When Less is More.

The time has come to get less out of our government. That’s right, less.

Societies operate in an invisible web of social contracts that define our mutual expectations in the pursuit of public goods through collective action.  We endeavor to capture the benefits of specialization and distributed authority in a manner where all of us are better off.  We reject schemes of isolation and independence by granting our proxy to others so that we might all enjoy greater security in our individual pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  Today, our biggest contract – between the people and their government – is in a perpetual state of breach: all are not better off.  And, we all share culpability.

This social contract, facilitated by taxation and representation, has been compromised by a combination of neglect and over-expansion.  This is arguably a bi-product of prosperity. Fewer of us hold our representatives accountable.  Most of us don’t even vote.  We’ve come to expect too much; our cradle-to-grave concept of social services is unsustainable.  Most of what we argue about in public fora today was never contemplated in the bargain our Founding Fathers struck with the colonies.  It’s time to rollback our expectations and take our future back.

While the Republicans rail about waste, the Democrats cite inequities.  While the Republicans want to privatize public services, the Democrats implore us to expect more out of our government.  Both parties are wrong. The path forward starts by retrieving our resources and reclaiming authority to re-deploy them in new structures and processes.  In the old days, we called these communities.  Today, we can do even better.  Objective-specific networks comprised of individuals, companies, and non-governmental organizations must take advantage of new technologies to solve problems and produce public goods.  I call them “amoeba networks,” fashioned after that single-cell, highly adaptive organism.  Imagine layers of amoebic networks that span many issues – open, transparent, and free of ideological hyperbole.  Many of the issues related to healthcare, education, and the development of alternative energy would be better served under networks unencumbered by laws that hinder innovation and entrenched, archaic systems of distribution. 

Call your congressperson today.  Ask him or her to promise less.  Tell them we’ll fend for ourselves.  By retrieving our resources and reclaiming authority we can all be better off. Less can be more.  The alternative staring us in the face is simply unacceptable: where more and more becomes less and less.

The Anger Party: Bring on Devolution!?

Last week, while I was watching a YouTube video of the September 12 “Tea Party” march on Washington  – between my amusement and disgust – I was struck by more than the ignorance, racism, and piety ... I was most impressed by the anger.[1]  The marchers were not minorities, young radicals, or those who have marched for the rights of gays or the unborn – not like we’re used to seeing. They were Boomers and Brokaw’s ‘Greatest Generation.’  They were against anything with President Obama’s name attached to it and took extreme liberties in modifying his name on their placards and posters. But it was not at all clear what they wanted – what they were for.  When interviewed they mostly stumbled to take a position or articulate a point of view on any issue.  They were just plain mad.  They were white and over fifty. They were like me. Well, sort of.

Introducing: The Anger Party – committed to devolution!?  Notwithstanding a few bigots, racists, and evangelical misfits, these are mostly good people – patriots chanting “U-S-A” who are concerned about the future of America and, moreover, their position in it.  They represent the angry margin that was once the center of American culture.  The country they knew, or thought they knew, has changed.  And they’re scared.  They blanch at the term ‘revolution’ although they embrace the notion of the ‘Tea Party.’ What they want is devolution – they want power taken away from our federal government and things put back the way they were.  Most claimed the Republican Party, but many more claimed no party. They are the newly disenfranchised. They are the Anger Party.

Our Founding Fathers worried about this and struggled to produce an organic Constitution to allow for self-correction.  They strived to protect us from our ‘errant selves’ and warned us of the danger of ‘factions.’[2]  More recently, Fareed Zakaria illustrated our slide toward an illiberal democracy in The Future of Freedom and argued for a rebalancing of liberty and democracy before restoration becomes impossible.[3]  It was clear to him, as it is to more of us now, that our form of collective action –our government – serves the few at the expense of many.  The Anger Party just wants to be put back on the list of ‘the few.’

While it is unlikely The Anger Party will prevail – especially without any sense of mission – the sentiment they represent (when you strip out the ugliness) is real.  It’s legitimate.  And, it’s a harbinger of things to come.  More people will become angrier more often as those who help themselves continue to ignore that they were elected to help others too.

