Ranthropologist

Category: Politics & Economics

  • Affording to Care

    Affording to Care

    As readers of this blog know, I advocate looking at an issue from multiple perspectives and using facts, logic, and an arsenal of critical thinking skills to reach a conclusion about just about everything. For some issues, this is easy. For others, it is very, very difficult. I am facing that difficulty right now. I don’t usually like to post about current events because I want my posts to be generally applicable instead of linked to a specific issue, but this post will be an exception. I am having an incredibly difficult time keeping any sense of perspective over the fact that the federal government shut down at 12:00 am on October 1, 2013 because of what seems to essentially be a game of chicken – or more accurately, a hostage situation. I just don’t get it. I am trying to remind myself that as much as I believe in my point of view, the people on the other side believe in theirs and have a right to it… but I am also reminding myself that sometimes, it’s okay to come to the conclusion that the other side is just. plain. wrong. This feels like one of those times to me.

    Much of my current state of mind comes from emotion, and I admit that it can color my analysis, but in this case I also think the facts are on my side. The thing is, this showdown over the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is not just about facts; it’s about ideology. It’s about a fundamental disconnect between two ideological realms: one that believes the government has a duty to provide for all its citizens, and one that believes that individuals are solely responsible for taking care of their own needs. Of course, there are nuances to these two ideologies, and a broad spectrum of positions between their poles. But my training in anthropology has taught me about the structure of culture and society – from the simplest hunter-gatherer band to the most complex industrial civilization – and I am convinced that the hunter-gatherers have it right. These groups stress interdependence among their members, with an egalitarian structure that doesn’t allow for status hierarchies or any one person having more power or possessions than others in the group. In fact, hunter-gatherers must provide for each other, because the survival of individuals depends on the survival of the group. Group survival is paramount. In many industrial societies, this notion has been turned on its head. Status, materialism, and individual achievement are paramount. However, this does not mean the burden of the ruling class to provide for societal needs is negated; in fact, it becomes more important than ever, because a class-based, stratified social system is by its very definition a system that allocates more resources at the top, and fewer resources at the bottom. The bootstrap individualist will argue that any individual has the capacity, with hard work and gumption, to climb to the top of the ladder. This is loosely true, but it ignores the complexities of living within an entrenched class system. In a class-based system, the playing field is not level. When you are standing 100 yards behind the starting line when the gun goes off, you have to run harder and surmount more obstacles than the runners who start ahead of you… and those runners are apt to leave even more obstacles in their wake. And, of course, there are only so many spots on the winners’ podium, so even if you see it and keep running towards it, chances are the people already standing there will fight tooth and nail to retain their position.

    In many ways I believe that the hegemonic lie perpetuated by this system – that is, the lie that there is space on the podium for everyone and all it takes is hard work to get there – is the root cause of our current crisis. The fight to defund the Affordable Care Act is championed by those who believe it is unfair for government to provide care to its poorest citizens. It is fought by those who believe that the poor just don’t work hard enough, or don’t try hard enough, or are lazy or entitled or accustomed to government handouts. Unfortunately, there are examples of people for whom this is true; but I don’t think it is true for the vast majority of those who are too poor, too sick, or too underemployed to afford health insurance. A successful culture is defined as one that secures the survival of the individuals that comprise it in a way that is fulfilling for most of them, most of the time. Clearly we are not meeting that definition in the United States. Other industrialized nations are having similar troubles, but at least most of them seem to have figured out that taking care of people’s physical (i.e. medical) needs is one thing that government should be responsible for. Our individualistic hegemony has obscured the path to a successful culture and society, so that opponents of the health care act criticize it as “unfair” because money they consider theirs – that is, the taxes they pay – is being spent to subsidize health care for those unable to pay for it. It’s “unfair” because those without health insurance now have a way to afford it because it spreads the risk amongst a much larger pool and allows for much cheaper premiums. It’s “unfair” because low-income people are being subsidized with taxes from individuals and businesses when they should just be working harder so they can get off the dole. It’s “unfair” because Congress is “exempt” (forgetting, conveniently, that the ACA is meant for people whose employers don’t provide health coverage, which Congress – also known as the federal government! – does provide for both elected officials and their staffs). It’s “unfair” because the burden of keeping the population healthy is being borne by those higher up the status hierarchy. To me, this is like those people on the winners’ podium – who know damn well that space on the podium is limited – flaunting their trophies and doing end-zone dances instead of shaking the hands of their fellow competitors and offering to help them over some of the barriers that they themselves may not have had to face. Instead of acknowledging that we are all in the same race, and working to make that race an equal chance for all, the winners instead blame the other competitors for having to race on an uneven track that they had no hand in devising and have very little ability to change.

