Once upon a time there was a pretty young lady whose name was Goldilocks. For her birthday, her grandfather gave her ten dollars and advised her to put it in a safe place where it could grow and become more than just ten dollars. Goldilocks asked her grandfather where that might be, and he said that the best place to take money where it might grow would be to a bank.
Now Goldilocks had saved some other money she had received on previous birthdays as well as her allowance which she earned by doing chores around the house, but she had kept all of her money in her “piggy” bank until now. Actually the piggy bank was in the shape of a small bear symbolic of her namesake’s encounter in the fairy tale. Her total accumulated savings now amounted to $100.00.
So, Goldilocks decided to take her money to the nearest bank, which was a very small local bank in her home town of Bear Bones. When she entered the bank, she was greeted by the President who had his desk in a private office in a corner of the building. The only other people in the bank were the teller behind the counter and Mrs. Ursine who was doing some sort of business with the teller. The bank President recognized Goldilocks as one of the town’s children who walk by his bank on the way to school and introduced himself as Paw Settee.
When Paw asked Goldilocks, “How may I help you?” she asked what kind of instruments he had available so that she could deposit her $100.00 and start earning some interest or dividends from her investment. Paw shook his head and said that the only two instruments he had available were CDs and savings accounts, both of which earned on average a measly .75 % per annum. Goldilocks clearly had higher expectations for her investment, so she thanked Paw and returned home. Clearly the local village bank was too small.
Goldilocks then decided it was time to get on the internet and see what other kinds of banks were out there. She poked around all sorts of sites and decided she would look into two others: one was Bear Stearns, which she initially liked because it had the first same name as her town and sounded sort of familiar. However, low and behold it had disappeared from existence. It had been a much larger bank than her village bank and yet it had disappeared. “Oh my” said little Goldilocks. It must have been like the dinosaurs and become extinct.
While she was looking around the internet she found out that a bear market was not a good thing to have and that a bull market was much more desirable, so she gave up on looking for things that had to do with bears, her favorite animal, and decided to look for things that had more to do with bulls, although she had read about Ferdinand and had heard about bulls rampaging through china shops but she also knew that China was a huge country and had plenty of room for bulls to roam around, but I digress.
Then she happened across a site for a bank named Goldman-Sachs. It sounded quite promising on two counts: It started with the same term her name did, and it sounded as if it must have a lot of money as in sacks of gold. So she tried to get in touch with its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (whose name Charles Dickens might have chosen for it contains elements associated with Lloyds of London and another concept such as ___________check.) However, she got nothing but a robo-receptionist who went on and on about all the different divisions and products they had available until poor Goldilocks gave up listening and now needed an Aleve.
Later she heard on the news that the federal government was investigating Goldman- Sachs for fraud and deception and that it had received a huge federal bailout because it was too big to fail. After reading about the Bear Stearns extinction, she did not understand how there could be anything larger than a dinosaur but clearly in some people’s minds there were such things. These things larger than dinosaurs were apparently immortal and began to act as if they were, so she decided that she would shop her investments elsewhere. She didn’t want a bank that thought it was God. It was clearly way too big.
Finally, she found a bank that was actually able to serve her long-term interests. It wasn’t the tiny little local bank that had very few offerings and not nearly a broad enough base of investments to withstand a serious recession because all of its income was based on very local loans. It wasn’t so large and so committed to instant profits for itself that it bet against its clients in order to expand its own sphere of influence internationally. It kept its eye on the long view and on serving its clients and its region well. It operated on a human scale and wished to serve generations of citizens, which is to say it was a regional bank with enough territory in its scope to satisfy a hungry bear and a herd of bulls as well as a little Goldilocks who had only a hundred dollars to invest. Little Goldilocks no longer had to worry about being gobbled up by bears or trampled by bulls because the people in her banking world knew and trusted each other. There was no more than two degrees of separation among the subscribers to the regional bank. They all knew someone who knew someone else among the whole banking constituency. It was neither too big to fail nor too small to succeed. It was just right.
