Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[dreadgeek]

I want to introduce a concept to folks who may not be familiar with what I think is one of the most important ideas in Western political and social philosophy--namely the idea of justice as fairness, introduced by my favorite 20th century philosopher, John Rawls. In 1971, he wrote a book "A Theory of Justice" in which he had one of the best thought experiments anyone *ever* devised. I'll explain the thought experiment and then get into how I think this applies to Occupy Wall Street.

Imagine that we here have a chance to design a society from scratch. We're starting with an absolutely clean slate. We get a group of people together to hash out what kinds of rules and laws we are going to have. Now, here's the truly clever bit. Everyone is negotiating from what Rawls calls the 'original position' behind a 'veil of ignorance'. What this means is that no one knows whether they will be born into this society rich or poor, the ethnic majority or the ethnic minority, gay or straight, male or female, etc. Rawls posits that from that position there would be two broad principles by which to structure their society:

1) Equality in the way that basic rights and duties are assigned. If, for instance, there's a draft you don't get out of it by paying someone to take your place (which benefits the rich but not the poor). The son of the bank head and the daughter of the teller both get drafted (or the son of the teller if you prefer).

2) Arrange any social or economic inequalities so that they are both A) to the greatest benefit for the least advantaged and B) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

So, let's take Affirmative Action. In a Rawlsian society, it would not be based upon race but upon class. The reason being is that let's take two women--one we'll call Jacqueline and one we'll call Lynn. Lynn grew up poor. Have to leave in the middle of the night because the landlord is going to show up with the sheriff first thing in the morning to evict you poor. Jacqueline grew up, not necessarily rich but well-heeled. There was no robbing Peter to pay Paul in Jacqueline's childhood. Now, Jacqueline is black and Lynn is white. However, Jacqueline has a parent who teaches in the university system and she wants to attend a sister school and, as it turns out, one of her parents is an alum of that system as well. So she has two legs up. Lynn, on the other hand, has no such advantages. So Lynn, needs some kind of affirmative action while Jacqueline does not. Now, this might mean that Lynn is going to get into, say, UC Berkeley on a 3.75 cumulative GPA and 1800 SAT while Jacqueline is going to need a 4.0 and 2200 SAT. Is this unfair? Yes, it is! But the unfairness is directed toward the person who needs it most.

The second part of this is that *provided* that both Lynn and Jacqueline get into UCB but only Jacqueline can *pay* for it (because her parents had the money to set aside excess money for a college fund) then Lynn gets financial assistance. All of the good grades and stellar SAT scores mean nothing if you can't pay tuition and buy books. We would also want to make certain that even if Lynn went to school in a poor neighborhood and Jacqueline went to school in an upper-middle class neighborhood the schools were *equal* in terms of books, competency of teachers, facilities, extra-curricular activities and programs, music and arts.

Now, I personally think that although this is only a thought experiment it is a *useful* one. We need not scrap either capitalism or democratic governance in order to achieve this NOR is the Rawlsian society a utopia. Since regulated, well-functioning, entrepreneurial capitalism does a reasonable job distributing goods and services to the greatest number we need not get rid of capitalism, we need only *regulate* it properly and put in firewalls to prevent, for instance, monopolies and to allow labor to organize into unions. We need not do away with democracy just make it so that it isn't only the rich who can be elected to office.

There is potential in these ideas which, again, are not mine. I think that as we have to come up with both Capitalism 3.0 and Democracy 2.0 (or maybe even 3.0) it is useful to think about how we go about it and how we sell it so that we get the largest possible majoritarian buy-in. One of the reasons why I like the Rawlsian approach to social democracy is that it tries very hard to be fair, it tries to meet people where they are, and it does not call for radical solutions of the 'in order to save the village, we had to destroy it'. As a Rawlsian conservative my focus is on social stability. Society is not made up of eggs but of people and so the idea that we can only make an omelet (a better society) at the cost of breaking eggs is distasteful. So the solutions that attract me are ones that expand opportunity and maintain some level of stability.

I got the idea to throw these ideas out there based upon this piece in today's WaPo by Matt Miller.

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

So am I reading that what you are proposing is that the corruption needs to be gotten rid of instead of the entire system?

I agree that tossing the entire egg basket seems impossibly extreme and destructive. I hope it does not come to that.

[Gráinne]

I think I must be several rungs lower in knowledge and brain power, but I see several problems right off the bat:

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

2. I don't agree that poor=lower standards for Berkeley or any college. If UCB demands a 4.0 and 2200, so be it. It's the same as the draft example, in my opinion, but based on class, not payoffs, and the other way around in that poor turns into an advantage.

I would be mad as hell if I were Lynn, because the standards were lower. I'd never know if I could have met them on my own merit. Instead, I got in solely on the "benefit" of my class. Also, I (as Lynn) would presumably have had more to learn and had to work harder because my family would not be college educated. I would feel that all that work was for naught because of some factor out of my control. So I don't believe in affirmative action based on class, and I would not take it for myself even if I was eligible under this (hypothetical) society. It's patronizing.