---

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&feature=player_embedded#t=11

[2] See The Federalist Papers – particularly the writings of James Madison.

[3] Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003).

The Spending Myth

In George Cooper’s The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles and the Efficient Market Fallacy, he credits a relatively prolific Norwegian-American economist, Thorstein Veblen, for coining the term “conspicuous consumption.”  Veblen studied the “leisure class” at the turn of the 20^th century and used the term to identify markets where demand actually increased as price increased for the same amount and quality of goods – suggesting that markets were, perhaps, far from perfect.  He was one of the first to suggest that the tidy models of economic behavior were false; they ignored man’s capacity to make irrational choices – an appetite of irrationality that would prove insatiable and cause Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan – many years later – to, reluctantly, warn of “irrational exuberance.”  Of course, this irrationality was largely contained in Veblen’s day by the small number of people who had the financial capacity to behave irrationally, ergo the “leisure class” – a pleasing term for those with more money than sense. But that would change.

                  As the 20^th century unfolded and American power expanded after each of the first two World Wars, the numbers of those reaching a level of affluence rose steadily together with a hubristic claim to perception of value defined more frequently than not by price. More people had more money and, therefore, the capacity to make irrational assessments of price and value.  We segued from “conspicuous consumption” to “Keeping up with the Joneses” – a phrase originated by Arthur R. "Pop" Momand in a comic strip of the same name in the latter years of World War I.  The expansion of the “leisure class” meant our answer to the question, “What is wealth?” would be defined not by savings or investment – by Robber Barons’ tally of track miles or oil wells – rather, by consumption.

                  Cultural anthropologists must salivate about where we are today.  They have more than one hundred years’ evidence of our ingenuity and stupidity.  A perfect storm of brilliance and madness – frequently quelled by theological innovations replacing Calvinist notions of sacrifice with televangelist’s promotion of prosperity as the new benchmark of piety.  We traded the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) for Luke’s prescription to enjoy the fattened calf (Luke 15:23) – let the feast begin!  We embraced consumption – how much we spend – as the definitive yardstick of wealth. No money?  No problem – just charge it.  In doing so we placed our future in the hands of those who find value not in price, but in our debt.  We tethered the future of our children and grandchildren to a pirate ship.  We are betting on mercy where ingenuity and innovation once stood. We have succumbed to our perversion of price and value.

                  This is the unique, albeit shameful legacy of my generation – of those who rose to the challenge of Sputnik; found freedom at Woodstock; and embraced the alchemy of Reagan, swagger of Clinton, and hubris of Bush. Our masterpiece of contrivance was papering the world with ether-backed credit default swaps – vapor paper – trillions of dollars of securitized myth that makes Bernie Madoff look like rounding error. Our current prescription? Spend more! We continue to measure our prowess by total spending rather than savings and investment.  Our military is presumed to be most powerful because we outspend the rest of the world, combined.  Yet, suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices bring us to our knees.  We believe we have the greatest healthcare and education systems because we spend more than anyone else, while forty-plus million go without care and our high school rankings in math and science plummet. Every data point we stare at to forecast an economic recovery is fathered by spending. As the economy sputters, we contemplate more “stimulus.”  After all, it got us where we are and that can’t be all bad, right?  Wrong.

                  It is time to straighten the irons.  It is time to change the discourse of wealth.  It is time to return consumption to the altar of avarice and rebuild America. It is time to save, invest, and yes, sacrifice.  Wealth enables spending; spending does not create wealth.

Healthcare: What to Read

The healthcare issue is complex (to say the least), which is a significant contributor to its vulnerability to subterfuge.  For those of us interested in understanding it - who want to know what the fuss is all about and maybe even form our own informed opinion - I offer two articles and one study I believe tell you all you need to know.

They are:

1) "The Cost Conundrum" by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker, June 1, 2009, available at www.newyorker.com.

2) "How American Healthcare Killed My Father" by David Goldhill in The Atlantic, September 2009, available at www.theatlantic.com.