The lesson Goldilocks learned from her experience is that the concept of “just right” is not just personal. It is universally human. The problem is that we as humans lose track of scale and either bite off more than we can chew or put ourselves on a diet that cannot possibly sustain us. We lack humility on the one hand and courage or common sense on the other. If only we asked ourselves, “Is this suitable or comfortable or fitting in the long run?” Instead we default to “more must be better” or “self-denial is a virtue” or “I want it now no matter what.” We end up behaving like the bulls and bears we use as symbols instead of the human beings we ultimately want to be and actually are.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wall Street's Wilderness
The SEC has no intention of winning the case against Goldman Sachs. It only wants to prove that is has insufficient tools by which to manage Wall Street. The key is to get Goldman Sachs to take the bait and fight the case. How to keep Wall Street on the hook for this fight is going to take some canny fly-fishing on the part of the SEC. If Goldman Sachs were a smart cutthroat trout, it would not take the bait and would simply buy off the fishermen, forcing the SEC to play catch and release. Fighting the SEC and then wriggling off the hook will only lead to greater measures of control in the future. Let’s hope Goldman fights all the way.
The Masters of the Universe, a term used by Tom Wolfe in Bonfire of the Vanities to describe the self-image of high rolling Wall Street investment bankers, is the modern manifestation of the rugged individual taming the American wilderness in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of the forest and the Indians, the modern Natty Bumppo has a world economy to conquer. He fashions tools such as derivatives and credit default swaps instead of animal snares and saw mills. Since the physical wilderness is no longer a viable medium for heroic exploit, the emerging and increasingly complex global economic wilderness is the only wilderness left where individuals with the capacity to cut paths to riches are able to hack their way to glory and success. The physical wilderness, meanwhile, has been mostly set aside for worship and recreation, except where oil and gas may exist.
There is something in the American psyche that loves the single combat warrior, an ancestor to the master of the universe concept and also identified in another Tom Wolfe book called The Right Stuff. We canonized that warrior in our stories and then movies about Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, the Lone Ranger, and a host of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters. Gradually they were urbanized and began seeking justice on the streets instead of on the prairie or in the woods. But they were always associated with justice for the little guy against the monstrous forces of unbridled or corrupt power. By the late 20th Century, we even saw women in the role with the production of Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae.
Today, the combat warriors of Wall Street are no longer single or heroic. They work for too-big-to-fail banks; they are faceless like the Lone Ranger, but they serve themselves and their employer and not the little guy or justice. Their only defense for their greed is a rationalization called “trickle down” economics.
The sea was once a wilderness as well as the forest and the prairie. Herman Melville captured its wonder and seeming limitlessness in his epic novel Moby Dick. At one point in the novel an African-American character named Fleece, the Pequod’s 90 year old cook, is coaxed by Stubb, the playful, teasing, and cruel second mate, into giving a sermon to the sharks that are tearing into Stubb’s whale tied along side of the ship. The sermon, in essence, is as follows:
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat natur, dat is the pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned…Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbor’s mout, I say…I know some o’you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mout is not to swaller wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get into de scrouge to help demselves.
Stubb then calls Fleece’s sermon Christianity, but Fleece loses patience with the sharks and condemns them for their uncontrollable greed which will lead to their deaths by gluttony. The sermon also foreshadows Ahab’s uncontrollable rage against the great white whale.
While Wall Street likes to see itself as a collection of hunters and gatherers in an economic wilderness or on an open sea of opportunity, unfettered by rules and laws, it has a higher duty to deliberately assure that the small fry get their needs met and not simply assume that some crumbs fall off their table. They also need to make sure they are not pursuing phantom whales as they harvest the bounty of the new economic wilderness and that their weapons are not financial boomerangs which end up circling back, attacking their clients and eventually themselves.
Given human nature, we know beyond any doubt that self-government and an appeal to higher duty seldom works. Something larger than ourselves needs to be in place to provide the rules by which we play safely. The best thing we have come up with so far is representative government. Too often, however, we end up electing or appointing the same sharks that have wreaked havoc with our economic well being.