    As I said at the start, I have a very hard time maintaining my objectivity about this subject. All I can see is that a group of individualist ideologues is willing to take down the entire system just so that our weakest, most vulnerable citizens have no chance at even seeing the podium, much less standing on it. I know this part of my argument is not logical, but right now, with this situation, I can’t help but give some heed to emotion.

  • Mini Rant: FU, National Association of Realtors

    Mini Rant: FU, National Association of Realtors

    There are many reasons I don’t watch much television, but one of the big ones is how infuriated I can get at commercials. Last night I saw one for the National Association of Realtors that made me want to put my fist through the TV. Over a picture of happy children throwing a ball, the commercial intones that “home ownership contributes to higher self-esteem and better test scores.” Hey, NAR? FUCK YOU. Don’t you think everybody would like to be able to own a home? Do you really think that you are stimulating epiphanies amongst people who are renting? ‘Cause yeah, sure, they’re renting because they want to, and not because they have to. And now, because of your commercial, they’re thinking “Oh yeah, I should totally buy a house so my kids will have better self-esteem and test scores.” This commercial absolutely infuriates me with its tone-deaf message and implicit criticism of those who are unable to afford home ownership. Of course home ownership improves feelings of self-worth and benefits educational outcomes – that’s because those who can afford to buy a home are generally already living in one of the upper tiers of the social and economic hierarchy. What a solipsistic, circular, insulting, and demeaning piece of BS.

  • Economic Maladaptation

    Economic Maladaptation

    Near the end of the semester in my Human Origins course, I teach about two concepts: the epidemiologic transition, and the demographic transition. Both of them have to do with overall improvements in quality and length of life in societies that have reached a certain level of knowledge and wealth. In the epidemiologic transition, knowledge and innovations regarding health and medicine combine to reduce the incidence of infectious disease, and generally increase the overall health and longevity of the population. Mortality from non-infectious diseases such as heart disease and cancer increase as life expectancy increases. So, instead of dying young of an infectious disease, you live longer and ultimately perish from a disease or condition linked to old age and/or the consequences of a Westernized lifestyle (such as poor diet and lack of exercise). Combine this with the demographic transition, which sees life expectancy increase, and a drop in death rates followed by a drop in birth rates as societies industrialize and modernize, and you have a perfect recipe for booming population growth. Not every society in the world has gone through both of these transitions, but enough have that what should have been viewed as benefit is now becoming a detriment. Put in evolutionary terms, what was once adaptive is becoming maladaptive. I hypothesize that it is not these two transitions themselves that are to blame, but yet another transition, which I am going to call the economic transition.

    So what is the economic transition? As the world has modernized, starting at least four centuries ago with the age of European exploration and colonization in the 16th and 17th centuries, the global economic system that we know today as capitalism has taken hold. Capitalism, and the quest for profit through the exchange of material goods, is in many ways a beneficial and adaptive system for human groups. However, link it to the natural human desire to achieve status, and then link status to the ownership of material things and the symbols of exchange that make that ownership possible (i.e., money), and add in the longer-lived and massively expanded human population we are dealing with today, and you have a recipe for maladaptive disaster. Capitalism, superficially, is extremely similar to biological evolution and natural selection – call it economic selection. Left to its own devices, the natural consequence of capitalism is to concentrate wealth in the hands of a very few people or groups. This can work in some circumstances, especially when the social group affected is reasonably sized. Competition can lead to greater resource acquisition for the overall group, which is then redistributed by the leaders who had the greatest hand in acquiring it. This is what happens in the Big Man system that used to characterize many native economies in places like Papua New Guinea. The Big Man worked hard and gained followers who worked on his behalf to grow the biggest garden and the largest herd of pigs, and as harvest or slaughter time came, he rewarded his followers for their hard work. Those who worked the most gained the most, but nobody went without basic necessities. Why? Because in small groups, the well-being of the group depends on the well-being of the individuals who comprise it. The Big Man, for his part, was well compensated for his leadership efforts, but he did not end up with portions that were much larger than those of his workers; his gains instead had to do with status and leadership power (which from an evolutionary standpoint tends to correlate with greater reproductive success – to me, this is the underlying impetus for the development of these sorts of systems).