3. I can agree on financial assistance for school, but if I were queen of education, I'd trash the federal loan and grant programs and privatize all student aid. That would cut down the artificially high cost of education and re-introduce competition: bang for the buck, so to speak. But that's another post.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

Some regulation will be necessary, but I believe that we're in this mess because of rampant regulations and interference by government. We need much less, not more.

[Apocalipstic]

The problem with all this is people. People not doing the right thing.

Who gets to decide what is fair?

With everything privatized with no regulations, who oversees things?

With no unions who stands up for workers?

I agree that corruption is a huuuge problem, but it seems like removing regulations is something that got us into this mess.

People do not do the right thing, the honorable thing...

I really don't know what the answer is, but thinking abt it is interesting.

[Apocalipstic]

I do want to say that I agree that social stability does seem to be in our best interest!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by guihong

I think I must be several rungs lower in knowledge and brain power, but I see several problems right off the bat:

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

Yes, the upper-class IS being discriminated against but, again, the idea here is that if there is going to be inequality, if we're going to have a thumb on the scale (and as humans we can hardly do anything BUT) then Rawls' idea is that the inequality goes in favor of those *least* advantaged. At present the thumb on the scale clearly favors the *most* advantaged. Since someone is going to end up slightly ahead no matter what we do, we have to decide who we want to favor. Rawls says favor those for whom a bit of inequality in their favor will do the most good--that means those who have the least.

2. I don't agree that poor=lower standards for Berkeley or any college. If UCB demands a 4.0 and 2200, so be it. It's the same as the draft example, in my opinion, but based on class, not payoffs, and the other way around in that poor turns into an advantage.

The reason I use GPA and SAT is because there are all manner of little advantages that the upper-middle class child of a pair of college professors is going to have that the working-class child will not. Some of those advantages, things like private SAT prep, a family library, etc. can translate to unearned advantage. So IF there are two candidates, let's say Lynn and Jacqueline both have 3.75 GPA and 1600 SAT scores then Lynn should get in if Lynn is from an impoverished background and Jacqueline is not. Now, if Jacqueline has a 4.0 and a 2200 then she should get in, period as should Lynn. But all things being equal, again, put the thumb on the scale of the person who is least advantaged because, as a whole, we will get the most bang for the buck.

I would be mad as hell if I were Lynn, because the standards were lower. I'd never know if I could have met them on my own merit. Instead, I got in solely on the "benefit" of my class. Also, I (as Lynn) would presumably have had more to learn and had to work harder because my family would not be college educated. I would feel that all that work was for naught because of some factor out of my control. So I don't believe in affirmative action based on class, and I would not take it for myself even if I was eligible under this (hypothetical) society. It's patronizing.

I understand the argument you are making. I even share some of your stance on it. But IF we're going to have affirmative action, I think it should be class based not race based.

3. I can agree on financial assistance for school, but if I were queen of education, I'd trash the federal loan and grant programs and privatize all student aid. That would cut down the artificially high cost of education and re-introduce competition: bang for the buck, so to speak. But that's another post.

I'm a little dubious. I understand that in certain circumstances markets are better allocators but I don't know that student loans are one of those things for much the same reason I don't think that markets are the best allocators of health care. I see no real benefit for, say, Chase to provide student loans at a reasonable rate to poor people. I also don't want people's ability to get a loan be subject to a credit check even one based upon their parents. I would actually prefer we do student loans in a quid pro quo basis. If you have the cash to pay out of pocket, good on you. If you take out a loan with BofA to pay for school, bully for you. If, however, you can do neither then the deal I'd like to see society make is this: one year of work for one year of school. So let's say you want to be a doctor. That's eight years of school. We'll foot the bill. We'll pay for your books, etc. When you graduate you spend the next eight years in practice in either a rural community that needs a doctor or an inner-city clinic that needs one. Now, probably better than half of those people will be heading for the city the minute their 8 years are up but there will be others who will rather like being where they are. Either way, it is win-win-win. Communities get eager young doctors and, thus, local health care. Students who otherwise couldn't afford medical school get their dream. Society doesn't have a bunch of doctors getting out of school saddled with $200K in debt.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

I have to say I strenuously disagree with getting the federal government out of education for one simple reason: national standards. I think it is utterly *insane* that a nation as technologically and scientifically advanced as America does not have a standard for what students should learn. We are the only industrialized nation that does not have a national standard that we expect every student to have attained by the time they graduate. So if California wants to set Algebra, biology, American history and Civics as criteria and Arkansas wants to drop biology and algebra under the present system that is fine. I think that is madness. There are reasons why the United States, alone of the G-8 nations, and the only OTHER nation in NATO, where knowledge of the basic principles of evolution are not well understood (the other being Turkey). There are reasons why American students under perform in math and science generally. It's because we have no national standard so if you are in a school district in Arkansas the teacher may--either to protect her job or because she believes it--not teach evolution in biology class while if you are in Maine, you're probably going to learn the amount of evolutionary biology one would need in order to understand why various bacterial pathogens have evolved drug resistance.