We don’t need big government or small government but rather good government run by good people. The kinds of people we do not want in government are voracious sharks or especially sleek barracudas who pretend to care for the little guys and then feed on them all the way to the bank.
The Masters of the Universe, a term used by Tom Wolfe in Bonfire of the Vanities to describe the self-image of high rolling Wall Street investment bankers, is the modern manifestation of the rugged individual taming the American wilderness in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of the forest and the Indians, the modern Natty Bumppo has a world economy to conquer. He fashions tools such as derivatives and credit default swaps instead of animal snares and saw mills. Since the physical wilderness is no longer a viable medium for heroic exploit, the emerging and increasingly complex global economic wilderness is the only wilderness left where individuals with the capacity to cut paths to riches are able to hack their way to glory and success. The physical wilderness, meanwhile, has been mostly set aside for worship and recreation, except where oil and gas may exist.
There is something in the American psyche that loves the single combat warrior, an ancestor to the master of the universe concept and also identified in another Tom Wolfe book called The Right Stuff. We canonized that warrior in our stories and then movies about Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, the Lone Ranger, and a host of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters. Gradually they were urbanized and began seeking justice on the streets instead of on the prairie or in the woods. But they were always associated with justice for the little guy against the monstrous forces of unbridled or corrupt power. By the late 20th Century, we even saw women in the role with the production of Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae.
Today, the combat warriors of Wall Street are no longer single or heroic. They work for too-big-to-fail banks; they are faceless like the Lone Ranger, but they serve themselves and their employer and not the little guy or justice. Their only defense for their greed is a rationalization called “trickle down” economics.
The sea was once a wilderness as well as the forest and the prairie. Herman Melville captured its wonder and seeming limitlessness in his epic novel Moby Dick. At one point in the novel an African-American character named Fleece, the Pequod’s 90 year old cook, is coaxed by Stubb, the playful, teasing, and cruel second mate, into giving a sermon to the sharks that are tearing into Stubb’s whale tied along side of the ship. The sermon, in essence, is as follows:
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can’t be helped; but to gobern dat natur, dat is the pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned…Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbor’s mout, I say…I know some o’you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mout is not to swaller wid, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can’t get into de scrouge to help demselves.
Stubb then calls Fleece’s sermon Christianity, but Fleece loses patience with the sharks and condemns them for their uncontrollable greed which will lead to their deaths by gluttony. The sermon also foreshadows Ahab’s uncontrollable rage against the great white whale.
While Wall Street likes to see itself as a collection of hunters and gatherers in an economic wilderness or on an open sea of opportunity, unfettered by rules and laws, it has a higher duty to deliberately assure that the small fry get their needs met and not simply assume that some crumbs fall off their table. They also need to make sure they are not pursuing phantom whales as they harvest the bounty of the new economic wilderness and that their weapons are not financial boomerangs which end up circling back, attacking their clients and eventually themselves.
Given human nature, we know beyond any doubt that self-government and an appeal to higher duty seldom works. Something larger than ourselves needs to be in place to provide the rules by which we play safely. The best thing we have come up with so far is representative government. Too often, however, we end up electing or appointing the same sharks that have wreaked havoc with our economic well being.
We don’t need big government or small government but rather good government run by good people. The kinds of people we do not want in government are voracious sharks or especially sleek barracudas who pretend to care for the little guys and then feed on them all the way to the bank.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Taxes, Triggers, and Tea
Times have been tough for a lot of Americans these past couple of years. One of the things that tough times tend to generate is fear. Roosevelt saw that tendency and tried to negate its magnetic pull by declaring: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” However, this time around, there was no Roosevelt to reassure us. There was a black man sitting in his former seat.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
I say black man because that is how a certain portion of America still sees the President. They cannot get past the fact that the country elected a black person as President of the United States. Some called “birthers” keep trying to insist that he cannot be the President because he was not born in the U.S. Others dismiss him as a spendthrift liberal who is giving what is left of the country to his fellow black people. Still others reject him on the basis that he used taxpayer money to bail out the big banks and Detroit but left the average white guy behind holding his up-side-down mortgage, facing the loss of his home and his job, and burdening him with the cost of health care for 32 million folks without health insurance.
