The Dosquatch Says…

Money is make-believe. I mean this sincerely, particularly in situations where it is used as the basis for decisions that hold people down and keep them from or strip them of the basic requirements of life, like food and shelter.

I also recognize that the “prosperity for all” aspect of this position at least approaches a socialist view. That doesn’t make the position wrong, or me a socialist. Deal with it.

I’m not advocating socialism, nor completely siding against capitalism. I’m saying that there exists some basic quality of life to which all men ought be naturally entitled, and that meeting that need might require finding a middle ground between the extremes.

I’m saying that it is morally repugnant, for instance, that veterans who have defended these liberties “we hold so dear” are left to panhandle, while some blonde tramp lives large because she manages not to flutter her lazy eye too much while exercising her only marketable skill – “That’s hawt.“

Or maybe it’s because she was born into a family fortune. I’m just saying that, perhaps, such a station in life should be earned rather than be dictated by happenstance. If fortune and luxury are a birthright, are we really so much better than a feudalistic aristocracy?

At this point, everybody in my reading audience with even a single conservative nerve fiber in their body is champing at the bit. The vile spectres are raised – redistribution of wealth, state ownership, censorship, government control, burdensome regulation. I know, I’ve heard the arguments. I’ve made some of these arguments. You want to know why? Because they’re all valid concerns.

That does not make status quo the correct choice. My concerns about class disparity are valid, too. It is not enough to embrace one evil for fear of another. We should seek what is good in each argument, discard what is not, and attempt to build a system that is of benefit to all.

To that end, I’ll now field some imaginary Frequently Asked Questions.

Q: How do you propose to fund this “basic equity for all” you suggest?
A: Money is a make-believe score keeping system, remember?

Q: Dude, seriously.
A: OK, fine. If one needs money, one must go where the money is. In the US, the top 1% of the population control 38% of the wealth (and the top 10% control 71%), while the bottom 40% of the population control less than 1% of the wealth. So… we go squeeze the top 1-10%. What amounts to a minor discomfort to those few, but results in major quality of life improvements to many, seems acceptable.

Q: AHA! Socialist! Wealth redistributor! Damn dirty commie! And what’s this “in the US” crap? I thought you didn’t believe in borders! Where’s your birth certificate?!? Have you even read this bill?!?
A: Dude. Seriously.

Q: Sorry.
A: It happens. Care to try that again in the form of a question?

Q: Erm…. OK, who are you to decide how much squeezing is “a minor discomfort”?
A: Me? I’m nobody. But I’m not making that decision, either, I’m just throwing stones at windows. Socio-economic policy is ultimately decided by large groups of people much higher up the food chain than I. Historically, those decisions are made by that 1% for as long as they can keep the bottom 40% from changing minds with pointy sticks… which often causes something more than “minor” discomfort. Just saying.

Q: Wealth is the reward for hard work and success! Why would you punish the people who are working the hardest to prop up those who do the least?
A: A lot of “those who do the least” are people who have been laid off to improve the bottom line of “those who work the hardest”. Real hardships inflicted in the pursuit of money. I go back to that $38,000,000 bank CEO. A month of his salary would completely feed 240 families of 4 (probably more) for an entire year, and he would still be left with more money than I’d make in a millennium – and I dare say the laborers who get laid off in these sort of economic times work a hell of a lot harder than that CEO on a golf course.

Q: The ultimate goal of socialism is to have us all equal in poverty.
A: That’s not really a question, but I’ll field it anyway. I’m not a socialist, I am not advocating socialism. I want you to go forth and prosper. Live large, make mad money. Go to a golf course and call it work. I don’t care, and I don’t want to take that from you. All I’m saying is needs before wants. You can’t buy a keg for the party until you’ve paid your bills. In this context, meeting the basic needs of its citizens is one of the duties of society. If ensuring that families have homes and food means you have to wait a few more months to get another gold-plated Ferrari or private jet, I’m OK with that.

Q: Wow – that was awful snarky, wasn’t it?
A: I’m a snarky kind of guy.

Q: Don’t we already do these things?
A: No.

Q: I mean, there are shelters and soup kitchens and compulsory emergency medical treatment and…
A: NO!

Q: Aren’t these things best left to charitable organizations?
A: Basic needs are not an issue of charity, but of responsibility. Food and shelter and basic medical care are needs. Leave Angel Tree to the charities.

There are more bodies that need beds than there are beds in the shelters. There are more people that need food than there is soup in the kitchen. Economic downturns hurt us all, and it is at these times when “charity” would be needed the most that people can least afford to give, and the coffers suffer.

