Lately, I have been taking a step back from all the news in healthcare reform, financial industry reform, etc. because instead of getting frustrated by small details, turns, and a lot of talking, I've decided to take it all in instead. To me that means I've been trying to only point people to important, bigger ideas/changes/phenomena that mean something rather than a lot of hearsay or tit or tat -- I still watch all the details, I just relate to it differently.

In regards to my new attitude to news, I do think we can all contribute more meaningful perspectives to the raging debate. Joe Costello, who is one of the biggest advocates of democratic conversations I know, is a great example of someone who has added important perspective to the DC-style of being political. He writes every few days to a list of people and with his permission, I'll post his writings here.

The way the healthcare debate is framed in the media, between friends, and across party lines is either big government is bad for economic freedom or people should come before profit. I don't see any real possibility for dialogue given these basic beliefs are just that, beliefs. These beliefs help to more generally push the country as a whole to the left or to the right based on which argument is better executed, better shrouded, better taken up by its activists. I play that game often and generally this is the political ballet we participate in and have seen before us for decades. But, it's really a sickening game of intellectual competition around what makes good organizing. I still care about the most strategically and exciting of organizing ideas and tactics that can actually beat the Fox News machine, but this kind of thinking is still stuck at tactics.

The free market ideologues and economic thought for the past 50 years have claimed that the free market solves our world's problems -- because people are motivated by making a buck people will design the most efficient, most relevant, most ingenious problem solving products to make that buck; the most popular products are popular because people buy the best product on the market for their needs. So, if you take healthcare, the claim is that private corporations have come up with the best insurance plans thus far that work to solve our country's healthcare needs. Yet, looking at the healthcare system as a whole, it's obvious there are lots of problems that are going unsolved by the free market. For those who can not afford healthcare, there is no market remedy because the corporate-market system does not find it the most profitable to cover the poor. Taken at a whole, the free corporate-market system suggests that only those who have enough money can be a part of the solution. My point is that blind faith in the free markets do not solve problems as a whole. It's clear that free markets only solve singular problems - corporate insurance plans have provided ample care for millions of people and have not provided adequate or any care for millions of others (78% of people who go bankrupt from healthcare costs start off with healthcare insurance, 15,000 people die because they have no insurance). We need to take this moment and every moment after this to think about what the best system for healthcare for all is and how to provide for the pitfalls -- think it all through, plan it out, think about it some more and implement in reasonable steps. Private insurance seems to have a role in this kind of overhaul.

Now, to solve problems as a whole, we need to look at the problem as a whole -- this is common sense. Yet, we as a country have not believed that every so often, when things start getting old, we should take a step back and look at the whole of a problem and do a complete assessment and revamp. It's common sense but we haven't extended this common sense to the way we think free markets, economies, healthcare, roads, education, should be addressed and reformed. We instead succumb to the idea that a piece-meal approach is efficient and sufficient because we have believed the world is too big and only the laissez faire attitude makes sense for solving such large problems -- the free market approach is a piece-meal approach and that's that. Does the piece-meal approach constitute an address of grievances -- NO. And yet, who can we trust to take a step back, take a bird's eye view of our healthcare and truly attack in a general way problems like, for example, my full-time employee brother and sister-in-law are made poorer by a requirement to buy private insurance with the effect that their family is broken up and they had to send their son away to Arkansas where his grandmother can care for him?

We need someone we can trust to look over stuff with the best of intentions in an academic or scientific way.

The kind of transparent analysis and problem solving that we need must start with a basic goal of solving problems for an entire society; it must operate for the sake of advancing a real freedom to live, eat, breath, produce, build things, and the real exercise of the mind for everyone. Otherwise, we're not tackling a problem, we're creating a consumer culture.

And there are solutions to be had -- if you have seriously done any reading on what has worked for many more people than for a few, you know there are steps we can take towards making things better for progressively more people. For example, see below, we should not be okay with a system that puts more money in the hands of bankers at the expense of lower wages, higher debt, lost jobs, etc. But, again, you must read, research and learn to see what constitutes a real solution and what does not.

So, if corporations' sole mission is to make profit while providing, reliable, safe, tested, and useful products to its consumers, we can't trust them. There are segments of the population they just can't provide for without ripping off or creating an agreement of lifetime debt. And if you asked them or looked at their track record, profit has informed every business decision they make (mostly).

Government is a body or process that was set up to operate for the sake of its people and progress, all people, all progress. Government has promised to be good and care for all its people towards greater freedom, but as the millions of disenfranchised and nonbelievers prove, it has not. Government as we know it has also operated for profit - our representatives pass policies that make them the most in campaign contributions.