None of these fears are made true by the policies set forth by the President, but that does not prevent these fearful folks from embracing and focusing those fears. Yes, we have yet to see all the bailouts paid back or rules put in place to prevent another Wall Street bubble disaster, but the economy has come off life-support and is beginning to stroll around the block; and it is dreaming of running another marathon some day, albeit at a much slower pace. The task now is to engage the general populace so that it too can participate. How that is accomplished has yet to be revealed, but there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Remember, under capitalism, which is what we still have as our economic system, the workers are the first to be let go and the last to be brought back.
However, meanwhile, there are two distinct but overlapping groups of white folks who are determined not only to take what they see as justice into their own hands but to stop the President from bringing what they call “socialism” to full throttle in our midst. They are The Tea Partiers and The Gun-Hoes. The Tea Party consists of the angry white folks who generally do not carry weapons or cling to them the way small children cling to security blankets. They use their voices to mouth the half-truths and outright falsehoods they hear from Limbaugh on radio or Hannity on Fox News. When they are interviewed or when they make their placards, they never get out a message that makes any sense for their own well-being. Their placards and pronouncements imply if not call for, in effect, self-inflicted wounds such as loss of Social Security or Medicare. In short, they want to be taxed less but still receive their government benefits which are paid for by taxes. They want their cake and eat it too.
The Gun-Hoes, on the other hand, tend to be rural types or rural wannabes who go to the woods on weekends and play war games in preparation for that anticipated time when they will be “forced” to defend the Constitution from the corruption by Washington, Wall Street, and Socialism in general. These militia groups have bubbled and deflated in size and number proportionally to the rise and fall of unemployment and to their perception of the degree to which Washington is controlled by liberals. With the 2008 election of a black President and a majority of Democrats in both houses, the number of background checks in the U.S. rose immediately by 42 percent the month after the election. Although gun purchases have leveled off in the past six months as joblessness has, it has not been simply because of a decrease in fear but also because of fully loaded saturation levels of gun-toting whites. The gun cabinets are full because the Gun-Hoes ascribe to the other Roosevelt’s adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Not all gun purchasers join militias or even tea parties. Many are quiet, isolated, individuals who are not joiners by nature. They quietly buy their guns and store ammunition in fear that they may have to defend their homes in the face of some sort of takeover by an “enemy adversary” who may appear in the form of a government agent, an illegal immigrant, city folk, or simply a non-white or non-resident alien. They hate the government in general, but they fear the individual or group who might threaten their sense of libertarian peace or rugged individualism. The ones the public needs to fear most are the ones driven by “voices from God” such as the nine from the group that calls itself Hutaree who were recently arrested in the Midwest.
Uncertainty produces fear, and fear brings out the worst in us. The more diverse and larger a population and the fewer jobs, the more fear and suspicion reign supreme. Fear has a way of transforming the golden rule into “Do unto others as you suspect they would (or will) do unto you.” It is a preemptive and projective strike, the product of selfishness and fear. We project our fears onto others who are different and imagine them acting out what we might be capable of doing ourselves or have already done and therefore fear retribution. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All criticism is autobiographical.”
That’s why the Tea Party, hosted by that screech owl Sarah Palin, is so noisy and the gun sales so bountiful. I’ll reluctantly put up with the noise so long as the guns stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep in mind the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and meanwhile try to ignore the saying about the squeaky wheel.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Privilege of Paltry Principles
“And it is not difficult for them to maintain their principles at the cost of the discomfort of others.” W.S. Maugham Cakes and Ale
Maugham was referring to the English and a lack of fire in the grate of a drawing room in summer; for the English were notorious for not lighting fires before October 1st even if the weather warranted it. This instance reminds me of the contemporary American conservative’s use of one principle against another as a means of assuring good returns on investments even if those investments stifle competition rather than encourage it. Conservatives call for smaller government and freer competition, but when it comes to competition, they won’t invest in a start-up unless it has not only identified a niche but secured it with an intellectual property patent.