    The Big Man system is a sort of proto-capitalism. Anybody could aspire to be a Big Man, and with enough hard work and charisma, individuals could work their way into the top status tiers of these groups. The key difference is that the Big Man did not keep the majority of the wealth for himself, and he did not attempt what true capitalism attempts today: gather the most wealth possible while paying as little as possible to acquire it (whether for raw materials, workers, overhead, or what have you). The capitalist world system is designed to concentrate wealth. It is theoretically true that anybody can compete in this system, but with 7 BILLION competitors, success is anything but assured, and the structural obstacles to reaching that success are more numerous and complex than I can possibly attempt to explain in one post.

    I still haven’t really explained the economic transition yet, because at least a basic knowledge of economic systems is important. Nevertheless, I can describe it simply as a transition from small-group based competitive yet redistributive systems to a system based on personal financial gain that thrives on the perpetuation of class inequality. In a survival of the fittest economic system, inequality is the only possible outcome. What’s even more insidious about this transition is that even those at the bottom of the class and income scale believe that this is the way it is supposed to be, and that the only way out is through acquisitiveness and consumption. I have already written on this at some length in posts discussing hegemony. This is hegemony in a nutshell. The economic transition is maladaptive because it relies on continued resource consumption, and it is linked to the large and long-lived global population that consumes those resources. The economic transition, if it continues to its logical conclusion, ultimately means the ultimate biological maladaptation for the human species, to wit: extinction.

    I actually didn’t mean for this post to be a treatise on my view of our world’s economic problems, but these things just come out as they come out. This is the starting point for many more specific posts to come. What started my ruminating on this particular topic (other than the fact that I ruminate about it just about every single day) was thinking about our obsession with material things, and wondering how in the world we can save ourselves from ourselves. How can we modify the system so that status comes from the person you are rather than the things you own? How can we actually slow down the economic engine, and adopt a philosophy of economic balance, instead of constant growth? When will we realize that the values of our lives come from experiences, rather than possessions?

    Let me end this post with a question for my readers: what are your fondest memories? What makes you smile when you need a boost? Do these memories revolve around things, or people and experiences? One of my favorite memories, one I call on when I want to feel happy, is from 2001 when I surprised my mom by coming home from Albuquerque for Christmas one week early. I called her from outside her front door. As we spoke, I made it sound like I was still in Albuquerque. I knocked on her door and laughed to myself as she said “Hold on sweetheart, there’s someone at the door.” She opened the door and saw me, and I will never, ever forget the look on her face or how she dropped the phone and grabbed me into a hug of joy. This is a memory that I could never buy, yet it makes me happier than any material thing I have ever owned. I think that if we consciously remember what truly has given us joy in our lives, it may lead us out of the materialism = happiness lie that so many forces are leading us to believe.

  • Health Care Fascism

    Health Care Fascism

    The American Heritage Dictionary defines socialism as: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. The same dictionary defines fascism as: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

    Socialism and fascism are two terms that have been bandied about a lot lately as people voice their dismay with various policies being proposed or pursued by the United States government. In particular, the prospect of new health care legislation has led to outcries that the government is trying to take over our lives, and that if it is passed, the country is one step closer to socialism, if not outright Communism (the capital C is an important distinction, marking a governmental system as opposed to a traditional style of communal, cooperative living typical of small hunter-gatherer societies). I suggest, for those who fear that the new health care system is socialist, that they closely study the definition of socialism posted above. What the new legislation proposes is just about as far from socialism as you can get. For one thing, it vastly increases the market share of private insurance companies. The government mandating that all citizens purchase health insurance means a massive increase in revenue for existing insurers, whether those premiums are paid by citizens as individuals, by businesses, or by the feds. And, in any case, what the government is trying to do is make people responsible for their own health care, instead of having them wait for an emergency they can’t afford, and which the government (whether state or federal) will end up paying for anyway. But the socialist point is, if the industry is still in private hands, then in no way does this legislation constitute socialism.

    Many of the people who are opposed to mandated health insurance are upset with the idea that the government can force you to do certain things. I will admit that I tend to be somewhat libertarian about the government’s role in things that should be personal choice. Philosophically, I oppose helmet laws, seat belt laws, smoking laws…. basically, if you choose to do things that are risky to your health and safety, so be it. It’s not government’s place to make me wear a helmet, etc. And I suppose I could say the same for mandated health care. The reason I support health care legislation (even though I believe the current bill is massively flawed for failing to include a public option) is because of the structural inequalities that make access to health care so difficult for so many in this country. From an economic perspective, I support the legislation because I believe that ultimately, access to care makes for a healthier population, which costs society much less and saves a lot of money in the long run.

