Sunday, August 30, 2009

Earned Votes

It's easy to understand why we have a representative democracy, rather than a true one. Reading and understanding the laws governing the United States is a full time job, and then some. We have had to delegate this task to others and pay them to spend all of their time trying to digest and understand the laws as they are proposed. It's really impossible, of course. In fact, our representatives have a full-time paid staff to help them understand the laws; the staff read and make summaries, which is a great deal to accomplish.

Things are changing, now, however, with the advent of the internet and increasing access to all the information anytime anywhere. It is conceivable that within the next few years we might be able to move in the direction of a true democracy, with each of us in our homes reading and voting on local and national issues.

Do we want to do this? I am imagining a country run by the masses of people, the majority of whom have no interest in national issues, nor the competence to understand them. Many can't reat, of course, but the real obstacle is lack of interest and will to take such an active stance. Another objection is the amount of time required as well as the complexity of the material. The sheer volume of words is overwhelming. Possibly the most damaging objection to a true democracy is that there is no ready place for bargaining.

On the other hand perhaps that last objection is really an advantage. Would it be a bad thing if each item proposed for vote had to stand on its own merits? Does pork-barrel bargaining really benefit the country?

Moreover, the laws would have to be written in a simple and precise way. Perhaps only the practical intent and application of the law would be all that is needed. However, there could be no unrelated amendments attached, which is how bargaining worked its way into the legislature. Each proposed law would have to be limited to a single subject, and written with a fair and brief explanation of its effects.

This presupposes that we all as voters would be capable of understanding the proposed legislation and its consequences, and I am not convinced that more than 30 or 40% of the public is actually capable. At the risk of sounding elitist, many of the people that I know and with whom I am friendly are not interested, willing and/or able.

So what about leaving voting to those who are 1) interested, 2) literate, and 3) able? Suppose that votes had to be earned through examination? In that past, literacy examinations for voters were simply a way of excluding certain classes of citizens who were not encouraged to be schooled and literate. However, those days are long past, and now it seems clear that anyone who wants to learn to read and write can do so. I don't want people voting who cannot understand what it is they are voting for.

And I don't want people voting on how to spend our money who don't pay taxes. Our motto should be "No representation without taxation!" It's easy for a welfare recipient to vote for more welfare; he/she doesn't have to pay for it. An important qualification for a voting card should be that the person pays taxes and earns a living if not disabled. Perhaps additional votes could be earned or awarded for community services. For instance, it's conceivable that combat veterans could earn an extra vote; perhaps the extra vote could be limited to areas in which the person has demonstrated especial knowledge or ability.

We might end up with an electorate who are knowledgable, honest, thoughtful and literate, who have earned the right to have an opinion and whose money finances the government. Scarey thought, isn't it. Do we think that a genuine democracy could actually work?

Friday, August 21, 2009

Licensing parenthood II

In our culture, having babies seems to many people an inalienable right. Reproductive freedom is a given. Considering that raising children is the single most important job in the world, we seem to have no qualms about allowing everyone to raise them and in any quantity they desire.

We require people to get a license in order to drive. To get the license they have to show basic competence to know and understand the rules of the road as well as the physical competence to manage a car. But to have a baby all that is required is the urge and the opportunity. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, if you like the present situation. Just ask a DHS worker.

Might it not be a good idea to require people to get a license to have a child? It’s easy to see some advantages to such a proposal. We could require people to show minimal financial ability; we could require skills training, as we do for driver’s licenses. We could require refresher courses to cover various stages in a growing child’s life.

Low intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean disqualification (except in the extremely low range). After all, half the people in the world are below average in IQ. On the other hand, any parent has to have the capacity to understand and abide by basic parenting principles. The only grounds for disqualification for a parenting license would those behaviors or qualities that render a person demonstrably unable or unwilling to provide adequate protection and supervision for a child. Current recreational drug use or excessive alcohol abuse are obvious disqualifiers, as is a history of violence or abuse of others. If future research shows other clear connections between adult behavior and mistreatment of children, such behaviors might well also become disqualifiers.