The latest exposure of this inconsistency in principle (free market vs. secure investment) is the patenting of genes. It seems that biotech companies have been able to secure patents on parts of the human body even though nature is not supposed to be patentable. CBS’s 60 Minutes exposed this whole can of genes on their Easter Sunday show. The piece revealed that a biotech company called Myriad Genetics had patented the gene that indicates susceptibility to breast cancer in women. Therefore, the only place you can get tested for the gene is through Myriad. The cost of the procedure is $3200. While most insurance plans cover the cost, some do not cover the complete cost.
However, cost coverage aside, does any company have the right to isolate and patent a gene? Apparently, only in America has it been legal so far. Then again, that may change now that the courts have gotten involved, thanks to a case involving a New York woman whose insurance would not pay the full fee to Myriad.
I can see where an investor would want to secure an investment by investing in something protected. Surely a patent on some sort of cure would be reasonable. But to prevent any other research on a gene because of a patent seems, well, patently immoral. Under what circumstances should property rights and profit protection take precedence over saving a life? Doctors may take the Hippocratic Oath, but business treats even parts of human beings as property to buy and sell. It is slavery piecemeal.
To me this is a prime example of how the modern scions of capitalism defended by conservatives have run amok of principle. They may hold life as sacred at the point of conception, but if an adult is in need of a service she cannot afford because her gene is owned by a corporation, that’s too bad. What principle could possibly explain this ambivalence about human life?
Private property has always been the basis of capitalism. Making anything and everything, including genes, own-able takes us backwards as human beings, not forward. Making money for the few at the expense of the many never had a noble ring to it either. It’s trickle up, not trickle down.
As 60 Minutes pointed out, Jonas Salk, who invented the cure for polio did not patent the vaccine for his own profit. He was happy to have made a contribution to society by eliminating a dreaded disease. Today, one wonders what the pharmaceutical industry is up to when all we see advertised are maintenance drugs rather than cures. If they can get us to buy a drug that makes us feel better or improves our health without curing the problem, then we feel better and they continue to make money on the endless refills we purchase.
Where are medical heroes of today? Where are the actual cures? I suspect that the principle of profit takes precedence over the principle of medical solution, thanks to investment strategies and greed. It simply is not profitable to come up with cures for disease. It is highly profitable to come up with maintenance relief of symptoms.
This may all sound cynical, but it shows just how far we have strayed from doing what is right. Instead, we would rather do what is profitable. The market system does not serve us; we serve it. And until we regain control of it and put it to our own best use as a species, we will continue to see our body parts not auctioned off to the highest bidder but patented in isolation and for someone else’s profit.
Principles are meant to be questioned. If they do not stand up to the test of greater goodness, they should be discarded. Making money and hiding behind principles of free market or Caveat Emptor are as nonsensical as not lighting a fire in the drawing room because it is not after October 1st. Moreover, they are a whole lot more threatening to civilization as we know it.
Maugham was referring to the English and a lack of fire in the grate of a drawing room in summer; for the English were notorious for not lighting fires before October 1st even if the weather warranted it. This instance reminds me of the contemporary American conservative’s use of one principle against another as a means of assuring good returns on investments even if those investments stifle competition rather than encourage it. Conservatives call for smaller government and freer competition, but when it comes to competition, they won’t invest in a start-up unless it has not only identified a niche but secured it with an intellectual property patent.
The latest exposure of this inconsistency in principle (free market vs. secure investment) is the patenting of genes. It seems that biotech companies have been able to secure patents on parts of the human body even though nature is not supposed to be patentable. CBS’s 60 Minutes exposed this whole can of genes on their Easter Sunday show. The piece revealed that a biotech company called Myriad Genetics had patented the gene that indicates susceptibility to breast cancer in women. Therefore, the only place you can get tested for the gene is through Myriad. The cost of the procedure is $3200. While most insurance plans cover the cost, some do not cover the complete cost.
However, cost coverage aside, does any company have the right to isolate and patent a gene? Apparently, only in America has it been legal so far. Then again, that may change now that the courts have gotten involved, thanks to a case involving a New York woman whose insurance would not pay the full fee to Myriad.