Some regulation will be necessary, but I believe that we're in this mess because of rampant regulations and interference by government. We need much less, not more.

I'm unconvinced that we need less regulation. To me the anti-regulation idea is like, well, like this (admittedly, I'm taking this out of the educational context and putting it in a financial one). Imagine, if you will, that you are given a driver's license that allows you to drive drunk. If you get into an accident you won't be prosecuted. Even if you kill someone you won't be prosecuted. What's more, if you wrap your Porsche around someone's Kia and kill everyone in the Kia, you will have provided for you, free of charge, a brand new Porsche. Now, what possible reason do you have NOT to drive drunk other than the possibility that you, yourself, might be killed? Very little that I can see. This is the situation I see us in with regulation of the finance sector. If I work for a big investment bank and I make all the right moves and the company has a banner year, I make my salary and a bonus. If I make all the wrong moves and, in so doing, cause a pension fund to collapse and wipe out some company that was viable because I bought it, hollowed it out and then sold it at fire sale prices, I get my salary and my bonus. So heads I win, tails you lose. At that point, other than the sheer competitive joy of being the top dog, what *possible* reason do I have to care about my job performance? None. I'm getting paid and paid well whether my actions spread prosperity far and wide or concentrates it all within my little firm. Even if I do something that crosses the line into illegality there's a better than even chance I'm going to walk, with my salary and bonus. That is *all* a direct result of deregulation.

Cheers
Aj

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by guihong

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

Just....no.

It seems to me that a system like Aj described above would eventually make the need for such a system obsolete. As I'm sure you're aware poverty is usually generational, as is education / access to higher education. By helping Lynn out you're creating an environment for her where her children will require less of a leg-up than she did, her grandchildren even less, until eventually the playing-ground is level in terms of access. It's controlling the things that -can- be controlled.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

This would be WORSE for low-income neighborhoods than it already is. You're aware of how poorly the "healthcare for profit" debacle has gone in your country, I presume?

How do you expect low-income families to pay to run the schools that their children will go to?

Interestingly enough, Finland has free education for everybody. This includes post-secondary education. It is, as I'm sure you would have deduced, run by the government. And guess what else? Finland is tied for the number one spot on the Education Index portion of the Human Development Index that the UN does every year. Looks like government involvement in Education has gone -very- well for Finland.

[Gráinne]

In some states, including Arkansas, there is a program by which most if not all of your expense incurred in becoming a teacher is waived if you agree to teach in some impoverished area, such as the Delta. I do agree with your idea, and think a program like this should be implemented nationwide, for many more majors.

I do agree with national standards, which would be the bar by which to measure success and failure in my hypothetical school system, and I think it should be a whole lot higher than it is now. Any other business with a 45% failure rate (that's the dropout rate in my school system, and a conservative guess) would be an abject failure. In fact, all states except Texas have adopted the "Common Core" program in which eighth grade in Wichita, Walla Walla and Worcester would be equivalent in subject matter, standards and skills taught, so we're going in that direction, however late. The major inequalities in school districts are not addressed, but I digress.

Besides that, I cannot think of a single area in which government has gotten involved (housing, education, health care, Amtrak) and costs have not ballooned along with beauracracy. The government is simply not efficient or cost-effective compared with privatization, so while I do say we need some regulation, it's government regulations passed on the banks that caused the high fees and shenanigans in the first place.

[Gráinne]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Just....no.

It seems to me that a system like Aj described above would eventually make the need for such a system obsolete. As I'm sure you're aware poverty is usually generational, as is education / access to higher education. By helping Lynn out you're creating an environment for her where her children will require less of a leg-up than she did, her grandchildren even less, until eventually the playing-ground is level in terms of access. It's controlling the things that -can- be controlled.



This would be WORSE for low-income neighborhoods than it already is. You're aware of how poorly the "healthcare for profit" debacle has gone in your country, I presume?

How do you expect low-income families to pay to run the schools that their children will go to?

Interestingly enough, Finland has free education for everybody. This includes post-secondary education. It is, as I'm sure you would have deduced, run by the government. And guess what else? Finland is tied for the number one spot on the Education Index portion of the Human Development Index that the UN does every year. Looks like government involvement in Education has gone -very- well for Finland.

First, we've had affirmative action and the leg-ups for several generations, and we still have generational poverty, maybe more entrenched now than before. Schools are not making the mark. How long do we keep up such an experiment before we say "Enough. Here are the standards; do it or not".

As for my school idea, I had in mind something like the Finland model. It's still far less expensive than all the fads that America wants to try.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by guihong

First, we've had affirmative action and the leg-ups for several generations, and we still have generational poverty, maybe more entrenched now than before. Schools are not making the mark. How long do we keep up such an experiment before we say "Enough. Here are the standards; do it or not".

As for my school idea, I had in mind something like the Finland model. It's still far less expensive than all the fads that America wants to try.

Maybe the unification of the Americas is the answer!