Q: OK, but medical. Why medical? Aren’t the emergency rooms obligated to treat everybody regardless of ability to pay?
A: There are many problems with this, starting with – how do you think the ER pays for this? If Joe doesn’t pay, his bill gets absorbed in higher cost to everybody else. We’re already paying for Joe’s care, and at the highest possible rates, and for the least benefit.

Healthy people don’t go to the ER, and the ER’s only obligation when discharging you is to have patched you up enough that you aren’t in imminent danger of death. To quote a Disney parrot – “You’d be surprised what you can live through.” And this sort of policy doesn’t do anything to address chronic needs or ongoing care, like diabetes and cancer. It treats immediate health threats, but leaves you days and weeks at a time to spiral toward death.

Better in terms of both health and cost to offer basic health maintenance than clog the emergency channels.

Q: If we are compelled to meet a person’s basic needs no matter what, what incentive does he have to do anything useful, at all, ever?
A: This is an excellent question. I’d like to hope that one would aspire to something higher than bare sustenance, but the conditions of the current welfare system seem to indicate otherwise. In short, I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer for this. I wish I did.

That kinda taps me at the moment. I know there are other questions, but they aren’t coming to mind at the moment, so I’ll leave it at this.

If you’d like me to answer actual questions, feel free to drop me a comment!

Meet the Furback, economy, philosophy economy, health care, money, snarky

I want to talk about the economy for a moment, but I don’t want to sound like an econ textbook. Market forces are numerous, complex, and obtuse. There is an entire vocabulary of painful words used to discuss such things in elaborate and clinical detail. But in spite of all of that, there is this:

I have a skill or object that you desire. You have a skill or object that I desire. We agree on an exchange of goods and/or services that we both feel is fair.

This is called “Direct Barter”, and everything else is a variation on this theme of varying complexity. This isn’t even Econ 101, this is remedial level stuff, and I promise not to get any deeper than that.

As group size increases, direct barter becomes more and more difficult to track. It becomes beneficial to trade in the abstract. I provide my good or service for a claim token rather than direct benefit, and I can exchange that token where and with whom I need for that direct benefit at a later time.

The claim token itself has no direct value except as an abstract representation, and this only works if all parties involved agree on that represented value. To the extent that the tokens you posses accurately represent the goods and services you have provided to the community, this is all a Good Thing.

That’s not what happens, though. What happens is that the perceived value is assigned to the token rather than what the token represents, and people are incentivized to chase the tokens without regard for the benefit to the community – to game the system in search of a higher score for the sake of the score. This sort of behavior is often to the detriment of the community.

These tokens have taken many forms over the years – precious stones and metals, shells, beads, and today we call it “money”.

We are living the results of the quest for money for money’s sake. Those who hold the reigns of the economy have used their positions, the access it provides them, and through chicanery and unmonitored backroom gambling, used money to acquire more money, while providing no useful good or service in return. This may be good for the individual in the short term, but is horribly detrimental to the community in the long term. It strains the system, and its credibility, and eventually it must break.

And it has, with the result that those with the reigns and their $38,000,000 salaries, prior to bonuses, have brought their broken toys before us and begged for even more money to put them back together.

Just for perspective, $38,000,000 is more than I would earn in over a thousand years were I able to keep every cent I made. There is nobody providing that much of a direct barter benefit to the community. Such levels of compensation are pure fiat.

The economy breaks, those shrined institutions of money shake to the foundation, and everything stops. Unemployment rises, prices spiral, people cannot afford groceries.

But it’s all make believe. The scoreboard is broken, but the scoreboard is only keeping count of valueless tokens. The things of real value still exist.

There are jobs to be done, and people who want to do those jobs.

There are people without homes, and houses sitting empty.

There are people hungry, and food in the fields.

And this, for the want of money. But it is not money we want, but a fair exchange of value. Shelter and food and family and friends for a job we are willing to do. We are beholden to an imaginary thing of our own creation. It need not be so.

There is no reason a willing and able person should not be allowed to contribute those skills to his community. There is nothing to be gained by keeping a family homeless next to an empty house. There is no nobility in allowing people to be hungry next to fields full of food.

To the extent that means exist in a community, it is to the benefit of, and therefore the duty of, that community to see that the basic needs of all of its members are met. Food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment. What we do in service for one another ultimately helps everyone.

Prosperity is not unless it is for us all. Anything less is tyranny by a different name.

Politics, economy economy, money