    But back to socialism/fascism. For those who are afraid of the government “taking over our lives,” let me ask you this: is the government telling you what health insurance provider to use? Is it telling you what procedures or medications you can or cannot have (answer: no – the insurance companies are the ones who still get to do that). In other areas of your life, does the government mandate what food to buy? What car to drive? What books to read? What magazines to subscribe to? What news channel to watch? What TV shows to follow? What websites to read? What sports team to root for? Who to vote for? What you can say in public, on television, on the internet? Where you can go? Who you can talk to? What job you have? And, if the government has too much control of our lives, takes too much of our money, then I guess they should stop funding schools, roads, public safety, scientific research, job training, higher education, etc. They should also stop legislating things such as sanitation standards in restaurants, truth in advertising, product and consumer safety (lead-based paint or toys, anyone?), drinking and driving, traffic laws, tracking of sex offenders (oh, except wait – the government doesn’t do enough to keep us safe from sex offenders!). After all, if we as citizens are responsible for making the right decisions, then we don’t need to legislate all those things, because people will do the right thing without having to be told (end sarcasm). This is the tragedy of the commons – we cannot assume that people or industries will police themselves, if there is no cost associated with the use of the commons (read: laws that make people behave). This is not socialism or fascism – this is the consequence of trying to maintain social order when dealing with enormous groups of people.

    Requiring health insurance is, in my opinion, no more socialist than requiring car insurance. It makes people take personal responsibility (gasp!) for their own health, just like car insurance covers your liability if you are in an accident. Hmmm, personal responsibility – isn’t that a conservative value? Isn’t it worse when people don’t have health insurance and expect the government to pay if they need medical care? Frankly, this legislation is less socialist than the current system.

  • Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson

    Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson

    My knee has been bothering me a little bit, so instead of going for a run outside today, I went to the gym to do 45 minutes on the elliptical. This was at about 11 am. I never watch television on Saturdays, especially during the day, so I was intrigued to see that several channels on the overhead monitors were showing the TV equivalent of spam, i.e., infomercials. One starred Heidi Klum. She was hawking a line of face products designed to cover wrinkles, complete with “unretouched” (but not unblurred or unlighted) before and after photos. Another one was making the preposterous claim that YOU can buy YOUR OWN PROPERTY for ONLY PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!! Yes, that’s right, YOU could own A HOUSE LIKE THIS for only A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! On yet another screen, 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON was selling financial kits that will allow YOU to MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN JUST A FEW HOURS doing online stock trades. These “programs” brought many questions to my mind, not the least of which was why the hell I should trust 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON to give me financial advice.

    Are there that many gullible, ignorant, naive, and/or just plain stupid people out there who fall for this stuff? I guess there must be, because the infomercials persist. It’s a sad indictment of our culture that we are caught between two conflicting mythologies: the cultural value that those who work the hardest will have the most success, and the tantalizing idea that anybody can get rich quick. Both of these propositions are absurd, but there are enough people out there who fit the myths that people believe them. This is a perfect example of confirmation bias – only acknowledging or remembering the evidence that supports your view, and ignoring the evidence that doesn’t. My personal name for this is the “plane crash theory.” You remember the planes that crash, because nobody talks about the ones that land safely. Can you imagine how boring (and not to mention long) the nightly news would be if the safe landings were reported? “We now turn to Bob Bobson for tonight’s safe landing report.” “Thanks Brian. Today, planes landed safely in Topeka, San Jose…” (Three hours later…) “Now back to you, Brian!” Obviously this can work the same way for our cultural beliefs about success and making money. The recent immigrant who works two jobs for minimum wage just to pay for a ghetto apartment that he shares with five other people might not agree that the hardest workers have the most success. But for every ten thousand hard-working, yet low income people, we have a “boot strap” story about somebody who “overcame tough beginnings” and became a millionaire. This is what we remember. And, for all the thousands of people who sign up to sell Amway or Acai berry juice or whatever and fail to get rich, there are one or two people who do succeed, and again, this is what we remember. It is all magical thinking, complicated by those correlated, but not causative, success stories. So, what’s the moral of the story? For me, I guess it’s “don’t go to the gym on Saturday mornings!”