A Politics of Properly Balanced Tensions, Part I
A week ago, Bill of Integral Options Café, somewhat in response to policy-position posts by Joe Perez of Until [“Beyond Liberal, Left, and Progressive: An Inclusive and Revolutionary Politics for Tomorrow”] and Matthew Dallman of The Daily Goose [“A standard we ought insist upon”], laid out his own positions on ten vital political issues. Bill called his positions' overarching POV “A Politics of Compassion” --which I found to be quite excellent; I agree with all of Bill’s points, except that I want to move more slowly with respect to decriminalizing drugs and doings away with the Electoral College than he. This post, and its two follow-ups, will tackle the issues that Bill brought up but with my mini-analyses and with comments on what Joe, Matthew and Bill have said about it all. I hope that others of you will join the chain with your own capsulated thoughts on important issues of the day, and will speak to what overriding elements -- Compassion? Integral theory? Responsibility? Egalitarianism? -- you figure are the most germane overriding principles to guide legislating, politics or governance.
Why do I give the governance I seek the tedious (and perhaps ridiculous) name “A Politics of Properly Balanced Tensions?” Because I believe law, properly crafted, is in the realm of wholly unselfishly-viewed interests that compete or conflict. Selfishly-made law, that creates bridges to nowhere and special exemptions for well-connected corporations or industries, are beyond the pale and won’t be dealt with here. Properly-made legislation is not totally guided by reason (due to the limitations of reason). It should be divorced from the chaos of emotional tangles, and allow for a wide field of diversity, thus rather objectively trying to meet a wide range of people's legitimate needs. And because I think that understanding any important political issue involves looking at things from all aspects and different vantages; appreciating the concerns of those who differ from you in how they think and what they believe; making compromises; respecting the human condition with all its insanity and mess; getting the incentives right; and always looking toward what will work best in the long run.
Let us look at the ten issues Bill of IOC examined, in order, plus two additional issues, Immigration and Terrorism. I will look at four today, and four matters in each of the next two days in this planned three-part series.
1) Universal Health Care. Having worked for a TPA -- a third-party administration company -- admin’ing health-care trusts, I have a well-informed and somewhat different vantage in looking at the matter. A prime issue to me is the rather nonsensical situation where individuals become dependent on the business they work for to provide them health benefits.
Though most companies are in large insurance pools of various sorts that share the risks associated with employee illnesses, many are not. And those that are not allow perceptions based on the supposed health care costs of job applicants to weigh in on their hiring decisions. This can greatly disadvantage people will health challenges competing in the job market. People who have movement difficulty or vision or hearing impairment are less likely to get employment in our current system. As well, overweight people; women, especially young women; senior men; and African Americans will be less likely to be offered jobs than they otherwise would be due to subtle discrimination against perceived big users of health-care benefits. All of society suffers when the best person for a job doesn’t get the position for reasons that are not directly related to the tasks of the job.
It is also inappropriate for a person who has health challenges that are readily apparent on the jobsite to be at risk for termination directly because of the cost to the employer for health maintenance.
While there are laws and programs meant to protect ill or injured employees, in the real world employers allow what they know to affect their decisions and rather easily get around the law. And to the degree employers have to pay employee health costs, health-challenged employees are at an unfair disadvantage in the workplace and job market.
Consider, as well, all the added cost companies have for any employee vis-à-vis alternatives like buying machine replacements for staff or having work done outside the US in developing countries. Since the burden of health care is borne by companies instead of the state here in America, companies are incentivized to seek means to do their business in ways other than hiring expensive human labor to perform tasks. If the state was wholly responsible for people’s health, employees would be more valuable “commodities” in the marketplace of "doers of tasks." Because of our long string of huge trade deficits, we need to find means to level the playing field to ship fewer jobs and more goods overseas. Otherwise, America has a future of decline.
In order to make things more fair and because it helps those most in need of good health and makes hiring people less directly expensive to employers, state-run Universal Health Care makes much better sense than our current system. There are “incentive” challenges to implementing such a system. Hypochondriacs or just generally fearful people with plenty of time to kill can be set loose to clog hospitals with their gripes of very minor or non-existent ailments. Co-payment policies -- such that state hospitals are run like HMOs -- might be just the thing to deter people with no real need of care from getting in the way of those with ailments that would benefit from the services of a doctor.
In a comment to his post, Bill of the IOC says he would want a non-governmental organization [NGO] of some sort running a vast American Universal Health Care system. I don't see that this would be a good idea. Medicare and Medicaid have good records as government-run programs. The government is the institution that is responsible, so they must run it, in my opinion. The Canadian system should be our model.