[Apocalipstic]

Wait, did not we get into this mess by cutting regulations for banks and financial institutions?

[Cin]

Originally Posted by guihong

Besides that, I cannot think of a single area in which government has gotten involved (housing, education, health care, Amtrak) and costs have not ballooned along with beauracracy. The government is simply not efficient or cost-effective compared with privatization, so while I do say we need some regulation, it's government regulations passed on the banks that caused the high fees and shenanigans in the first place.

You’ve got to be kidding. Government regulations caused the economic disaster we are facing now.

Just consider the horror that privatizing prisons have caused. And in case prisoners are not worthy of concern how about private group home providers for children in foster care. South Dakota has become a powerhouse for private group home providers. NPR investigated them because of the inconsistencies in removing Native American children as well as complete disregard for the Indian Child Welfare Act. Native American children make up 15% of the child population, yet they make up more than half of the children in foster care.

Like any instance where Corporate America is involved the object is to maximize profits while providing minimum service. There is certainly no incentive to surpass the service provided by government. Corporate America will always do less while making obscene profits. I mean seriously look at the mess they made with the economy. They are cheerfully destroying financial stability around the world. And because they’ve done such a good job with the economy you want to put them in charge of education.

But then it was regulations the government passed that caused the problems.

I guess there really is no hope.

I give up.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by guihong

First, we've had affirmative action and the leg-ups for several generations, and we still have generational poverty, maybe more entrenched now than before. Schools are not making the mark. How long do we keep up such an experiment before we say "Enough. Here are the standards; do it or not".

As for my school idea, I had in mind something like the Finland model. It's still far less expensive than all the fads that America wants to try.

I actually have to put in a couple of things. We've had affirmative action for *at best* two generations. Consider: so before 1965 (my sister was 2, I was 2 years from being born) there was no affirmative action. In fact, there was no equal employment opportunity what-so-ever! Both my parents were very intelligent and accomplished people and there were large numbers of universities that would not have hired either of my parents, even if my mother had been the second coming of Jacques Barzun or my father the reincarnation of John Dewey they couldn't have taught at, just to take one, Ol Miss.

So, the United States does not have legally enforced equal employment opportunity until 1965. We did not have what is considered affirmative action until Nixon and that was, if memory serves, in 1972. So at its very best we are talking two generations and a bit of change assuming a 20 year generational turnover. Secondly, as far as generational poverty being, if anything, more entrenched than before I don't think that is true. I probably will not have time or energy to hunt down and work the numbers until this weekend but I suspect what I'll find is that, certainly within black communities, there is less generational poverty. In fact, I know that to be the case because the black middle-class is larger now than it has *ever* been.

Anecdotally, here's the educational attainment between my grandmother, born at the beginning of the 20th century, and my generations (I'm not including my son at this point because he is still serving in the Army). My grandmother got to about the fourth grade. My father, her youngest, attained two Masters and a PhD. On my mother's side, her father had no schooling to speak of and I'm unsure if he could read and write his own name, my grandmother had maybe a sixth grade education. My mother attained a Master's and a PhD. My half-sister has a PhD and M.D. My eldest sister has a J.D. I am the slacker having not yet attained a M.S. (but I'm working my way there). That is three generations. My father's brother did not serve in WW II and so did not have the G.I. Bill. Because he didn't have the G.I. Bill he didn't go to college. Out of his kids (four to my parent's two and a half) only one of them went to college.

So saying that we've run this experiment for several generations doesn't really work. We can, for all practical purposes, write off the first half of the 20th century as far as equal opportunity in America. There was none. This is not to say that there was not a black middle class, there was but it was much smaller. What there wasn't was any pretensions that anyone could grow up and run, say, GM or become President. No black person in 1950 was going to have a corner office at the GM headquarters. I would be shocked to find out that GM had *any* black or female executives in 1950. We cannot even begin talking about it until 1948 when Truman desegregated the military.

As far as poverty alleviation programs, we can now write off the first quarter of the 20th century. Social Security, recall, doesn't come into existence until 1935. The Great Society programs all came into existence in the middle part of the 60s. By 2000 they were all, with the exception of Head Start, functionally non-existent by the term of the century. So we can't even really say we've had poverty alleviation programs for very long.

I don't have the data before me right now, but I can say that both observationally and anecdotally, the most generous thing I can say about poverty alleviation programs in the United States is that we made something that, if one were feeling particularly generous, could be called an effort. In fact, probably the two best poverty alleviation programs I can think of are the public school system (or it used to be) and the G.I. Bill.