3) "Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Addressing Long-Term Health care Spending Growth" by 9 smart people, available at www.brookings.edu/reports.

Moving on (from healthcare) ... next up ... My Generation's Special Contribution to American Mythology: Spending is Wealth.

Mr. Brooks 'n Me

My wife has often suggested, after reading David Brooks' column in the New York Times, that there is a synaptic circuit - a telemetric loop that runs between Brooks' mind and mine.  In his column today, 'Let's Get Fundamental' (www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/opinion/04brooks.html) he argues, citing David Goldhill's piece in The Atlantic (see 'Let the Numbers Speak' post, below) and a research report from the Brookings Institute, that it is time, as I suggested (see 'RIP-Teddy' post, below), to go for it - all out reform - to swing for the fences.

Brooks is more eloquent than I and has just a few million more readers.  I hope he gets his message across before it's too late.  I hope he gets his hour with Obama to offer guidance before next week's address to Congress.  (I'm relatively certain I won't.)  I hope we actually do accomplish reform rather than, as Brooks warns, just "essentially cement the present system in place."  But, maybe I hope too much.  And, maybe Obama is all hoped-out.

As Brooks, I, and the Brookings Institute study agree: the problem is fixable.  The resources are there.  The financial imperative couldn't be more obvious.  The outstanding question: do we have the will?

Healthcare: Time to Address the Real Question

There’s a great scene in Disclosure, the 1994 movie starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. (Okay there’s more than one.) The one I’m referring to is when Douglas’ character, who has been compromised by Demi Moore’s character via a sexual liaison, realizes he’s solving the wrong problem. Douglas is quietly implored by an undisclosed supporter to ‘solve the problem.’ Douglas, of course, thinks he is solving the problem but subsequently realizes it was the wrong problem. When he finally figures this out he prevails. It all reminds me of how the Democrats and the White House are approaching the healthcare debate: they’re addressing the issue by arguing about the wrong things – albeit ably – and allowing a discussion about what is and always has been a public good to be framed in a construct of an individualistic meritocracy.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank identifies the same strategic error in ‘Why Democrats Are Losing on Health Care.’ Frank argues it’s ‘the big questions that are tripping them up.’ Understanding that the very nature of insurance is a cooperative, subsidized construct; that there’s no such thing as a truly individualistic healthcare choice; that the connection between merit and healthiness ‘is almost as risible’; and that ‘healthcare is not an individual commodity to be bought and enjoyed like other products … that the health of each of us depends on the health of the rest of us.’ (Just wait for H1N1’s return this fall.) In short, the Democrats have fallen into the wrong discussion – a battle they can win and still lose the war.

The larger issue is (see 8/31 blog), who are Americans? Do we believe in public goods, like security, safe water, law enforcement, etc.? Answer: yes. Is healthcare a public good? Answer: yes. When most of us have too much healthcare, some have none, and the providers are rewarded for over-serving those of us who have insurance – bankrupting our future – everyone loses in the long run. And the long run isn’t so far away.

It’s time to put the larger questions on the table and stop playing able technocrats. It’s time to agree on who we are and what we believe in. Then, the question of 'how' gets much easier.

Healthcare: Let the Numbers Speak

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then numbers are worth five hundred. Here are a few numbers to provide perspective on the healthcare debate.

Surely we can do better than this…

From David Goldhill’s article in The Atlantic:

Number of deaths each year from patients infected while in the hospital: 100,000 (more than twice than from motor vehicle accidents).

Number of deaths from blood clots following surgery: 200,000.

Exploding costs…

Also from Goldhill in The Atlantic:

Percentage of Medicare & Medicaid spending to  total government spending in 1966: 1%. Today: 20% (and rising).

‘The federal government spends 8 times more on healthcare as it does education, 12 times what it spends on food aid … 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times what it spends on water supply, and 830 times what it spends on energy conservation.’

The cost of power…

From Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone:

Amount of financial support from the health sector each of the republicans in the senate’s ‘group of six’ – considered the defacto key actors in the senate on healthcare reform – have received.

Grassley - $2,034,000.

Snowe - $756,000.

Enzi - $627,000.