I must say I am not for a piece-meal approach to solving problems -- I don't believe in the idea of complete freedom of the individual as a way to solve the world's problems because those who are advantaged soon find ways to oppress and exploit the rest, making it so that at some point individuals have a taller than 6 feet hurdle to overcome. I believe in the individual-public participation in fixing systems with a process for taking a step back and moving forward with the best ideas. I believe in open systems, collaborative processes, meritocratic competition, research, science, dialogue, education, and leaders that can implement the ideas of a society.

Either we become a collective culture with checks and balances and humanitarian leaders or we turn government into a completely transparent, open, administrative entity that posts academic/objective councils to oversee and implement the best ideas. Government need not be what has become common. Instead, I would like to see a transparent system of governance that leaves everything open to participation from the public as a way to keep government in check and to hold government accountable to account for and bust the overwhelmingly powerful and corrupt in the system. But here government means the public assisted by administrators and governance means only what is needed to bring greater humanity to our society so that those who pass through it come out better than when they came and those who do not, find themselves having to relearn the way they operate their business.

What are the real ideals of freedom?

To have freedom in this world, people need basic utilities and it has only been through collective action that they were brought to us. Basic public utilities create freedom and they are education, roads, healthcare, safety nets, freely-flowing capital, and a market that is competitive and has low barriers to entry.

So, what do we need to do to our failing economic system? Now's the time to look at how we have approached money in the past 40 years. Now that we had an economic crisis of great proportion, one many never imagined could be possible, we can look back at what we as a society have thought of as "getting rich and a good economy".

As Professor Michael Hudson lays out, here is our former psyche:

As an example of their warped thinking, consider an attractively priced home. Would you rather own 100% of a home free of all debt with a market value of 100,000 euros if free of debt – or, would you rather own 60% of the same home at an inflated market price valued at 250,000 euros? In the second scenario you would have 50,000 euros of “surplus wealth” (60% x 250,000 = 150,000 euros, compared to 100,000 in the first example). People across the globe have been convinced that the second scenario represents “wealth creation.” What is overlooked is that the higher-priced home carries interest charges on its higher market price. This charge would amount to 6,000 euros a year, or 500 euros a month, at 6% interest. The same property is worth more, but includes a much larger debt overhead – income for the financial sector
....

For them, a free market was one free of debt – especially foreign debt. In The Wealth of Nations (especially Book V, chapter 3), Smith warned against creditors becoming “free” enough to disable the ability of governments to protect citizens from creditors...The tacit assumption is not that bankers’ exorbitant greed is achieved at the expense of the economy at large, but that the financial sector’s prosperity is a precondition for the economy to grow. ..Every economist who has looked at the mathematics of compound interest has pointed out that in the end, debts cannot be paid. Every rate of interest can be viewed in terms of the time that it takes for a debt to double. At 5%, a debt doubles in 14½ years; at 7 percent, in 10 years; at 10 percent, in 7 years. As early as 2000 BC in Babylonia, scribal accountants were trained to calculate how loans principal doubled in five years at the then-current equivalent of 20% annually (1/60th per month for 60 months). “How long does it take a debt to multiply 64 times?” a student exercise asked. The answer is, 30 years – 6 doubling times.

Most societies throughout history have sought to provide credit legally in ways that do not permit creditor oligarchies to emerge. Today’s creditor advocates are at war with the spirit of this idea. And in taking this position, they reject the thrust of the Enlightenment’s anti-usury laws, classical political economy’s distinction between productive and sterile investment, the St. Simonian attempt at financial reform, and the Progressive Era’s attempt to mobilize national credit to fund productive industrial investment rather than being extractive, benefiting only the few. The classical idea of economic freedom itself was formulated as the antithesis to feudal-epoch finance. And the ideal of freedom from predatory finance is what is being threatened today, as if society has forgotten how long and hard the reform struggle has been.

The fight to end debt bondage and debtors prisons took many centuries to achieve its humanitarian objective. Handel’s Messiah is a staple of the Christmas and Easter season celebrating the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. What has been forgotten is the context in which Handel arranged the first performance of this oratorio in Dublin, on April 13, 1742. It was a charity concert for the benefit “of the Prisoners in several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inn's Quay.” Enough money was raised to free a hundred and forty two prisoners. The oratorio’s text accordingly contained references to “breaking bonds asunder” and “casting away yokes,” recalling the early Christian belief that the Messiah’s reign would bring liberty (Hebrew deror or debt cancellation) and release (Greek aphesis) from debt bondage. The “redeemer” was literally the redeemer from debt.

The point is that people deserve to receive the fruits of their labor. This means bringing prices in line with actual labor-costs of production and reducing the financialization of our entire society. More must be said on this....

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