I am deeply unconvinced that government is as inefficient and the private sector is as efficient as set out to be. Now, I haven't worked in the governmental sector in a quarter century after I took off my uniform for the last time. I have worked in the private sector most of the last 20 years and I've seen a lot of things, very few of them I would call something resembling efficiency. At any rate, I think that like the roads I think that education is altogether too socially critical to leave up to the vagaries of the private market. Corporations have one mandate and only one mandate and that is to make the largest profit possible. If corporations are left to run educational systems, they will squeeze every dollar out they can. On paper it may look more efficient but keep in mind that Edu Corp Inc. has to make a profit. No one in the boardroom and none of the stockholders will mind if, on the way to ever greater profits some kids are educated, but they will require the CEO and executive team to keep their eye on the ball and that ball has a big dollar sign. If the question comes down to another few points on the stock market or art programs, well, we don't want to turn out a bunch of artists anyway. This can all be true even IF every single teacher in the system is well paid and dedicated to being an educator. By mandate, a corporation must maximize its profits for the shareholders. Delivering a product is just a happy byproduct of that maximization. I think that education, along with public safety, defense, physical infrastructure are too vital to our society to be left up to the profit motive. They are intrinsic public goods.

Also, one other thing on the inefficiency of corporations. I give you Microsoft. I have worked with Microsoft products since 1991. They are, whether they deserve to be or not, the gold standard for office productivity applications. They are the default operating system but no one who works in the industry or intimately with computers as part of their day-to-day work (I mean working IT or software development within some other context) thinks that Windows is a great product. DOS was good. Hard to use but good. Windows 3.1 was, well, it was okay. Pretty much a direct lift from Xerox PARC but decent enough (Apple lifted from Xerox PARC too). Windows 95/98 were fairly decent operating systems but insecure as all hell. Windows ME was a travesty. Windows NT 4 was good as a enterprise/business operating system but buggy as all hell and, like 95/98 very insecure. Windows 2000 and Windows XP were the high water marks until recently but they were both bloated, buggy and, sing it with me, really damn insecure. Windows Vista was Windows ME with a nicer interface, 'nuff said. Windows 7, which I've had at work for about 3 or 4 months now, is actually a decent operating system. I'm rather impressed. However, until Windows 7 was put on our desktops I was bringing in my personal laptop (a Macbook Pro) and using that for my day-to-day work except where I had to use those tools we have that *only* run on Windows and even then I would run a remote session to my Windows box. My email, IM, browser, text editor, presentation and word processing, were *all* done on my Mac. I'm not the only one who did something like that.

Yet, Microsoft *still* owns the desktop and everyone in the industry knows they don't deserve it. It's just that they made themselves indispensable and the overhead to change from a Windows to a Mac or Linux environment is prohibitively expensive. So by sheer inertia they maintain their market position. Is Windows the number one operating system in use today? Yes. Is it the best operating system in use today? Not by a long shot. Yet, they *own* the home and end-user operating system business.

I'm not saying corporations can do nothing right. I am saying that government *can* do things correct. I don't think governments are good at, for instance, making consumer electronics and I think it is beyond its core competencies. Likewise, I don't think that private sector corporations are good at running things like educational system, it's beyond their core competencies. Education in America is broken but it as not always this broken. We *can* fix it but I don't think turning it over to the tender mercies of the market is the way to do it.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Wait, did not we get into this mess by cutting regulations for banks and financial institutions?

Yes. We did. The repeal of Glass-Steagal is going to go down in American history as one of the most singularly stupid things EVER done by Congress. We actually had regulatory firewalls in place so pretty much *precisely* the kind of thing that happened couldn't happen. If you were a commercial bank, you couldn’t be an insurance company. If you were an insurance company, you couldn't be an investment bank. Then we tore down that firewall and banks snatched up insurance companies and then investment firms turned around and snatched those up and on and on. The meme that is out there is that these poor banks were just trying to make an honest buck and then along came the government and forced them to give loans to undeserving (read brown skinned) people. The fact that they bundled these arcane financial instruments called credit default swaps (which were a bet on people *failing* to pay their mortgages) is conveniently swept under the rug and into the memory hole because it doesn't fit the dominant meme that poor people are losers who deserve their hardships while rich people are winners who are being put upon by all of those loser poor people who, for instance, may have not had sufficient foresight to pick rich parents at birth.

Cheers
Aj

[SoNotHer]

The movement toward deregulation is long in coming and started before Glass-Steagal. The contention is that the regulation limits market growth and stifles personal and corporate wealth. Canada and any other country like it that has greater regulations bad has also had greater social and economic stability and in fact growth. Charting the American-Canadian dollar exchange over the past ten years is an interesting if sad (for citizens of the US) revelation.

I appreciate designers and theorist like Rawls very much, AJ. I like visionaries, and I find the design elements and principles of permaculture, for example, to be a source of hope. I would like to believe there will be a myriad of acts that will tilt the United States toward something more like the simulacrum of democracy. Some of these will involve quiet conversations that reaffirm the best ideas of a democracy. Others will involve legislative and corporate changes. And still others will involve more dramatic and salient acts of civil disobedience.