I can see where an investor would want to secure an investment by investing in something protected. Surely a patent on some sort of cure would be reasonable. But to prevent any other research on a gene because of a patent seems, well, patently immoral. Under what circumstances should property rights and profit protection take precedence over saving a life? Doctors may take the Hippocratic Oath, but business treats even parts of human beings as property to buy and sell. It is slavery piecemeal.
To me this is a prime example of how the modern scions of capitalism defended by conservatives have run amok of principle. They may hold life as sacred at the point of conception, but if an adult is in need of a service she cannot afford because her gene is owned by a corporation, that’s too bad. What principle could possibly explain this ambivalence about human life?
Private property has always been the basis of capitalism. Making anything and everything, including genes, own-able takes us backwards as human beings, not forward. Making money for the few at the expense of the many never had a noble ring to it either. It’s trickle up, not trickle down.
As 60 Minutes pointed out, Jonas Salk, who invented the cure for polio did not patent the vaccine for his own profit. He was happy to have made a contribution to society by eliminating a dreaded disease. Today, one wonders what the pharmaceutical industry is up to when all we see advertised are maintenance drugs rather than cures. If they can get us to buy a drug that makes us feel better or improves our health without curing the problem, then we feel better and they continue to make money on the endless refills we purchase.
Where are medical heroes of today? Where are the actual cures? I suspect that the principle of profit takes precedence over the principle of medical solution, thanks to investment strategies and greed. It simply is not profitable to come up with cures for disease. It is highly profitable to come up with maintenance relief of symptoms.
This may all sound cynical, but it shows just how far we have strayed from doing what is right. Instead, we would rather do what is profitable. The market system does not serve us; we serve it. And until we regain control of it and put it to our own best use as a species, we will continue to see our body parts not auctioned off to the highest bidder but patented in isolation and for someone else’s profit.
Principles are meant to be questioned. If they do not stand up to the test of greater goodness, they should be discarded. Making money and hiding behind principles of free market or Caveat Emptor are as nonsensical as not lighting a fire in the drawing room because it is not after October 1st. Moreover, they are a whole lot more threatening to civilization as we know it.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Smaller Government?
The Tea Party Express rolled into Denver yesterday. I saw on the news the signs they bounced in their hands in a didactic gesture of insistence. “Small government” was one of the more prominent ones they shook with anger and self righteousness.
And then reality began to confront their plea in my memory bank. I began to think about the last time I stood in line for any length of time. No, it wasn’t to get tickets to the opera or the symphony or even a play at the Space Theatre. It was at the Post Office. I had gone there to retrieve my mail after being out of town for a few weeks. There was one person working behind the counter, there were two people in front of me, and there was a line forming and lengthening behind me as we waited for the woman who was insuring a package, buying stamps, and generally accomplishing all of her little missions that had brought her to the Post Office that morning.
I can remember a time when no matter how long the line was, I could get in and out of the Post Office in a few minutes because there were three people working the counter. Not today. Today, thanks to smaller government, I have to wait about a half hour to forty-five minutes to get my mail early in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday.
Then I began recalling the last time I had to go to the DMV for a car registration or a driver’s license renewal. I remember spending hours trying t get what I needed and lost almost a full day of work in the process. It seems the volume of business at the DMV is far greater than its capacity to handle it, so small government in this instance appeared to be costing productivity in the workplace a great deal.
When I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago, I noticed that road crews were everywhere patching and sealing the already magnificent roads and in the process completely eliminating any road hazards due to potholes or cracks. At this time of year in Denver, unless you have a large SUV with oversized tires, you are apt to put your front end out of alignment by dropping into some significant potholes everywhere around town. Of course, New Zealand has a more socialist government than we do, so they put social services such as national health care and road repair ahead of any shorter-sighted call for lower taxes and smaller government.
I don’t know about you, but I remember what happened when we relaxed some rules governing Wall Street during the last thirty years of the 20th Century after we seemed to forget what brought them into existence to begin with, thinking that a freer Wall Street and less government interference would be a good thing for everybody. And so we bought into trickle-down or supply-side thinking for a few decades. It turned out the government had to act about as big as you can get in the end in order to salvage the world economy from complete collapse. Had it stayed a bit bigger and more powerful to begin with, the collapse would have been prevented.