2) Gay Rights. Bill Harryman makes the point that civil unions (and not marriage, which he views as outside the purview of the state and being, for both homosexual and heterosexual couples, in the province of religion) should be made available to all adult citizens as a matter of equity. I fully agree; this is the route to end discrimination against homosexual couples. But I would add that government should also not be in the business of discriminating against single people. Society has an interest in seeing to the education and happiness of children, and should exceptionally direct resources to that end, but should not have a preference in the makeup of families -- allowing single people, couples, sets of adults, all with or without children, to exist in households without some groups/configurations receiving special tax or legal benefits that come from the state.
3) Limited Capitalism. I believe that capitalism is very necessary -- due to its efficiency -- but needs to be regulated and tamed to protect consumers and correct for wildly unjust income disparities. Today in America, the system is rigged, giving special treatment to insiders who have influence with politicians. Ours is a politics of Social Darwinism rather than one that seeks fairness and a carefully-crafted matrix of incentives to keep capitalism in check to be a proper force for economic activity. I think it truly is the case that today soldiers are sent to die in Iraq to profit Halliburton and oil company executives. It is an insane old world.
We should also allow some laws that correlate effort with income. This is not “income redistribution,” but a correction to income misdistribution. Just as there are minimum-wage laws that guarantee that the poor among us are not de facto slaves, there should be laws that cap or heavily tax income of those with huge salaries who, necessarily, come by their wealth from networks of influence. I have to ask: What effort could any individual possibly make that could justify an income of $10 million per year? Show me anyone who could sweat enough to justify extracting that much wealth from our collective economy in one year. We should end the grotesque theft from the common weal that is today allowed.
4) Decriminalizing Drugs. I think that society has to come to the right balance in dealing with drugs. People, especially young adults, will experiment and society should have a proper understanding of that and allow some latitude for people’s strange behavior, desires and mistakes. At the same time, society should deter behavior and use of substances that endangers the overall peace, security and happiness of the population. Plus, we must be sensitive to the destruction American use of drugs causes overseas, in nations like Afganistan [heroin] and Columbia [cocaine] that are corrupted due to American demand.
I would like to see a study of where we are with suppressing drug trafficking in the US nowadays, with an effort to quantify the pain/good that can be done by various protocols in allowing/suppressing trafficking.
Tomorrow, Part II: Foreign Policy; Ethics in Politics; A Department of Peace; The Environment.
Why do I give the governance I seek the tedious (and perhaps ridiculous) name “A Politics of Properly Balanced Tensions?” Because I believe law, properly crafted, is in the realm of wholly unselfishly-viewed interests that compete or conflict. Selfishly-made law, that creates bridges to nowhere and special exemptions for well-connected corporations or industries, are beyond the pale and won’t be dealt with here. Properly-made legislation is not totally guided by reason (due to the limitations of reason). It should be divorced from the chaos of emotional tangles, and allow for a wide field of diversity, thus rather objectively trying to meet a wide range of people's legitimate needs. And because I think that understanding any important political issue involves looking at things from all aspects and different vantages; appreciating the concerns of those who differ from you in how they think and what they believe; making compromises; respecting the human condition with all its insanity and mess; getting the incentives right; and always looking toward what will work best in the long run.
Let us look at the ten issues Bill of IOC examined, in order, plus two additional issues, Immigration and Terrorism. I will look at four today, and four matters in each of the next two days in this planned three-part series.
1) Universal Health Care. Having worked for a TPA -- a third-party administration company -- admin’ing health-care trusts, I have a well-informed and somewhat different vantage in looking at the matter. A prime issue to me is the rather nonsensical situation where individuals become dependent on the business they work for to provide them health benefits.
Though most companies are in large insurance pools of various sorts that share the risks associated with employee illnesses, many are not. And those that are not allow perceptions based on the supposed health care costs of job applicants to weigh in on their hiring decisions. This can greatly disadvantage people will health challenges competing in the job market. People who have movement difficulty or vision or hearing impairment are less likely to get employment in our current system. As well, overweight people; women, especially young women; senior men; and African Americans will be less likely to be offered jobs than they otherwise would be due to subtle discrimination against perceived big users of health-care benefits. All of society suffers when the best person for a job doesn’t get the position for reasons that are not directly related to the tasks of the job.
It is also inappropriate for a person who has health challenges that are readily apparent on the jobsite to be at risk for termination directly because of the cost to the employer for health maintenance.
