Wrecking Crew, Human Nature And Progress, Health Care
I am reading Thomas Frank’s new book, “Wrecking Crew”. In this case it is about Republican attempts to destroy the New Deal and deliberately sabotage the federal government to make it the servant of business and to make it incompetent in almost every area except perhaps Defense. Even there under Rumsfeld they tried to privatise with very mixed results.
Now we have Obama and I am not sure where he stands on the government. He seems to be an old school liberal believer in effective government. I wonder after years of Republicans and Republican lite Democrats, if there is a federal government with any institutional memory left. It has been deliberately sabotaged since 1981 according to Frank.
The screw ups in Iraq and the Katrina debacle are both examples of how badly the federal government has been undermined according to Frank. This is because of a policy of putting persons in charge of agencies who did not believe in the mission of the agency, by deliberately underpaying federal workers to cause a brain drain and by sending talented federal employees who believed in their mission to positions where they would have no influence. This went on under Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton according to Frank.
He also records the rise of the lobbyist, and the increase of the revolving door between industry and government. He said that lobbyists have created a new economic class in Washington that has turned the suburbs around Washington into the wealthiest in the nation. In fact 5 of the 6 wealthiest are in Washington suburbs according to his book. It used to be that the suburbs of NYC were the wealthiest but this indicates a real shift of wealth from finance to lobbying government.
I just checked Wikipedia and it says that of the top 10 counties in median income, 5 of them are in the suburbs of Washington, DC. This is the list.
Rank County Median Household Income
1 Fairfax County, Virginia $100,318
2 Loudoun County, Virginia $99,371
3 Howard County, Maryland $94,260
4 Hunterdon County, New Jersey $93,297
5 Douglas County, Colorado $92,125
6 Somerset County, New Jersey $91,688
7 Morris County, New Jersey $89,587
8 Montgomery County, Maryland $87,624
9 Arlington County, Virginia $87,350
10 Nassau County, New York $85,994
4 of them are suburbs of New York, 5 of them are suburbs of Washington and one of them is a vacation and retirement county in Colorado.
This is incredible. The people living in those counties are not the federal bureaucrats. They are the lobbyists and contractors. This is the result of 30 years of government outsourcing, and right wing policies that put emphasis on using private industry to perform government functions because they claim that government is incompetent or inefficient. By sabotaging the ability of government to do its job the Republicans and the blue dog Democrats have created a self fulfilling prophecy.
For years I was a believer in coops and the voluntary government approach of left wing anarchism. It was basicly an idealists vision of mutual aid and cooperation. Some anarchists believed that people would cooperate out of self interest others out of a belief that people are inherently cooperative. After living for over half a century I have come to the conclusion that most people simply don’t want to be bothered with issues of state. Some people are wonkish and love policy. Others are paranoid with an axe to grind. Some are simply uninterested, and there are others have no time.
We could make proactive democracy mandatory, like some countries make it mandatory that people vote. We could make it a law that people all have to vote every day with an hour set aside for that in every day. There could be a stipend just like jury duty. Most people respond to financial incentive. But will that make government any better? Just like the internet gives people access to more knowledge than ever before does that make us any wiser?
The problem is that smart motivated lawyers, the sort of people who live to come up with ways to help the people with money find ways to game the system will always be there to find loopholes. This is a pretty cynical view.
This is on CSPAN tonight.
Today Max Baucus announced his health care plan and it does not include a public option as we expected. It has a coop option. This should make anarchists happy. But it does not make me happy because I have become more convinced that what we need is a single payer plan not a coop competing with private insurance. Unless this coop plan is funded it will become a dumping ground for people that the private insurance industry does not want. It becomes an even more extreme situation in which private insurance industry can cherry pick the patients they want. Not a single Republican has come on board despite this weakening of the plan.
The basic fact of the matter is that Baucus is the insurance industries man in the Democratic Party and he is the man putting foward the Senate Plan. This plan is the plan that industry wants and it is the plan they will probably get.
Senator Mitch McConnell is still opposed to every plan because it will kill jobs by increasing taxes. He is using the example of last August’s AstroTurf protests to say that most Americans are opposed to the health care plans. He says the plans should be left up to the states and that the taxes will be up to 52%. He is saying that the new government plan will force seniors off of medicare. The Republicans just say no. They want less government according to McConnell. That is pretty lame considering what the track record of the Republicans has been to outsource Government to private industry at more cost and less efficiency than it was in federal hands.
Getting back to my point above about human nature. I have watched Anarchists and leftist groups for years work on developing consensus decision making processes and come up with methodology to empower those who are normally silent and unwilling to speak. I have watched tedious meetings crawl on for hours with people dealing with introductions and issues of process. I have seen the opposite with impatient leader types running rough shod over process in an attempt to get an agenda pushed through.
Although there have been some advances, such as women and minorities have been allowed to enter the main stream debate and perhaps some of them got their start in these radical groups that helped them develop their public speaking skills, ultimately I think that people take the public stage when they are ready and it may be laudable that certain types of organizations in theory make it easier for people to participate, ultimately I don’t think that there is any real difference in terms of the percentage of active persons in the anarchist scene than in any other. If you discount the factor that Anarchism may attract the type of person who is more of an A type personality, pun intended, process may give an increased opportunity but in reality cliques, friendship and ones sense of personal drive and ambition has more to do with a persons movement in a group than the process of the group.
There may be methods of enforcing commitment and involvement by using motivational psychology, but ultimately life is and people are and we do what we do.
That does not mean that there cannot be any change, but we are only a few generations from the jungle. We are hard wired biologically to function in certain ways. We can modify behavior in early childhood and behavioral psychology puts emphasis on the first 5 years of live. That sets certain patterns of behavior, but much is genetic. I mean I look at myself. I look just like my dad. He was gone from the time I was 4 years old but I picked up genetic traits from him that I barely recognise. I have spent years in spiritual communes, taking mind altering drugs, studying the most radical theories that I could find and ultimately I have discovered that biology triumphs.
It doesn’t mean we are hopeless, but it does mean we are conditioned by our genes and we need to learn how to take that into account. Behavioral scientists who work for the advertising industry certainly do.
I am realizing that we have to be forced to do good or the right thing sometimes. This can be done democratically, and by that I mean leadership has to convince enough of the people that they have a good idea, and if enough people agree then we should as a society act. This can be by a simply majority, or by a 3/5 or 2/3 or whatever we agree to. But the point is there has to be leadership and people willing to give leadership a chance. That leadership has to be legitimate and we need a process of changing that leadership if we decide it doesn’t work. This may be what we have now. I am not sure. I would like to see democracy expanded and a real increase in public policy focus on encouraging people to participate. But for it to be worth the effort the results must be real empowerment. Is that Anarchism, maybe, is it democracy, maybe, I would call it democracy plus.
Whatever we aim for I think we need to pay attention to where we come from, to get an idea of what is possible in moving foward in the human project. Part of it is to stop encouraging greed and selfish tendencies. This is not simply a matter of process, this is a matter of understanding human psychology and modifying behavior in the direction of liberation and progress.
Tags: Baucus COOP Plan, Frank's Wrecking Crew, Insurance Industry Loves It. Anarchy and Human Nature