Times are hard for people. And there are two genetic strains of personalities reacting to those hard times.
The first is dominated by the selfish gene. They are the ones who say “hey, look at me! I’m doing just fine. If I could do it, you can too. I’m blessed. And don’t take anything of mine, unless you’re willing to pay me back a very high rate of return!”
The second is dominated by the selfless gene. They are the ones who say, “look, that could be me. Hey, I have something here I’m not using. Take this. Maybe you can find some use for it. And don’t worry about paying me back… When you get on your feet, return the favor to someone else who is down on their luck..”
We both know individuals and groups of individuals who follow these two pursuits…. To those of us who study history. a parallel can be drawn between the two camps. The selfish first stems from Old World philosophy. The selfless second originated in the New World.
The European nations were at that time founded upon the principals of mercantilism. Each nation used militaristic methods to acquire capital in the form of gold bullion. Stealing gold from South Americans was the principal cause of wealth formation throughout Europe during the colonial age. Those nations without territory in South America, stole their gold from those who had territory and were stealing South America blind. And then of course, you could trade some of your products for their gold if they were inclined to buy. That in a nutshell, was the European economic system existing at the time of this continent’s discovery.
You did not aid and abet your enemy. You charged, kept records, and used your military to collect, if those owing you money failed to meet their obligations. Needless to say, this mentality flowed downhill throughout each nation’s respective economies. If someone defaulted, you threw that person into prison where they could never acquire the means to pay you back.. You were vindictive, demanding, and cruel…. You had to be, so they feared you. Many of our early settlers were these poor locked up souls, filling up debtor’s prisons, only to be shipped over here, dumped and left to die..
Instead they prospered and from them, came the other line of treating those less fortunate: helping them get back on their feet by making them productive enough to earn money. The money then earned, was subsequently returned to those generous souls who gave them a break, by being spent in their stores on their own goods or services.
As the frontier expanded Westward, this philosophy spread with it. If a neighbor’s house burnt, you and your neighbors had a house raising party. If Indians stole their horses, you gave up some of yours. If your neighbor needed a plow, you lent him yours. The benefit was obvious. Should you befall poor circumstances, they would do the same for you, without asking. People were a rare asset as America’s frontier expanded; natural resources were abundant. So naturally, people gave up what they had, to help other’s if that meant they all had a better chance of surviving… After all, natural resources couldn’t come to your aid or load your weapon, should your family be attacked by a scalping party out on a raid.
This concept of banding together to help others is a very American trait. It would be one not so well widespread today, if it hadn’t been the greatest generation of Americans who brought it to the forefront. WWII drove home this idea to the rest of the world, It showed all that America was very different. Over here, people stood for something and because of that, they were willing to invest valuable resources to help right injustice, and even better, once winning? They packed up and went home. And one even better? They used their own precious resources to help their former enemies get back on their feet again… Gee what a great country..
Today we hear that same philosophy about helping others, being used across our health care debate This great debate of this decade is, at the core, a debate between helping people survive, or… helping people get rich off of helping people survive… All National Health Care arguments boil down to that one sentence… Whatever side you are on, whatever plank you hide behind, whatever argument you make, at its core is either the belief that we should be selfless, or selfish.
There is no way around it. If as a nation we should be selfless in our treatment to our unfortunate, our own citizens, then we need some form of governmental input. If as a nation we should be selfish in our treatment to our unfortunate, our own citizens, then we need to maintain the current status quo system of for profit private health care…
History has a funny way of playing tricks. We think of Socialism as a European tradition. However it was from America that socialism derived its inspiration during our nation’s growth over the 19th Century. Socialism was a contrived as a method calculated to achieve those values visible on the American frontier, by redirecting the wealth that for so long, had been locked down by a very few. Socialism was the way to pry open the coffers of one or two rich guys, thereby allowing help to flow outward to areas where it needed to go.. One should note, that the rise in Socialism was most prominent after WWII when the populations of broken nations looked to America as a model, and said we want to be like them… Combining the resources of government and business was their quickest avenue to achieve that goal.
It’s time we pool our resources over on this side of the ocean. Our financial system was stripped bare, and we need to grow our way back to prosperity. We also need to bring along the global economy with us..