While there are laws and programs meant to protect ill or injured employees, in the real world employers allow what they know to affect their decisions and rather easily get around the law. And to the degree employers have to pay employee health costs, health-challenged employees are at an unfair disadvantage in the workplace and job market.
Consider, as well, all the added cost companies have for any employee vis-à-vis alternatives like buying machine replacements for staff or having work done outside the US in developing countries. Since the burden of health care is borne by companies instead of the state here in America, companies are incentivized to seek means to do their business in ways other than hiring expensive human labor to perform tasks. If the state was wholly responsible for people’s health, employees would be more valuable “commodities” in the marketplace of "doers of tasks." Because of our long string of huge trade deficits, we need to find means to level the playing field to ship fewer jobs and more goods overseas. Otherwise, America has a future of decline.
In order to make things more fair and because it helps those most in need of good health and makes hiring people less directly expensive to employers, state-run Universal Health Care makes much better sense than our current system. There are “incentive” challenges to implementing such a system. Hypochondriacs or just generally fearful people with plenty of time to kill can be set loose to clog hospitals with their gripes of very minor or non-existent ailments. Co-payment policies -- such that state hospitals are run like HMOs -- might be just the thing to deter people with no real need of care from getting in the way of those with ailments that would benefit from the services of a doctor.
In a comment to his post, Bill of the IOC says he would want a non-governmental organization [NGO] of some sort running a vast American Universal Health Care system. I don't see that this would be a good idea. Medicare and Medicaid have good records as government-run programs. The government is the institution that is responsible, so they must run it, in my opinion. The Canadian system should be our model.
2) Gay Rights. Bill Harryman makes the point that civil unions (and not marriage, which he views as outside the purview of the state and being, for both homosexual and heterosexual couples, in the province of religion) should be made available to all adult citizens as a matter of equity. I fully agree; this is the route to end discrimination against homosexual couples. But I would add that government should also not be in the business of discriminating against single people. Society has an interest in seeing to the education and happiness of children, and should exceptionally direct resources to that end, but should not have a preference in the makeup of families -- allowing single people, couples, sets of adults, all with or without children, to exist in households without some groups/configurations receiving special tax or legal benefits that come from the state.
3) Limited Capitalism. I believe that capitalism is very necessary -- due to its efficiency -- but needs to be regulated and tamed to protect consumers and correct for wildly unjust income disparities. Today in America, the system is rigged, giving special treatment to insiders who have influence with politicians. Ours is a politics of Social Darwinism rather than one that seeks fairness and a carefully-crafted matrix of incentives to keep capitalism in check to be a proper force for economic activity. I think it truly is the case that today soldiers are sent to die in Iraq to profit Halliburton and oil company executives. It is an insane old world.
We should also allow some laws that correlate effort with income. This is not “income redistribution,” but a correction to income misdistribution. Just as there are minimum-wage laws that guarantee that the poor among us are not de facto slaves, there should be laws that cap or heavily tax income of those with huge salaries who, necessarily, come by their wealth from networks of influence. I have to ask: What effort could any individual possibly make that could justify an income of $10 million per year? Show me anyone who could sweat enough to justify extracting that much wealth from our collective economy in one year. We should end the grotesque theft from the common weal that is today allowed.
4) Decriminalizing Drugs. I think that society has to come to the right balance in dealing with drugs. People, especially young adults, will experiment and society should have a proper understanding of that and allow some latitude for people’s strange behavior, desires and mistakes. At the same time, society should deter behavior and use of substances that endangers the overall peace, security and happiness of the population. Plus, we must be sensitive to the destruction American use of drugs causes overseas, in nations like Afganistan [heroin] and Columbia [cocaine] that are corrupted due to American demand.
I would like to see a study of where we are with suppressing drug trafficking in the US nowadays, with an effort to quantify the pain/good that can be done by various protocols in allowing/suppressing trafficking.
Tomorrow, Part II: Foreign Policy; Ethics in Politics; A Department of Peace; The Environment.
2 comments:
Good post, Tom. I agree with you that sound politics should do its best to understand the nature and needs of a wide range of people, examine social issues from many perspectives, and do its best to create effective, long-term solutions to the problems with which it's confronted. But where do we find the people who have the ability to do these things, and how do we get them elected in a system that largely seems to screen them out?
