The "Grievance Industry"

[paft.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, just after the end of Reagan’s first term, I was listening to a local Talk Radio host, Ronn Owens, doing a sort of “summing up” of the Reagan administration so far. He brought up Reagan’s question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and he said, “I gotta tell ya. Yes, I am. And everyone I know is better off too.”

Ronn invited his mostly white, middle-class listeners to weigh in. One after another they lined up to chirp about how well they were doing in Reagan’s America.

Then, he got a black caller, who informed the host, “I’m not better off. I’m not better off at all. In fact, things have gotten worse. And I don’t know one single black American who’s not doing worse.”

“Oh now sir,” Ronn said, with the air of someone calming down a hysteric. “don’t you feel you’re being a little myopic?”

I guess the farsighted, non-myopic approach would have been for the caller and all those other black Americans to think happy thoughts about how well Ronn Owens and the other white folks were doing, rather than focusing on their own petty concerns.



There has long been in the United States mainstream the unspoken assumption that a poor, female, gay, non-Christian or non-white person voting in his or her own interest is a form of whining rather than common sense, even though the stakes for these voters tend to be higher than the concerns of wealthy folks who don’t want to pay those extra taxes that could price them out of that second house in the Hamptons. The rule of thumb is, apparently – if you have a real grievance influencing your vote, like “I could lose my healthcare if the Republicans have their way” or “I could end up unable to afford birth control or unable to get access to an abortion” or “As a black American, I don’t want a guy who’s taking advice from Charles Murray deciding policy that’s going to affect my kids” or “My family could go hungry” or “I could end up in jail for having consensual sex with another adult” or “this guy wants to pass legislation that would endanger my right to vote” you are part of the “Grievance Industry.” And that’s a bad thing.

This attitude has recently been kicked into overdrive by the passing of ACA. The right wing is now in full panic mode over the horrifying discovery that people like being able to afford healthcare and are not going to like having that access taken away. Worse, these same people will actually vote in favor of their own physical and civic well-being. The right seems to think this is awfully unfair, and they believe it’s even more unfair for Democratic politicians to point out to these voters how much is at stake.

Joan Walsh at Salon puts it beautifully:

So let me make sure I understand. Telling your voters, accurately, that Republicans are trying to make it harder for them to vote, and are blocking action on pay equity, the minimum wage and immigration reform is unfair “grievance politics”? Likewise, any effort to deal with the scandal of $1 trillion in student loan debt? Oliphant compares it to the grievance politics practiced by Republicans under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But that form of grievance politics mainly relied on inflaming white voters’ fears of cultural and racial change with false or highly exaggerated claims about Democrats. (emphasis added.)

The difference between accusations that are accurate and accusations that are highly exaggerated or quite simply untrue is apparently unimportant, as far as some in the media are concerned.

I mean really, it’s all about whether or not they make people get all emotional. All that arm-waving and emoting about “I want to cast a ballot” or “I want my heart medication” or “I don’t want to end up homeless after my unemployment benefits run out” is JUST like those Republicans who said that black people were going to take over and John Kerry didn’t deserve his medals and gay people were going to kidnap your little boy and marry him. So vulgar!

Why can’t people directly affected by these policies stop horning into conversations that should really be conducted as abstract conundrums over cocktails at a DC reception?

*

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ah, but then we get into the question of how property rights exist without a government, and more to the point an army, to protect them. I'll give you a hint: they don't.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Your assertion fails the test of logic. Ideally, given Hobbes, government exists, or was created, to protect property that already exists. Property is nothing more than the assertion of exclusive control over scarce material goods and services. You assert property merely by standing where you are standing, breathing, eating, shitting, etc. Property exists in each individual's body and in each individual's actions to interact with the material world. In fact, according to Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation grounding, you must engage in a performative contradiction to argue that property does not exist, government or no. Even if Og and Zuck do not respect each others' rights of property, and squabble over every spare squirrel bone it is still the case that they are each making property claims against the other, even if neither has credible moral claim to some article over which they are squabbling.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Hobbes's ideas are obsolete. Government created property, it did not protect something that already existed. If Og didn't respect Zuck's property, Og clubbed Zuck over the head and left him for the cave bears.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Property is nothing more than the assertion of exclusive control over scarce material goods and services.

By force.

Without a ruling body, if you're too weak to assert your own property rights, then someone else takes it from you.

This is not an ideal circumstance for human civilization.

In fact, according to Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation grounding, you must engage in a performative contradiction to argue that property does not exist, government or no

I'm constantly amused by how in one breath you preach humanity's incompetence in electing governing bodies, yet praise their supposed rationality in individually asserting property rights.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It is possible to establish rules for the acquisition and transfer of property that do not involve the initiation of force and restrict its use to defense only. Defensive use of force is justifiable. It is the initiation of force that is not.

[paft.livejournal.com]

So if a penniless and woman went into a store and picked up some food for her starving child and left without paying for it, no force would be initiated, right?

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

What you are proposing is one of those "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear..." questions. Theft does constitute an initiation of force. Consider: the woman has violated the store owners' property right not only in taking without paying but in terms of even being in the store, she is trespassing. This is so because she has violated the terms of implied contract entered into when she entered the store: i.e. that she was there to potentially purchase something for sale, not expropriate the owner.