One could argue that capitalism, free markets with no regulation, is exactly what collapsed our global financial system. AIG taking insurance payments and spending them, simply because they weren’t regulated, is exactly what capitalism calls for…
Americanism, on the other hand does just the opposite. Americanism is simply the pooling of resources for a short time only, to help a neighbor in need. It comes with no attachments, save the deep understanding that should the shoe be on the other foot, we would be the beneficiaries of their good fortune. We need Americanism if we are to continue our role as the greatest nation on earth. Our experimentation with the old world order these past eight years, led us to disaster… just like it has led European nations to disaster every twenty years, up until Americanism took over after 1945.
The wave of the future is not a free for all, money grabbing fiasco; it is an evolution. And evolution is at its most successful when the gene pool available is maximised. As for the healthcare debate, the more players allowed at the table, the better chance we have at evolving our healthcare system into the best option. That best option, will be determined not by plan or directive, but by individual purchases across every state of this nation…
Even if you have great distaste for a government entity entering itself into the health care insurance field, you can have no fear of letting it compete in the free market of health coverage… It is after all, a free market. If it can’t compete effectively, it will become extinct. On the other hand, if it is the better option and receives a much better reception than its private competitors do, it would be wrong to deny this nation’s citizens something that benefits them so greatly… It would be flat out wrong..
So the American thing to do, is to allow this governmental insurance entity to compete on the free market with private competitors. Americans helping Americans. It’s the only American thing we can possible do..
And as an aside, the next time you hear the word socialism patsied about, set them straight. It is Americanism they’re against.. Socialism died with fall of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. Now, its Americanism. Helping ones neighbor who can’t help themselves..
But then again… there are those with the selfish gene.
kavips 
13 comments
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September 16, 2009 at 2:55 am
Brian Shields
Bullshit. Relabeling it with America in front of it with some blind patriotism isn’t changing the fact that you a robbing Peter to pay for Paul’s Healthcare.
I don’t care how you try to spin it, taxing one to pay for services to benefit of another is theft, especially if the one being taxed sees zero benefit from the exchange.
American charity exists, and should remain optional charity. Forcing people to be charitable isn’t charity, no matter how noble to venture is. It is still using force.
September 16, 2009 at 3:44 am
Helping One’s Neighbor… Americanism Outward
[…] is the original post: Helping One’s Neighbor… Americanism By admin | category: outward | tags: are-hard, chapel-hill, congestion, extreme-fatigue, […]
September 16, 2009 at 9:28 am
kavips
Relabling it dispels many myths surrounding the term health care. Your taxing factoid is wrong. Taxing one to pay for services that create a lower total cost for all of us, is beneficial.
Example. you drive. but you don’t pay .45 cents a mile as you do on private invested toll roads. 25,000 miles would cost every driver $11,250 each year. You probably don’t even pay that amount in total taxes…
Why? Because it is cheaper to tax everyone a small amount and use that large fund to drive down costs because it is done on such a large scale.
Taxes are simply part of the market economy and removing them, does…well, it’s like pulling Wal*mart out of town. What Health Care needs is a Wal*mart of health care. Since no one else will do it, our government by default, has to.
September 16, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Steve Newton
kavips
I would argue that the foremost problem with your thesis is this: both of those urges–selfish and selfless–exist in all of us, all the time. And both are necessary. If I become St Francis giving away all my worldly possessions to the poor–and thereby my own children starve–I am no hero.
Or look at it this way: how much is enough? In our family we give to charity both in time, goods, and money–we tend to give a lot when you add it all up. But who decides with that last $1,000 I have in the bank whether it should be used for someone else’s benefit or to send my own kids to a better summer camp?
It is all well and good in the abstract to engage in reframing that would make George Lakoff proud, as you do when you argue that unselfishly “giving” via government taxation makes life better for everybody, and so the mandatory nature of that giving is justified. The reality is that government does not work usually–if ever–in the pristine manner you suggest.
The government rewards middle and upper class property owners with tax breaks to purchase homes and land (for the benefit of the banking industry), but does not allow poor people to deduct their medical expenses from their income tax unless they meet a ridiculous 7% threshold.
So this is sharing: the poor guy cannot purchase medicine because he is being asked to “give unselfishly” to defray the borrowing costs of my condo?
Or the roads–your example in the comment above. Yep, that wonderful interstate highway system that we all chipped in to build, and which made possible white flight into suburbia, hollowed out the inner cities, and left primarily minorities trapped in huge dependency zones with little hope of ever escaping. All thanks to a government plan….