Every generation has its time and its cause. And while I am sure my parents and older siblings did not understand the fervor with which I protested for Queer rights in the 80s and 90s and protested for a greater awareness of and compassion for AIDS that transcended homophobia and stereotyping, I hoped that they appreciate that my passion and involvement was for good reason. This generation may well be the first generation in some time to not only not have a financially secure future, but there is a good chance they will not live as long as their parents, reversing a standing trend. Do they have a right to be angry? Are they justified in having an emotional response to a parlous future of financial and environmental debt

Beyond the concerns of a generation and its cause, I wonder how quickly can a vision be morphed into reality? And as thousands gather in Oakland tonight and shut down the port, and thousands more gather across the country and world, and while a controlling faction becomes more entrenched in its position, is there time for visions? Is there yet time and momentum to put in play a peaceful shift?

King may be right that the "arc of the moral universe...bends toward justice.' But what of the intersecting arc of human compassion and patience? Do we have it in us to pursue and unflinchingly make manifest visions of harmony, equality and justice? Are we more paradise or purgatory? Can we design ourselves out of our nature? Is the gift of design and vision the nexus and the portal to a greater evolutionary event? Can we be or become our visions?

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Yes. We did. The repeal of Glass-Steagal is going to go down in American history as one of the most singularly stupid things EVER done by Congress. We actually had regulatory firewalls in place so pretty much *precisely* the kind of thing that happened couldn't happen. If you were a commercial bank, you couldn’t be an insurance company. If you were an insurance company, you couldn't be an investment bank. Then we tore down that firewall and banks snatched up insurance companies and then investment firms turned around and snatched those up and on and on. The meme that is out there is that these poor banks were just trying to make an honest buck and then along came the government and forced them to give loans to undeserving (read brown skinned) people. The fact that they bundled these arcane financial instruments called credit default swaps (which were a bet on people *failing* to pay their mortgages) is conveniently swept under the rug and into the memory hole because it doesn't fit the dominant meme that poor people are losers who deserve their hardships while rich people are winners who are being put upon by all of those loser poor people who, for instance, may have not had sufficient foresight to pick rich parents at birth.

Cheers
Aj

[Greyson]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I actually have to put in a couple of things. We've had affirmative action for *at best* two generations. Consider: so before 1965 (my sister was 2, I was 2 years from being born) there was no affirmative action. In fact, there was no equal employment opportunity what-so-ever! Both my parents were very intelligent and accomplished people and there were large numbers of universities that would not have hired either of my parents, even if my mother had been the second coming of Jacques Barzun or my father the reincarnation of John Dewey they couldn't have taught at, just to take one, Ol Miss.

So, the United States does not have legally enforced equal employment opportunity until 1965. We did not have what is considered affirmative action until Nixon and that was, if memory serves, in 1972. So at its very best we are talking two generations and a bit of change assuming a 20 year generational turnover. Secondly, as far as generational poverty being, if anything, more entrenched than before I don't think that is true. I probably will not have time or energy to hunt down and work the numbers until this weekend but I suspect what I'll find is that, certainly within black communities, there is less generational poverty. In fact, I know that to be the case because the black middle-class is larger now than it has *ever* been.

Anecdotally, here's the educational attainment between my grandmother, born at the beginning of the 20th century, and my generations (I'm not including my son at this point because he is still serving in the Army). My grandmother got to about the fourth grade. My father, her youngest, attained two Masters and a PhD. On my mother's side, her father had no schooling to speak of and I'm unsure if he could read and write his own name, my grandmother had maybe a sixth grade education. My mother attained a Master's and a PhD. My half-sister has a PhD and M.D. My eldest sister has a J.D. I am the slacker having not yet attained a M.S. (but I'm working my way there). That is three generations. My father's brother did not serve in WW II and so did not have the G.I. Bill. Because he didn't have the G.I. Bill he didn't go to college. Out of his kids (four to my parent's two and a half) only one of them went to college.

So saying that we've run this experiment for several generations doesn't really work. We can, for all practical purposes, write off the first half of the 20th century as far as equal opportunity in America. There was none. This is not to say that there was not a black middle class, there was but it was much smaller. What there wasn't was any pretensions that anyone could grow up and run, say, GM or become President. No black person in 1950 was going to have a corner office at the GM headquarters. I would be shocked to find out that GM had *any* black or female executives in 1950. We cannot even begin talking about it until 1948 when Truman desegregated the military.

As far as poverty alleviation programs, we can now write off the first quarter of the 20th century. Social Security, recall, doesn't come into existence until 1935. The Great Society programs all came into existence in the middle part of the 60s. By 2000 they were all, with the exception of Head Start, functionally non-existent by the term of the century. So we can't even really say we've had poverty alleviation programs for very long.

I don't have the data before me right now, but I can say that both observationally and anecdotally, the most generous thing I can say about poverty alleviation programs in the United States is that we made something that, if one were feeling particularly generous, could be called an effort. In fact, probably the two best poverty alleviation programs I can think of are the public school system (or it used to be) and the G.I. Bill.