Let's continue the line of reasoning. Suppose the same woman is walking down a narrow alley and she is blocked in her progress by a large burly guy who demands that she get in his car or else. Suppose further that she pulls out a gun, but burly guy advances on her anyway. She shoots him. Has she initiated force? No. Burly guy did when he tried to kidnap her into his car. Change location, back to the store. Burly guy is an employee of the store and he sees her pick up the item, call it a loaf of bread, and head for the exit. Burly guy blocks her exit and demands that she relinquish the loaf of bread for which she did not pay, back on the shelf or he will not allow her to leave. She pulls out her gun and shoots him and leaves. Did she initiate force? YES. The key is in the initial rights violation. Force is only justifiable in defense against rights violation. In the alley scenario, burly guy violated the woman's right not to be assaulted and dragged into a car. In the store scenario, the woman had stolen the bread first, violating the store owner's rights; burly guy was defending the owner's property.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I didn't say anything about the woman having a gun.

Your notion of an ideal society sounds like an anarchic hellscape, with the poor sick, starving, and miserable and completely at the mercy of anyone who's accumulated enough wealth. I know that sounds really kewel and romantic to people who imagine they'd be the ones striding proudly through some marketplace in fatigues/a rippling cape with an Uzi/sword, but the reality would be much more sordid, ugly, and deadly for most people living in such a nightmare.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Well without a governing body, you don't have a way of stopping people from initiating force. Telling them 'it's wrong!' isn't going to stop them.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It's not a governing body that is what is needed. Nobody with an ounce of common sense is going to argue that security, property protection, and dispute resolution are unnecessary services and that nobody needs them. Surely, I would not argue that. Presently, governments have a monopoly on the provision of these services, mostly due to patriotic articles of faith which say that such political government monopolies are "necessary." What I will put forward is that these services do not need to be monopolized. They can be provided in a competitive market just like the provision of all other goods and services, from wheat germ to oil to lumber to hamburgers and toy action and fashion figures.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

We already have private sector security. Are you suggesting the disbanding of the police?

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Again, laws exist to establish services for property protection, dispute resolution, and other security. I'm not suggesting disbanding the police; I am suggesting that opening the provision of police services to full competition in the market would improve the quality and reduce the cost. Before we dismiss market security services as merely mercenaries, I think it is important to point out that private entities must face profit and loss realistically and may not mulct the taxpayer indefinitely. They must also act in ways that enable them to attract and retain paying customers who are free to contract with a competitor if they are not satisfied.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm open-minded. Any idea is worth hearing out as long as it's not coupled with anything extreme as a consequence.

Private police is something that's been gaining popularity. Maybe small municipalities attempting to replace their public force with a private one, as long as some provision to make sure everyone is covered including people who can't afford the service. Or starting off with a dual system and seeing how it goes.

My chief concern with any privatization is universal coverage for poor people. If they had it before, they must retain access under the new arrangement for as much as they were paying in taxes, or less.

Also, they must ultimately be regulated by the government. A private institution, in fact, could face higher scrutiny from the government due to more imposing regulations.

I'm just spit-balling here, but ultimately I like what we have going right now.

I feel like we've gone off topic a bit. Regardless of who is enforcing the law, I believe you still need a government behind it. And this government needs to represent the poorest and least of us. Otherwise, the 'laws' these private security forces are enforcing aren't worth squat.

[paft.livejournal.com]

k: Maybe small municipalities attempting to replace their public force with a private one, as long as some provision to make sure everyone is covered including people who can't afford the service.

Doing that with fire departments worked out SOOOO WELL in Tennessee.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when these things are allowed with little regulation. All the people responsible for that should be fired, and if we had any real oversight on this sort of thing, jailed.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

See my reply to paft below. It's typical of socialists to think they know all about running entire economies better while missing the crucial little details.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Oh didn't it! Economic short-sightedness is tyically accompanied by situational short-sightedness as well...

The town government set the rules for the fire department to contract beyond the town limits, that and the warped, over-regulated market in the insurance business is what combined to make that fiasco, not the private market. Anyone outside the town limits had to pay to be covered, for starters, and for seconds, the department's insurance company would not cover any injuries or damage to the firefighters or for their equipment if they were fighting a fire that was not covered under contract. Typical socialist: always think they know all they need to know to plan and run entire economies...and then get tripped up by all the details.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

It is to the advantage of private insurers and private security providers to allow a certain amount of free-riding. In other words, it saves them money to help investigate and catch criminals in their area even IF the person robbed, vandalized, etc. is not their direct customer. The reason this is so is because pursuing criminals even though they've victimized someone not subscribed to your direct service not only deters other criminals, it catches the criminal in question before he victimizes your direct customer. Furthermore, in a free market system, private insurers and security providers would probably institute contracts among themselves to reimburse each other when catching criminals who have victimized customers of other companies. It's a simple matter of mutual advantage: ABC insurance is ahead to have a contract with XYZ insurance such that ABC will cover part or all of the costs to XYZ if agents of XYZ happen to apprehend a criminal who has victimized one of ABC's customers. The contract would obviously be reciprocal.

Furthermore, to cite the "infamous" Tennessee fire department problem, in a true free market with more freedom of contract, the homeowner's insurance company would probably have contingency contracts with several competing fire services to provide service when needed. The homeowner likely wouldn't be a homeowner if he stupidly refused to pay fire insurance, because the bank wouldn't lend him the money to buy the house in the first place, except on that condition. It would be either that, or else the bank would merely pay the fire service contract out of the loan itself and the payment would then be part of the mortgage payments.

The problem with a lot of statists is that they are so invested in the religion of the state, that if a problem arises that looks like it has any component at all that may involve parties acting in a market they fall all over themselves to declare that this is exactly why the almighty state is the only agency capable of handling the supposed problem. Sadly, dependence upon the state cripples the imaginations of people.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I think you severely underestimate humanity if you think things will fall into place so neatly. An unregulated private system encourages greed and nothing else. The insurance companies wouldn't work together, they would try to drive each other out of business, they would collude, form monopolies, give customers shitty deals and find every possible way to screw them over. Once you have a captive market, you can do anything you want.