Not Socialism

We are conditioned by our business funded politicians to believe that any attempt to manage the invisible hand is socialism. The invisible hand is a good metaphor for a market's ability to create wealth. But it can be cruel and even violent too. If you lose your job, then you have nothing to trade for food and shelter. That's the invisible hand too. The great depression was the invisible hand in a downswing (or possibly an uppercut).

There are ways to manage the swing and we invest in many of them since we learn from our mistakes, sometimes. We supply clean water through the government. We manage crucial services like disaster management and social security. Medicare, public power, investment in research, and health and human services. 

Consider group insurance. Why does it work? Well, you get a body of people to invest. Some will be sick and others healthy, but the coverage is there for everyone to help keep them from having to suffer the unfathomable tragedy the invisible hand deals if someone gets ill - it provides income to help them recover and get back to a point where they can manage.

The flaw in our thinking is that this should generate a profit. Group insurance is all about a zero sum game. Add a profit motive to it and all of a sudden you are aiming not just to keep people healthy, but to extract a dividend from the investment - this drives up costs and cause scarcity management in the process as they shorten the health goal in order to maximize the return, making insurance a different proposal. 

They start talking about not covering certain illnesses. They start talking about raising prices for those that are more likely to get sick. Suddenly we are back to "every man for himself" because we're told our neighbors are dragging us down.

This is a red herring. Health Insurance is one of those areas where business and the profit motive work against the basic idea of providing services to mitigate the negative impacts of market swings and profit driven decision making. Group insurance is not socialism.

How do we know this? Well, if you look at how businesses are managed internally, you will see the same dynamic. I'm in IT and my team provide central services for our business. I am not allowed to make a profit - just provide the necessary services to my businesses at the lowest cost. My business is a capitalist enterprise, so how is this possible? Because it's sensible. I cannibalize my business if I insist on an internal gain rather than providing the central service. Is my department socialist? No. It's still capitalism. But I choose not to make money in this area in order to facilitate the wellbeing of my other businesses. I don't do this for free - I charge a "tax" but I have to prove that I'm not profiting through the process - just covering costs.

But if I try in our society to introduce the concept of Universal health care, as a zero profit concept, I'm accused of socialism or communism. The same rules apply - profit motive eliminates the proper incentive of the zero sum game. It disables it. It causes it to fail.

It turns out that in order to shelter ourselves from the bad aspects of the invisible hand, we have to turn to systems that work differently. Still within its mechanism, capitalism can thrive while having certain aspects - like public care and education, being non-profits (actual non-profits, not the pseudo non-profits that mega hospital systems have become).

To do this, we have to overcome the socialism label. This is responsible democracy, responsible capitalism - and those arguing against it are arguing against the public good. They're arguing to keep insane profits for some and death and starvation for others, representing it as the way it has to be - but it doesn't. There's room for both. Many European countries illustrate the balance and ability to do this. It's those that profit insanely that are telling you you will lose your job if we try to help the poor. 

These are the same people responsible for the great depression and the 2008 housing collapse. They're the same people who called FDR a socialist. They're the same people who are paid by oil and gas to make sure we don't change to sustainable fuel sources. Who argued that smoking wasn't unhealthy, that climate change isn't real and that guns are true freedom. I'm not talking about the people that believe these things. They are lambs brought to the slaughter (and I'm sorry if I insult you because you believe one or more of these things - I'm not inherently against guns properly managed or that there's no space for fossil fuels or plastics for specific purposes).

I'm talking about the politicians and businesses that profit off of the human misery. And unless we find ways to mitigate it, we will wind up in a Shakespearean tragedy - everyone dies at the end. We need the better story of reconciliation and balance. 

And reconciliation and balance is the story of the Democratic party today, in 2020. It's not extremism as the Trump adds shout. It's the start of an alternative to the dog-eat-dog world that business and politicians are profiting off of. Republican politicians are not leading a way forward. They are trying to maintain the same old story with repression, wealth for a few, profiting off the misery of others.

Please vote - and please consider voting for the alternative.