I am deeply unconvinced that government is as inefficient and the private sector is as efficient as set out to be. Now, I haven't worked in the governmental sector in a quarter century after I took off my uniform for the last time. I have worked in the private sector most of the last 20 years and I've seen a lot of things, very few of them I would call something resembling efficiency. At any rate, I think that like the roads I think that education is altogether too socially critical to leave up to the vagaries of the private market. Corporations have one mandate and only one mandate and that is to make the largest profit possible. If corporations are left to run educational systems, they will squeeze every dollar out they can. On paper it may look more efficient but keep in mind that Edu Corp Inc. has to make a profit. No one in the boardroom and none of the stockholders will mind if, on the way to ever greater profits some kids are educated, but they will require the CEO and executive team to keep their eye on the ball and that ball has a big dollar sign. If the question comes down to another few points on the stock market or art programs, well, we don't want to turn out a bunch of artists anyway. This can all be true even IF every single teacher in the system is well paid and dedicated to being an educator. By mandate, a corporation must maximize its profits for the shareholders. Delivering a product is just a happy byproduct of that maximization. I think that education, along with public safety, defense, physical infrastructure are too vital to our society to be left up to the profit motive. They are intrinsic public goods.

Also, one other thing on the inefficiency of corporations. I give you Microsoft. I have worked with Microsoft products since 1991. They are, whether they deserve to be or not, the gold standard for office productivity applications. They are the default operating system but no one who works in the industry or intimately with computers as part of their day-to-day work (I mean working IT or software development within some other context) thinks that Windows is a great product. DOS was good. Hard to use but good. Windows 3.1 was, well, it was okay. Pretty much a direct lift from Xerox PARC but decent enough (Apple lifted from Xerox PARC too). Windows 95/98 were fairly decent operating systems but insecure as all hell. Windows ME was a travesty. Windows NT 4 was good as a enterprise/business operating system but buggy as all hell and, like 95/98 very insecure. Windows 2000 and Windows XP were the high water marks until recently but they were both bloated, buggy and, sing it with me, really damn insecure. Windows Vista was Windows ME with a nicer interface, 'nuff said. Windows 7, which I've had at work for about 3 or 4 months now, is actually a decent operating system. I'm rather impressed. However, until Windows 7 was put on our desktops I was bringing in my personal laptop (a Macbook Pro) and using that for my day-to-day work except where I had to use those tools we have that *only* run on Windows and even then I would run a remote session to my Windows box. My email, IM, browser, text editor, presentation and word processing, were *all* done on my Mac. I'm not the only one who did something like that.

Yet, Microsoft *still* owns the desktop and everyone in the industry knows they don't deserve it. It's just that they made themselves indispensable and the overhead to change from a Windows to a Mac or Linux environment is prohibitively expensive. So by sheer inertia they maintain their market position. Is Windows the number one operating system in use today? Yes. Is it the best operating system in use today? Not by a long shot. Yet, they *own* the home and end-user operating system business.

I'm not saying corporations can do nothing right. I am saying that government *can* do things correct. I don't think governments are good at, for instance, making consumer electronics and I think it is beyond its core competencies. Likewise, I don't think that private sector corporations are good at running things like educational system, it's beyond their core competencies. Education in America is broken but it as not always this broken. We *can* fix it but I don't think turning it over to the tender mercies of the market is the way to do it.

Cheers
Aj

Thank you. When I read "several generations" I was stunned to see that people really think the civil rights movement of the 60's was several generatons ago. Affirmative Action was not implemented until after the civil rights movement.

I too believe that we should not throw out democracy and capitalism in its entirity. And no, I have never voted Republican and I know what it is like to be really poor.

Some government regulation, intervention is needed. I don't believe if humans were entirely left without "rules" of any sort that we would choose to share and be civil with one another. I am for building up the village even if it means at times my individual wealth will be static. But not by destroying the entire village, infrastructure we have in place.

Similar to poverty, wealth can also be generational. This means some people are born with advantage. If we do not share some of the wealth, give people hope, do you really think the masses will say Okay forever more?

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Maybe the unification of the Americas is the answer!

I'm not sure what that means?

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I'm not sure what that means?

I was referring to 2 things.

One, I think when we call the United State of America, "America", it discounts all of the other Americans living in North and South America and sounds very privileged and dismissive.

Two, I think North and South America should be more united, possibly as a single entity. Especially since many (if not most) of the problems of many of the other Nations on our continent (s) are the direct result of US policy over the years.

Thank you for asking!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I was referring to 2 things.

One, I think when we call the United State of America, "America", it discounts all of the other Americans living in North and South America and sounds very privileged and dismissive.

Two, I think North and South America should be more united, possibly as a single entity. Especially since many (if not most) of the problems of many of the other Nations on our continent (s) are the direct result of US policy over the years.

Thank you for asking!

It's not really a derail. It does relate. I do have a couple of follow-up questions. Why do you think that it is dismissive? No one is saying that Canada isn't on the North American continent and no one is saying that Brazil isn't on the South American continent. Brazil is, well, Brazil. Canada is Canada. I can't recall ever reading a Brazilian or Chilean saying "we too are Americans". Rather, when I've heard them make pronouncements of national pride they have expressed pride in being Chileans or Brazilians not in being Americans.