A serious problem is how to deal with the children that are born to unlicensed parents or to parents who have become disqualified. Obviously we can’t put the parents in jail because they have to care for the child. We can’t abandon the child, either. Clearly we will still need foster homes, although to a considerably lesser degree.

Perhaps a better solution is to add some chemical to the water supply, that would render all of us temporarily or permanently sterile. On receiving a license to have a child, we could be given the antidote to the sterility medication. Essentially (in principle) children would thereby only be born to those qualified to have them.

Not only could you set at least a minimum standard for competency to have and raise children, limits on numbers of children could easily be established and enforced. It’s pretty obvious that overpopulation will lead to absolute disasters in the long run.

While this sounds a little extreme, especially for those of us who object to too much government oversight, it’s our government and our oversight. The situation is plainly out of hand, and the children who are raised by incompetent, uneducated and inadequate parents are the ones who are first to be hurt. We pay the balance of the costs, so we should have some say about what we are willing to pay for.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Licensing parenthood I

Many of the human race are poor or terrible parents. Bad parents raise screwed-up kids who become screwed-up adults faster than the rest of us can therapize, teach or coerce them into a semblance of civilization.

In the last 4000 years or so during which civilization in roughly the modern form has existed, we apparently AS A GROUP have learned nothing. Individuals have become highly skilled as parents and teachers and therapists, but as a whole, we have not improved at all. We teach rage and greed and selfishness and religious bigotry; we raise criminals and killers and rapists and child abusers. We sow the wind; we reap the whirlwind. The human race, in spite of the knowledge of individuals, has chosen to remain on the first rung of parenting skills, if that. And even if we don’t know as much about positive skills in parenting as we should, we certainly know a lot of things that are flatly wrong and damaging.

I see people in my office whose parents started them on drugs or alcohol or sex before the children even knew what they were. Every day we see in the papers articles about children who were savagely beaten or killed by their parents. Girls are pimped out on the street at 10 or 12 to provide money for their parents’ drug use. These situations are, unfortunately, common; but what doesn’t often make the front page of the paper are the many instances of casual verbal and physical violence that don’t come to the attention of the authorities. The amount of psychological damage that ensues is impossible to measure.

Some young women pop out babies just to have money from DHS (Welfare, in Oklahoma); DHS pays out the money but has inadequate resources to insure adequate skills in the parents. People don't even have to know what causes babies to feel free to have them. Some young men think it is a mark of their "manhood" to father children they have no intention of helping raise. I recently saw a 20+ male wearing a lot of "bling" (real gold jewelry) who was proud of fathering 7 (at least) children whom he had seen once or twice and whom he had absolutely no intention of helping raise or support.

I'm quite sure that 3000 (or 30,000) years ago the situation was not significantly different. Perhaps the human race long ago was benefited by sheer numbers of people, regardless of quality. And that's the point: no matter what advances in science or psychology of parenting we make, we are not using them any more to raise our children than in our primitive pasts. We have increasing quantity and apparently decreasing quality.

The place to stop bad parenting is before bad or inadequate people become parents. We need to license and limit the production of babies. We need to stop human animals from breeding until they stop being animals.

Friday, August 07, 2009

What Jesus Did Wrong

There are essentially only two approaches to presenting a new set of moral values or ethics. The Preacher can go out into the populace and present his/her ideas. The masses may not know anythng about the new ideas, and their interest in them, at least at first, is likely to be minimal or negative. OR the Preacher can stay in his/her place, become a Teacher, and wait for the interested people to come to him/her.

In the first instance, the Preacher reaches a larger number of people quickly, but attracts negative attention as well as positive. The short-range outcome will almost certainly involve conflict. The Preacher's approach is an aggressive one, which tends to create tension.

In the second instance, the Teacher's ideas may spread very slowly, among those who are already pre-disposed to react positively. This low-profile approach rarely involves much conflict. The Teacher is essentially passive as regards the promulgation of his/her ideas.

Jesus was a good example of the first approach. The conflicts he created by aggressively presenting his controversial ideas fulminated into an outburst, resulting in crucifixion. Siddhartha Gautama was a good example of the second approach. He lived a long and effective life, dying in advanced old age of natural causes, and loved by all.

It's interesting to speculate about the possible outcome had each of these two exemplars taken the alternative approach.