By the way, go back and de-romanticize your history a bit: those people out on the frontier you have idolized as being all unselfish and community oriented and proto-socialist? When the “Indians stole their horses,” they responded with genocide and land grabs, all supported by the US government, which [I have documented elsewhere] has continued programs of forced sterilization of Native American women well into both our lifetimes.
So please, make the argument for cooperating in the name of shared benefit if you will, but try not to distort either history or reality when you do so.
September 17, 2009 at 7:27 am
kavips
make Lakoff proud?
I’ll take that….
September 17, 2009 at 7:35 am
kavips
The 7% is ridiculous.
There was white flight out of the suburbs.
There was Oklahoma and Wounded Knee.
But forced sterilization on Indian reservations?
None of which, affect whether our lives are better under cruel capitalism with no safety net, or under Americanism, which is capitalism with the adequate protection of a safety net..
I’ll still take the latter.
September 17, 2009 at 3:13 pm
John Galt
How has taxing everyone driven down the cost of using Amtrak?
When I was a child my father worked for DuPont’s. We had what was considered the best health insurance around. It didn’t cover doctor visits, it didn’t cover eye exams, it didn’t cover any dental. What it did cover was 50% to 80% of major medical procedures.
My parents chose their doctors based on cost and the quality of the care.
In the early 1980’s we were told that if had health care instead of health insurance cost will come down due to early detection of diseases. Now, most companies (mine included) have health plans that cover eye exams, glasses, all dental procedures, 100% medical coverage with a co-pay.
Last week I took my kids in for their back to school eye exam. As I waited I noticed women had picked out a pair of frames she wanted. The doctor looked at her insurance and informed her that her insurance pays for scratch guard and tinting; the women shrugged her shoulders and said “OK”. If she was paying for this out of her own pocket I highly doubt she would OK’d the additional $200.00, now times that by a million and you start to get the picture.
What if we were told that the cost of owning a car would be greatly diminished and the resale value would greatly be enhanced if car insurance would cover all maintence cost. Would you shop around for the best deals on tires or just purchase the best since you’re not really paying for them? Then as the cost of car insurance skyrockets, would you call for the government to step in and compete against GEICO?
Food is certainly as important as health care. What if had food insurance? Would you clip coupons, buy only what was on sale or buy in bulk to save money? Or would you just throw lobster tails and filet migon in the basket since your not really paying of it.
We currently do not have a free market in the health care industry.
Image a 24 year old male fresh out of college. He gets a job with a company and he gets the one size fits all health insurance policy his company offers. Now of course this policy covers hysterectomy’s and gynecological exam’s, neither of which he has any use for. Or he can opt out of this insurance and take the dollar equallivent and put the money in a medical savings account. Lets say his employer puts $4000.00 a year into his MSA that he “owns” and he puts in $2000.00 a year. By the time he is 40 his MSA has over $120,000.00
He would certainly need some type of heath insurance, something that would pay 50% to 80% of major medical with a $5000.00 deductable. In todays dollars what would that cost? Can we agree somewhere around $100 a month?
And of course you “own” your MSA, if you passed away in an accident you can leave your MSA to a family member or a friend or to a charity.
Nothing Congress is proposing will bring down the cost of health care, only the free market can accomplish that.
September 17, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Steve Newton
kavips
Here is the ultimate question for you: where should the safety net end?
For what are we not collectively but individually responsible?
September 18, 2009 at 8:11 am
kavips
First Steve, and then John:
Somewhere a decision has to be made on the dimensions of that safety net. Like every other decision we make, it is a bet on what we think will be cost effective for us… If we make it too wide, parts of it never get used. If we make it to small, additional accidents will happen.
Once the decision is made, the net get paid for and installed. The alternative: not having a safety net because one can’t decide on it’s dimensions, may have some appeal, until the first trapeze artist misses his rung and begins to fall…
John, you bring up good points why health care is not working well right now. Your MSA plan has merits as well. But as I read your well written piece, the over all theme of “indulgence” seems to predominate. The parts missing out of your analogy were those involving people who could not afford an MSA, or health insurance, or going to the doctor. If one has plenty of money the MSA makes good sense. But, if one can’t pay the Delmarva’s gas bill, and is in danger of being shut off, and has exhausted all assistance available, that $2000 a year is a necessity. The insurance has to wait… Likewise for businesses. If they can’t afford their portion of the insurance payment, the insurance piece has to wait…
Not all, but many of the arguments you make as to the abuses of our current system, can, with the implementation of a government competitor, actually bring our insurance market closer in line to the free market system we hold dear… Free market works only when there is competition We could bust the monopolies as was done to Standard Oil, or… we could introduce the Wal*Mart of Health Care, one all main street insurances would have to no choice but to compete with, in the form of a government supported business.
