a professional philosopher, I happen to know that you can convince yourself and others of just about any position if you’re clever enough. I don’t mean to say that there are no right answers, but only that we have every reason to expect that this debate will go on until the end of society itself. So while this argument is busy going on forever, Christians need to stand up and remind ourselves and the world that equality is a moral issue of the most serious kind, whether you believe it to be a prudential issue or not, and that therefore economic equality needs to be on the front-burner for those of us who consider ourselves followers of Christ. I’m not willing to believe that I am wrong about that, although I’m willing to believe that I might be wrong about how the economy works (especially because people who are much smarter than I am can’t agree). But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet forfeit his soul?

American Politics, Part III

Last week I argued that we need a government that is willing to step in and regulate the market for the sake of economic equality. Of course most Republicans are willing to accept the idea of occasional government intervention in draconian cases, but their usual mantra is “Stay outta the marketplace!” I think this attitude is unacceptable, at least if you believe as I do that the main standard by which all societies will be judged is by how they protected the vulnerable. Those who are great capitalists are typically not bad people – they are simply being as selfish as possible because that is exactly what capitalism requires of them – capitalism is only successful if the business world is populated with people who are greedy! If all capitalists decided to practice the virtue of contentedness starting on Monday, then we would have the Great Depression Part II by Friday. But that is exactly why we must have a government that is willing to tell those successful and greedy capitalists, “This far ye shall come and no farther.”

Also, last week I promised to analyze another big reason why we need a government willing to legislate the marketplace: the protection of the environment. Capitalism by itself offers absolutely no incentive to maintain environmental standards. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. The capitalist marketplace demands that the producers produce as much material for the lowest cost possible. And, since it costs a lot of money to dispose of waste properly, to forest responsibly, to harvest and plant in a way that will nourish the soil, etc., etc., these things are actually discouraged by the capitalist marketplace. Since the motivation to protect the environment does not come from the market itself, it must come from government regulations.

I have heard conservatives say of Al Gore that business would never survive his presidency, if he were to become President. I hope that this is not true. But I happen to know that it is true that if we continue to use our natural resources irresponsibly, then things will go badly for all of us and all of our decedents. Take the example of American automakers: they really hate it whenever the government increases the minimum fuel efficiency rating. Let the market decide, they say – let the people decide what they want to buy, and we will supply their demand. The problem is that it is quite rare that an individual will do what is in their own financial worst-interest in order to “help” with something as abstract as the environment. For example, if Company A and Company B produce the same product, but Company A’s version costs more because they spent a lot of money on proper disposal, then the usual person will buy the product from Company B. And if someone comes running up to them and says, “Don’t buy that! Company B disposes of their waste improperly,” the common person will just point out that Company B’s product costs less. The way to solve this problem is to actually make it illegal for Company B to dispose of their waste improperly, rather than to hope that Company B’s board of directors becomes populated by tree-huggers.

There are many situations in which the government must interfere for the sake of protecting the environment, because people will always do exactly what capitalism tells them to do: buy the product as cheaply as you can! The burden of making companies change their environmental policies is not the responsibility of the consumer, but of the government. In Bush’s first week, he repealed an astounding number of environmental regulations that were established by the Clinton administration, all in the name of “freeing the marketplace.” We need a government that, while sensible about protecting big business where they can (because we all need big business, even though we may not like to admit it), has the will and the courage to regulate the market by making certain practices illegal.

American Politics, Part II

Out society is not primarily controlled by the government. Rather, our society marches to the beat of the drum of the capitalistic marketplace. I do not wish to say that this is good or bad, for there are many positive and negative features of capitalism. I just want to say that this is our reality, so instead of thinking of America as controlled by the government, it would be more accurate to think of America as being directed by business, and merely managed by the government.

By analogy, the market could be thought of as a fire. Fires are nearly miraculous in that they provide a natural source of heat and light. If you have trouble imagining how central this is to life, imagine how terrible a frontier lifestyle would be without a fire. But like most good things, a fire can quickly turn disastrous and deadly if it leaps out of its intended boundaries. Likewise, the market can provide untold good and prosperity, and in an instant can lift a family out of generational poverty. But it can also be quite disastrous, as a fire that jumps over its boundaries. So the analogical conclusion is that just as we need the fire controlled, so also we need tight reigns on the economy. There are two primary ways that the marketplace can cause mischief, although I will only address one this week.