As for the four issues you addressed:
(1) I agree with Bill's and your call for universal health care, and I suspect, although I lack the expertise to claim anything approaching certainty, that you're right in arguing that the government should run it. I don't presume for one moment that such a system would be perfect, whatever perfect means in this context. People, often representing the status quo, have listed numerous problems that could result. But it seems to me that they don't compare with all the problems we have now or are likely to have with other alternatives. The present system seems absurd for reasons you point out and for reasons you don't. One that is foremost in MY mind is the problem that unemployed people such as myself (or people employed without insurance provided by their employer)have receiving coverage for "pre-existing" conditions. I have a heart arrhythmia called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (Tony Blair has or had it too) and even though it's been well-controlled for 38 years with medication, I can't get private coverage for an affordable rate. People also stick with dismal jobs because they're afraid to quit and lose health coverage for themselves and their families until they can re-establish coverage a bare minimum of three or more months later with a new job. Government administered universal health care coverage could eliminate these problems.
(2) I'm not sure I understand Bill's argument (and your agreement with it) that marriage is a RELIGIOUS rather than CIVIL institution and, therefore, gays shouldn't be allowed to marry but should be allowed civil unions. For what about the large number of heterosexual couples, like me and my wife, who marry outside the church, and what of homosexual couples whose churches perform and recognize gay marriages? Nevertheless, I agree with you that sound politics is willing to compromise, and I further agree with you and Bill that a good compromise in this case is for federal and state governments to perform and recognize civil unions according all the legal rights and responsibilities that are accorded by marriage.
(3) I agree with you that there need to be constraints imposed on capitalism that, without hindering productivity, prohibit the unfair accumulation of wealth that we see running rampant now. How about, for one thing, limiting a company's highest level of compensation to some reasonable multiple of its lowest level?
(4) I agree with you that society should seek to deter harmful drug use, but I'm not sure how effectively and fairly criminalization of drug use accomplishes this. It seems to me that we need to concentrate more on understanding the biological, social, cultural, and psychological causes of people using harmful drugs or not-so-harmful drugs in a harmful manner and address these causes in more varied and effective ways than we do now. I wonder what Ken Wilber and other "integral" minded people have to say about this.
--Steve
Nagarjuna/Steve,
Thank you for your thoughtful, well-stated response.
I share your frustration that the politicians of our time are not doing the people's work. It may be that political parties are the crux of the problem, forcing timid politicans to 'stay in line' with the party dogma if they want to keep their career ontrack. And then, most of what the parties do is wrestle for power, rather than legislate and make the hard, necessary decisions.
Also, voters act like children. They want a bounty of government services, but don't want to pay taxes.
Who was it who said (something like) "Democracy is terrible. The only thing going for it is that it is better than all the alternatives."
Re the issues: (1) Your point is excellent! Yes, our current business-provided health care system skews the use of the workforce in very bad ways. It prevents the best job applicant from getting the position. AND deters people from moving to new jobs. AND it leaves some people outside the system without the affordable health care they need. PLUS it all, rather diabolically, makes American labor much more expensive in the global economy.
2) I think the point Bill and I are trying to make is that the government should provide 'civil unions' to both hetero- and homo-sexual couples, leaving the word 'marriage' to religious institutions. Basically, the issue has become one of 'who owns the word marriage'? The way I look at it, let's surrender the word to fundamental religious leaders and followers who are infuriated about the idea of marriage being only between a man and woman, and go forward with equality. This won't change anything with your marriage, or anybody else's marriage, but it might clarify the distinction between what religions can recognize and what the government is doing when in sanctions the joining together of two people.
(3) I am very open to the idea of salary caps. My only problem here is that maximum salaries are much more of a bureaucratic (and conceptual) nightmare than minimum wages. If we were to create a 75% tax bracket, say, we risk having the rich move to foreign countries. If we cap top officers' salaries too tightly, we risk having companies moving their headquarters to corporation-friendly countries. Globalization wrecks havoc in the midst of creating greater efficiency.
It also has to be asked: Why shouldn't stockholders [thru their Board of Directors] have the right to pay their officers whatever they like? My answer is that the Good Old Boy network still exists, so, for the time being, they just shouldn't be allowed to. But I am troubled by the creation of new pay rules that have to be enforced, rather than using the IRS to exact equity in the economy by the much simpler and established system of enforced tax policy.
(4) I fully agree with your remarks on drug decriminalization. We need to weigh the hazards of what we are doing in all ways and then try to fashion laws that promote the kindest, healthiest outcome, internationally. And in doing so, not be calloused to individuals' stories and how laws can save or destroy lives.
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