This Wal*Mart of Health Care would then, through competition, trim the costs for everyone. And, it would use the free market to make it happen..If private insurance really IS better, they will become so in order to survive…
So we can stymie debate, confuse the issues by trying to decide the size of our safety net. OR….. we can build ourselves a Model A brand of health care, one that works…. is affordable, and then we can tinker with it year by year as time goes by… One wouldn’t ride around in a Model A today… But it was pretty cool back in 1911… Today, we have evolved through improvements to 100 mph cars…. ones we can walk away from even when totaled…
September 18, 2009 at 9:54 am
Steve Newton
Ah, there’s the rub: you admit that as a society we have never reached consensus on what should be in the safety net in the first place.
Instead, like our health care system (with Medicare, Medicaid, VA, private insurance, SCHIPS, and others) we keep building pieces out of this or that because you can always find a constituency that thinks ANYTHING should be included.
When do we get to have the national discussion about what the State is and is not responsible for covering, without a specific program being on the table and being huckstered?
September 18, 2009 at 3:40 pm
John Galt
Kavips,
I honestly believe that using my scenario we can fix the health care problem in this country in one generation.
The first thing we have to do to help the poor is to get the cost of health care down as low as the market will tolerate.
What Congress is proposing is another one size fits all insurance policy, instead of people choosing what they want to be covered. The Bill I read online states that all private insurance must cover what the government policy covers. Where is the savings coming from when you only decision is who has the more colorful brochure?
Get the Federal government out of health care (which they have no Constitutional authority, a point that is rarely discussed), allow for MSA’s to work much like 529’s. After which the States can come up with their own systems of caring for the less affluent.
I maybe mistaken, but I don’t think we are really that far apart.
September 19, 2009 at 12:56 pm
kavips
Steve. I’m afraid that we will never reach consensus. To do so would be the kiss of death for this nation… This nation as always once it has reached a plateau taken a precipitous fall. The first plateau I would give to the twenties, the second would be the single digits of this century…
Like it or not, we are simple cogs on a wheel of evolution. That includes the safety net… How big or how wide will always be in contention, which as I believe, is what the founding fathers envisioned. With their own eyes, they saw how singular ideas on how to form a country were all suspect in various ways, and that mixing them all up and finding something that all could bear to live with, was the conclusion that made the greatest sense against the unknowns of the future…
It is each persons responsibility to influence the development of events to the best of their ability. It is also their responsibility if losing their case to the majority of opinion, to drop it and move on to the next one…
If it turn out, that they were right after all, then history will make that determination.
September 19, 2009 at 1:13 pm
kavips
John,
Your vision of the MSA’s could work. I have used them to great advantage myself and as a national policy could highly recommend them..
The primary issue with MSA’s, however, is on how to cover those who can’t afford them. We have all heard references to times when our physicians got paid with pigs, grain, or goats.. Today it requires money… and unfortunately, lots of it…
The free market system does work well when there is competition. When that competition dissipates for whatever reason. the profits soar, sucking money away from other useful enterprises. It creates a drag on the economic system that eventually cuts through all the paper work stating otherwise, to make itself felt…
MSA’s and insurance for only catastrophic (amounts over the MSA ) would certainly drop the costs of health care…You are right there. If it one’s own money, then one tends to spend frugally and only on what one wishes to use…
And if one is not under obligation to spend MSA within a certain time frame, the amount may grow under compounded interest to amounts better than an IRA… The savings plan is one many Americans , especially if legislated, could subscribe to.
But, there remains the issue of those who we need to keep healthy, they do our labor for us, but we pay too little for them to get affordable health insurance. We can 1) have their salaries increased excessively and pay the higher amounts for all our goods and services, or 2) we can use the economies of scale and reduce the medical costs per person by using a medical plan taxed as is the FICA and Medicare tax done currently. Either way we pay more… The question is which increase will be less?
Competition is the only thing that drives down prices.. Since the private system has not yet accomplished that reduction, some of us feel the threat of a new competitor, is the only thing that will…..