Today we have these multinational corporations that have budgets larger than most countries out there doing business in their own interest, as they are designed to do. Without big or powerful government, who is going to ensure that these corporations contribute to the greater good at the same time they make a profit for their stockholders, who tend to be rather insistent that their investments yield short term returns on a regular basis. Who is going to help guide these huge corporations on a long term course that raises the world’s quality of life as well as the already high standard of living enjoyed by investors even higher? Would you suggest The United Nations? I think not. The only government capable of doing that is the U.S. government, unless we shrink it and let the Chinese and its directed economy bury us. And unless it remains large and powerful, it will be run over by all sorts of powerful entities with a lot more resources than the Tea Party crowd.
You want “smaller government”? Corporations, China, India, even the European Union are licking their collective chops! What are you thinking, Tea Partiers! If you want to protest something, protest against fast food and industrialized agriculture, not big government. The former will shorten your lives; taxes never have. And drink some green tea instead of throwing it in the sea of your misdirected discontent.
And then reality began to confront their plea in my memory bank. I began to think about the last time I stood in line for any length of time. No, it wasn’t to get tickets to the opera or the symphony or even a play at the Space Theatre. It was at the Post Office. I had gone there to retrieve my mail after being out of town for a few weeks. There was one person working behind the counter, there were two people in front of me, and there was a line forming and lengthening behind me as we waited for the woman who was insuring a package, buying stamps, and generally accomplishing all of her little missions that had brought her to the Post Office that morning.
I can remember a time when no matter how long the line was, I could get in and out of the Post Office in a few minutes because there were three people working the counter. Not today. Today, thanks to smaller government, I have to wait about a half hour to forty-five minutes to get my mail early in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday.
Then I began recalling the last time I had to go to the DMV for a car registration or a driver’s license renewal. I remember spending hours trying t get what I needed and lost almost a full day of work in the process. It seems the volume of business at the DMV is far greater than its capacity to handle it, so small government in this instance appeared to be costing productivity in the workplace a great deal.
When I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago, I noticed that road crews were everywhere patching and sealing the already magnificent roads and in the process completely eliminating any road hazards due to potholes or cracks. At this time of year in Denver, unless you have a large SUV with oversized tires, you are apt to put your front end out of alignment by dropping into some significant potholes everywhere around town. Of course, New Zealand has a more socialist government than we do, so they put social services such as national health care and road repair ahead of any shorter-sighted call for lower taxes and smaller government.
I don’t know about you, but I remember what happened when we relaxed some rules governing Wall Street during the last thirty years of the 20th Century after we seemed to forget what brought them into existence to begin with, thinking that a freer Wall Street and less government interference would be a good thing for everybody. And so we bought into trickle-down or supply-side thinking for a few decades. It turned out the government had to act about as big as you can get in the end in order to salvage the world economy from complete collapse. Had it stayed a bit bigger and more powerful to begin with, the collapse would have been prevented.
Today we have these multinational corporations that have budgets larger than most countries out there doing business in their own interest, as they are designed to do. Without big or powerful government, who is going to ensure that these corporations contribute to the greater good at the same time they make a profit for their stockholders, who tend to be rather insistent that their investments yield short term returns on a regular basis. Who is going to help guide these huge corporations on a long term course that raises the world’s quality of life as well as the already high standard of living enjoyed by investors even higher? Would you suggest The United Nations? I think not. The only government capable of doing that is the U.S. government, unless we shrink it and let the Chinese and its directed economy bury us. And unless it remains large and powerful, it will be run over by all sorts of powerful entities with a lot more resources than the Tea Party crowd.
You want “smaller government”? Corporations, China, India, even the European Union are licking their collective chops! What are you thinking, Tea Partiers! If you want to protest something, protest against fast food and industrialized agriculture, not big government. The former will shorten your lives; taxes never have. And drink some green tea instead of throwing it in the sea of your misdirected discontent.
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