Monday, August 03, 2009

The Stock Market and Las Vegas

I'm sure it's clear to many people that the stock market is simply a gambling establishment, appealing to the very same people that go to casinos. For some reason, this didn't occur to me until late in my life.

The value of a stock, as it is bought, sold and exchanged on Wall Street, has little or nothing to do with the value of the company on whose name it is based. When originally sold by the company owners, it was a way of raising money to improve the market share of the company, and the stock purchasers were thereby to receive a share of the future profits.

But as soon as the stock was sold, not by the orignating company, but by the most recent purchaser of the stock, its new value was now based entirely on the expectations and perceptions of the new purchaser. The purchaser was simply gambling that the value of the stock would change in a predictable way, so that it could be resold for a profit, not on the originating company's products, but simply on the expectation of exploitable change in price. Stocks go up and down in the amrket on a hourly (or shorter) basis; this clearly has no base in change in the company product value. People develop systems to predict stock prices, and they make public predictions, both of which change the expectations of potential stock purchasers and thereby the "value" of the stock.

It's a "get-rich-quick" scheme, and the suckers are those who think they can predict it. When the majority of potential purchasers believe the market is in a cycle of positive change, the price goes up, thereby proving the prediction. When the majority of potential purchasers think the market is going to go down, they act on their predictions, and lo and behold, the price goes down. The value of the company which issued the stock probably hasn't changed, but the stock value has.

I don't mind people gambling, in Las Vegas or in New York. I object to the pretentiouness, the pretense that "business" is going on there, that stock purchasers are contributing to the economy. Of course they are not. Making money on the stock market is a form of vampiristic feeding on the blood of those who actually produce goods or services of value. It's just gambling. There's nothing scientific or productive about it. It represents, as all gambling does, the hope of making money without having to work for it or produce something of value.

Perhaps it keeps the non-productive part of the populace happy and content with their hopes. I think they should just get a job.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Avoiding a rebellion

As the fiscal crisis deepens, it appears that we as a nation are dividing more and more clearly into classes. The "poor" class is really getting poorer all the time, and the upper classes are getting richer.

If we want this state of affairs to continue (which I rather favor), we should be aware that throughout history the "have-nots" have eventually risen up in rebellion and overthrown the system, usually doing away with a large percentage of the wealthy. If we don't want that to happen (and I really favor it not happening), we have to find ways to keep the poor happy. The Romans did it with entertainment, the English during the period of industrialization in the 19th century did it with alcohol. We have an even better soporific available now: drugs like marijuana and heroin.

People using those drugs readily remain stable and happy, even if their lives are somewhat shortened. However, they are there to change our tires and stock our shelves, to empty the bedpans and man the machines. We need them there, and we need them contented and happy. Let's give them free marijuana! Rising up in rebellion becomes almost impossible. Even hunger and envy won't drive them to it. And they'll think we're doing them a favor!

National Health Care

I'm astonished by the controversy over some sort of national Health Care insurance. The arguments about cost, who pays, who is entitled, go on and on. But surely it must be obvious that there is something profoundly wrong about this argument?

We are ALREADY providing health care for the indigent, the poor, the uninsured and the uninsurable. People without insurance simply go to the nearest emergency room and obtain treatment. Of course they don't go for routine examinations or really minor illnesses, but those issues are barely covered by insurance for anyone, if they are covered at all.

So the poor get free medical care. Free, that is, in the sense that they themselves don't pay for it. The hospital provides medication and facilities, physicians provide services. The hospital simply divides the cost up and raises fees for those covered by insurance so that the loss is absorbed. We pay for the indigent through higher fees to the hospital and to the physicans and nurses. Did we think that all those things were just either falling out of the skies or were being paid for by the benevolence of the hospitals?

The fees charged by hospitals and physicians will be higher in areas where more such services are provided to the uninsured. Border states, such as Texas, California and Florida, will charge higher fees than, say, Nebraska hospitals. In other words, all a national health insurance program will do is to redistribute the costs nationwide so that all medical insurance costs are coverfed more equally. That's a good deal for us border-state dwellers, not so good for those living in North Dakota.

Am I missing something here? Or is this largely a political farce?