When I was coming of age, in the time of Watergate and Vietnam, like many others I was so fed up with government, that I came to believe that we needed to fuck up the government so it would stop fucking with us. The United States was bad, that’s what we thought, and there was a lot of justification for that point of view. I voted for Reagan, as a lot of other people did, because he said what we believed. Let’s get on with doing our thing, and keep the government from screwing up. Of course it turns out that isn’t what Reagan was doing, he was just saying that to get our votes. Figures.
Anyway, now we live in different times. Now the problem are the mega-corporations. The cure, imho, is to create new business entities that serve the users first. Sure the shareholders make money, when you take a risk and produce a product or service that people want, that’s great and there must be rewards or people won’t risk. I’m a capitalist. But the things these companies are doing now is not capitalism. They know we don’t have time to understand all the ways they can screw each of us individually. If we did, there would be no time for living. So we should hire people to study what they’re doing and route around it. Either make it illegal, or start a co-op to offer the same service or product without the gotchas.
That’s the reasoning behind the health insurance “public option,” which is a damned good idea. We’ve tried it the way the insurance industry wants to do it, and the result is a lot of needless death, sickness, and wasted money. So, they can keep doing what they’re doing, but we’re going to pool our resources and self-insure. We could either form a new entity to do it, or we could use the one we already went to the trouble to create.
That was what the American Revolution was about, freeing ourselves from tyranny. There we go again. We allowed ourselves to be snookered into thinking that using our power is a form of weakness. Reagan. I don’t think Obama is our friend (remember, he likes Reagan), but I think if we kick his ass and show our power, he’ll come around. I heard Markos say the other day that they need to reactivate the base — but that’s bullshit. We need to reactivate ourselves. Obama didn’t organize this, that’s why we’re all so confused. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t particularly want Obama. I desperately wanted to get rid of Bush. For a while I was going to vote for Hillary. So were a lot of other people.
Sure, I cried tears of joy when we elected a young black man with his young black family. It was a wonderful moment, but that moment has now passed. Now we have to decide what we really want. It’s not up to Obama to activate us, it’s up to ourselves.
But don’t be kidded, we need government, without it, companies will just make more meaningless paper value and we’ll keep having collapses. Those guys don’t have a clue where to go either. I think that may be the problem. We don’t know what we’re doing here. More on that later.
[...] by Dave Winer on Protoblogger [...]
When the banking industry went belly-up I thought we should take all the bail-out money and used it to make a temporary gov’t commercial-lending bank.
I’m less sure about the public-option for healthcare. Definitely the health insurance industry is totally broken, and I have little interest in protecting them. I’d rather see more done to get employers out of the middleman position, allow interstate competition, and various other things to give some market forces a chance… I think the public-option is bound to just be a huge expense for reinforcing a bad process of delivering care.
Insurance is a form of government, you can have the government be the insurer or we can start a new insurance company — it’s exactly the same thing because insurance is such a simple business. The government through the FDA and the AMA (which is a government itself) controls what can be done by medicine. The “public option” is therefore completely non-controversial. Insurance is itself a public option.
Your points are well taken. In particular, the role of government in the behavior of mega-corporations is very interesting: Corporations are defined by law, from their limited liabilities to their tax advantages–and that pesky “artificial person” status.
For me, that’s the most onerous. According to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person#Creation_and_history_of_the_doctrine), the British Crown opened Pandora’s Box when it established the legal personality of a corporation. Why would they want to do that? So corporations could be sued.
We all know what has happened since: Corporations claim the right to representation in government.
Regarding the public option, my level of optimism is related to the “legal personality” outcome. Considering how pharmaceutical corporations reacted to the 1990 ruling by the US Congress that they would be required to charge all clients the same rates, I predict the same reaction for the public option. The Congress meant to stop the pharms from charging Medicare/Medicaid patients more than others for the same medicine. The result was that the costs were raised for all.
I blame the average ill formed sense of value that we share as a nation. It drives our elections, our purchasing, and our social evolution.
More diversity and mini-communities all coexisting is the way of the future. A multitude of micro businesses working together without heavy transaction taxes and providing real value is what I want to see.
I see the government as the gardener of our the economy garden. It’s role should be to foster competition and keep the crooked companies under control.
That’s the problem with big corporations, they’re like a weed infestation that kills the younger plants before they can bloom. No government would mean a world controlled by a few monopolies.
Ok, we need government. But why is the current government supporting the banks which caused the crash with the money of people paying taxes? Why is the current government backing them instead of simply let them fall? Shouldn’t we all think about the contradiction of talking against the “ancient” system of banks out of control while helping them when the dynamics of market show that the right course of action would be to simply stand and see how they enter into self destruction?
I think this is all a terrible situation of schizophrenia for the people, who is paying (as usual) the bad practises and behaviour of the financial corporations.
I agree Dave. We do need Government. We also need capitalism, but not the mutant viral version we are currently suffering under. The banks that caused this problem should have been shutdown, bankrupted by the FDIC, or properly regulated in the first place, so as to avoid artificial bubbles and collapse.
The only way “we the people” can change these “corporate persons” is to vote with our dollars. Stop purchasing their products and tell them why you are not buying what they are selling. Also, we must let the responsible companies know why we are buying their products. Hopefully because they create, sell, and recycle them in a responsible sustainable way.
As for health care. The current legislation and various flavors of public options amount to nothing more than a few band-aids on a massive hemorrhaging wound. Until we address the underlying problem, we will not be able to create a sustainable system. There are 4 basic health care systems in the world.
1. The Bismarck Model – used in Germany, Japan, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and parts of Latin America.
2. The Beveridge Model – Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia.
3. The National Health Insurance Model – Canada, Taiwan, South Korea.
4. The out of pocket model – most of the poor countries
The United States has a hodgepodge public/private/corporate mix of all these systems, so consequently cannot even begin to control costs or provide coverage for everyone. What we need from our government is a decision on which “SYSTEM” to use. Only then will we be able to move forward and create health care solutions.
[...] 1. I’m sorry but we need government. [...]
Here! Here!
I’ve been on board with the rest of it for a long time.
However, I eagerly anticipate the comments following up on “we don’t know what we’re doing here”.
There is only so long before the next wave of automation / industrialisation comes over the population. Machinery; Electricity; Computers; Interconnected Networks; Robotics => Convergence.
If we don’t have the necessary rights in place before these convergence items are more valuable in Economic Production, we will end up being ranked using the rules of the existing system. That is, by monetary value. Within a Fiat Currency system where Monetary Value is somewhat arbitrary (when it suits the bankers) & somewhat absolute (when deciding to enforce the debts of the poors).
That ranking will not favour the great majority of mothers, fathers & children in own country. Let alone those other folk of the world.
Co-Capitalism; Co-operative Capitalism or some other similar system that wins business on :
* effectiveness of service / meeting demand;
* within a framework that rewards the users as though they were the owners (or significant part thereof).
This would be a way forward, where capital value created through recurring revenue / business is not entirely captured by the existing shareholders & employees. But was awarded to the providing of the economic value – those that buy the service.
A portion of value could be retained for the Money & the Employees.
There has been some work along these lines in Canada, setting up the necessary institutions / constitutions to allow such non-profit / private hybrids to exist.
In a world where “less than free” exists yet creates enormous economic value, this may be a powerful concept. To each his own, according to his product, but with a safety net & within a “regulatory” framework of sufficient openness.
Of course, the main problem here is that any entity may be attached to another entity (bought / sold) and so the perpetuation of the entity would need to be addressed, lest it were eradicted through assimilation / acquisition.