Secondly, what would it look like to have nations as disparate as Canada, the United States, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Chile, et. al. as one national unit? We may be headed that way although I think that it would make the troubles of creating the EU an absolute nightmare. Are you saying that Canada and the United States should impose their legal and value systems on everything south US border with Mexico because that is precisely what would happen. What's more, I think that on balance, it's what we would *want* to happen. Consider that in Nicaragua abortion (just to take one example) is *perfectly* illegal. By that I mean that if a woman gets an abortion she is going to the big house for a very long time. Are you saying that we should impose Canadian laws on abortion and birth control on, say, very, very, very Catholic Mexico or Nicaragua which might have some definite feelings about it? OR are you saying that we should impose Nicaraguan values about abortion and birth control on the United States and Canada?

The EU is a great idea on paper and it may yet work out, but my reading of what is happening with the EU is that the member nations are realizing that it is not nearly as easy to blend such disparate nations as France, Germany and Spain into one political and economic entity and I would argue that those three nations have much more in common with one another than either Canada or the United States has with any South American nation you care to mention. So we're talking about blending political, social-cultural and economic systems into one political and economic entity going form the Arctic to Antarctica. That's a pretty tall order.

Consider that the United States, which is relatively culturally homogenous, has trouble holding itself together between the northern and western coastal states and the southern states.

Lastly, this would be the dream of multinationals or it would be an utter nightmare for the people living south of the US-Mexico border. Consider that either the multinationals will pull out of the US and Canada and move, en masse, south of the US border causing the job market here to completely collapse because there's simply no way that Americans and Canadians can compete with salary levels in, say, El Salvador OR the cost of living in the poorer South American nations will leap, overnight, to the levels of the US and Canada. Chances are, we'd get the worst of both worlds. Jobs would be sucked out of the two rich North American nations and put in the poorer South American nations. This would force the cost of labor, making it even *more* of an employers market than it already is. At the same time, goods and services that are affordable in the United States would be prohibitively expensive in Nicaragua. Lastly, even jobs that are place dependent would be subject to the downward pressure on wages. What sane construction company is going to hire American or Canadian workers at, say, $15 an hour when they could just as easily ship the same number of workers up from, say, Brazil at a fraction of the cost because they'll be paid at $2 an hour. Raise the wages all the way down the strip? Congrats, you've now created a seven-fold increase in prices overnight.

I understand what you are saying but I think that the consequences of such a merger would be absolutely disastrous and I cannot think of any benefit

Lastly, and please take this question in the spirit it was given, how much time has to elapse before white people in the northern nations will grant brown people in the southern nations the compliment of assuming that they are, in fact, capable of running their own affairs for good or ill? I'm not saying that the United States has not intervened nor am I arguing that the interventions have had anything to do with helping the people on the ground in those nations. I *am* saying that eventually--whether that is today or a century down the road--whites in the northern countries are going to have to admit that sometimes, the autocratic dictator who plunders the country and hands out largesse to his cronies is a home-grown phenomena. If the United States puts the dictator in place, we did that. But if the dictator came to power by revolution or homegrown movement, at some point don't you think it's actually the responsibility of the people of that nation? To me, there's a strange kind of reverse racism in the sentiment that most if not all of the problems of nations south of the equator populated largely by brown people cannot *really* be held responsible for the conditions of their own nations. I've never heard someone blame Nazi Germany or the USSR on, say, the United States or Belgium. I've never heard anyone put the onus of Fascist Italy or Franco's Spain on England or Sweden. It is only *ever* nations populated by brown people who, apparently, do not choose their governments or make horrible, historic mistakes in allowing precisely the wrong people to grab hold of the reins of power. No, it's always--each and every time--the fault of this or that Western nation. I'm not saying it *never* is, I'm saying that sometimes Brazilians or Iranians or Congolese or Chileans do what the French, Germans, and British *all* did at some point in their history and realize that their national leadership is inept, corrupt, or evil. Let nations of brown people be, well, nations. Sometimes nations make national errors and wind up with dictatorships or kleptocracies. If the next government of, say, France would we blame the United States or would we blame the French?


Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

You’ve got to be kidding. Government regulations caused the economic disaster we are facing now.

Just consider the horror that privatizing prisons have caused. And in case prisoners are not worthy of concern how about private group home providers for children in foster care. South Dakota has become a powerhouse for private group home providers. NPR investigated them because of the inconsistencies in removing Native American children as well as complete disregard for the Indian Child Welfare Act. Native American children make up 15% of the child population, yet they make up more than half of the children in foster care.

Like any instance where Corporate America is involved the object is to maximize profits while providing minimum service. There is certainly no incentive to surpass the service provided by government. Corporate America will always do less while making obscene profits. I mean seriously look at the mess they made with the economy. They are cheerfully destroying financial stability around the world. And because they’ve done such a good job with the economy you want to put them in charge of education.

But then it was regulations the government passed that caused the problems.

I guess there really is no hope.

I give up.

Don't give up. Just because some don't agree. keep on saying what you believe over and over...the positive thought is out there now, in our collective mind cloud!