First, the market itself provides no incentive whatsoever to help a person who is not yourself or not in your immediate family. The market, rather, by its very essence, actually encourages every person to look out only for her own interests. “Its just business,” they tell you after they announce a company restructure. There is no basis to complain about or criticize any single businessperson who triumphs over someone else over on the way to more money, provided he does it within the bounds of the law. Indeed, this is what is required of a successful capitalist society. I, for example, will enter the meager philosophy professor job market in a couple of years. My hope is that I will be better, more intelligent, etc., than the other PhD students entering the marketplace, and that I will get the job instead of them. Correspondingly, the institution will only higher the best candidate and turn the others away. That is not positive or negative, but merely a description of how a capitalistic society improves itself.

Given the harsh realities of competition within capitalism, it is quite easy to see how our society can quickly become a society of “haves” and “have-nots.” But no single person is to blame – every “have” is simply doing his job. Capitalism, then, unchecked, can bring absolutely wicked outcomes, from the perspective of the Christian. James nails down the whole point of religion in general: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27). If this is true, then we should be worries about creating as society of “haves” and “have-nots,” which means that we need a government that is willing to step in and disrupt the marketplace when the marketplace in creating too much inequality. The Republicans despise this kind of thinking as “big government” – capitalism needs to be free to play itself out. If the market operates without interference, they claim, then it will continue to grow. And after all, they add, “A rising tides raises all ships.”

But I have a question for my Republican friends: What if you are wrong about how the economy works? Even the top economists in the world have vast difference in the way they conceive of successful capitalism. I must confess, I have NO idea how the economy works, but even the most well-equipped economists have only possible theories. But if we are going to make an error, as we may be by interfering in the marketplace, we should be concerned to err on the side of making an economically equal society. If those republican economists are wrong, and the “trickle-down” economic system is not the right model for the economy, then we will hamper economic growth AND exacerbate economic inequality. So if I am right that no one really knows how the economy works, and we are concerned about creating a equal society (making sure the orphans and widows are economically secure, even though they are not economically viable), then we should favor a style of government which is willing to step in if conditions are becoming unequal. There is the possibility, I am willing to concede, that the Republican economic policies are better for everyone; after all, I nor anyone else who doesn’t have a Nobel Prize in economics really has any idea. But I do know, as a Christian, that it is not acceptable to have the kind of society that doesn’t do anything about the plight of the vulnerable. But the Republican says, again, “Yes, but a rising tide raises all ships,” which is true. But just in case the “trickle-down” system doesn’t work, I would rather lose the whole world while pursuing justice. I don’t think that losing the whole world for the right reasons would be such a bad thing.

American Politics, Part I

[Note: This blog appeared last year. It was meant to be the first of several political blogs, but I stopped blogging altogether after the first one. I would like to follow through now, however, and on Sunday/Monday, I will post the part II in this series.]

Is there any philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats? Sometimes, the positions these two sides take on various issues seem pretty arbitrary. There just doesn’t seem to be any consistent pattern underlying each political party, and so it becomes – well, politics. However, I believe that there are consistent philosophies to be discovered on each side, and I want to lay bare those differences, and also argue the liberal position on several of the specific issues.

A Liberal society (in the sense of Liberal v. Communist, Islamist, etc., not the small “l” liberal v. conservative) has three distinguishing values that make it different from all other societies: the value of private property, the value of equality, and the value of individual freedom (especially the freedom to make a choice in the form of voting). When it comes to individual freedom, both parties succeed and fail in various ways, and so it is difficult to develop a systematic understanding of the differences in this area. However, the conservative and liberal ideologies begin to contrast in terms of the first two values.

These differences first arise when private property and equality come into conflict. The conflict is actually fairly common because, as John Locke observed, money is the most common form of private property. And hence we get conservative Republicans always pushing tax cuts (because that means more private property), and the liberal Democrats working to repeal tax cuts on the wealthy (because that allows the government to afford various programs for the lower and middles classes, and so enhances the value of equality). So the conservative mantra is “Equality is important, but what really makes a Liberal society great is private property”, while the liberal motto is just the opposite: “Private property is important, but what really makes a Liberal society great is equality”. Sometimes this difference is expressed in terms of the size of government, where the conservatives promote more private property as so favor “small government”, and the liberals favor the government having a larger role to play is making society equal, and so is the party of “big government”. In the coming weeks, I wish to explain and argue for the various liberal positions on particular issues in contemporary American politics.