I listened to Ben Carson's speech yesterday, as he announced his bid for the Presidency in 2016. I happened to find myself facing Fox News on a television in the locker room of the Y-- the only place I frequent where I am likely to catch both Fox News and various strains of foot fungus.
Because I am highly critical of Rupert Murdoch's agenda, and of the manipulative and heavy-handed rhetoric that characterizes Fox News, I was immediately suspect of Ben Carson, knowing nothing about him prior to that moment. But I am always willing to hear people out, even if they are endorsed by Fox News, so listen I did.
I heard him speak of the need to make our own way, of the disempowering effects of becoming reliant on the government to meet our basic needs, and so on and so on. It's the typical Republican Bootstrap line I've heard many times before, usually from white men, and occasionally white women, coming from a place of privilege and unquestionable opportunity. It's a common argument, that America provides all of the opportunities to succeed equally to everyone, and if you're not succeeding, it's your own damn fault. It assumes, of course, that everyone really does receive the same opportunities, an assumption that is beleaguered by overwhelming and well-documented evidence of inequity in school funding, police profiling, prison demographics, to name but a few. I have to say, I do find the line a little more convincing (just a little) coming from a man of color, raised in Detroit by a single mom working a couple jobs to make ends meet, which is probably why Republicans are falling over themselves to support Carson as a candidate. And, to a certain extent, I too believe in the ethic of teaching a person to fish rather than giving him or her a fish; I'm a teacher, and I've many times seen the empowerment that comes when under privileged kids learn tools to help them make their way in the world. But we simply can't pretend that the inequities don't exist. They do, and therefore, it's not a this or that, Welfare State or System of Inequity, kind of equation, and pretending that the same opportunities exist for all hard workers equally doesn't make it so.
Setting this first stirring of dissent aside, I kept listening to Ben Carson. He cited the current $18 Trillion debt and then he said, essentially, "If God allows me to get to the White House, we're going to change this government to work more like a well-managed business." (I'm only paraphrasing a bit.)
And if for no other reason than that, he lost me right there.
My Republican friends, or some of my Libertarian friends, might say "well what's wrong with that?" Efficiency, a balanced budget, sensible spending and investment decisions. These are things woefully lacking in our government. True, all true. But here's the most important question: What is the central purpose of a government? To make profit for its shareholders, or to administer the resources of a society in order to provide for the security and well-being of that society?
Some of the biggest problems with old-school capitalist notions of business, as I see them, is that core concepts like "profit" and "cost" have been far too narrowly defined. Cost is hardly ever measured with respect to the environment as a result of contaminated water, or air, or radioactive dump sites, for example. Profit is only ever measured from the perspective of the share-holders and the owners, and not with the overall well-being of all the workers and environments that created it, and it is only ever measured in small units of time, annually, or even quarterly. If earning a lot of revenue this year means that your great-grandchildren will be facing droughts, or floods, or cancer from unimaginable toxins, can you truly say you profited?
Sure, more and more businesses are looking toward sustainability models, and some forward-thinking capitalist theorists are writing about these costs, with measuring tools like the Triple Bottom Line. That gives me some hope. But still, all of the business models around today are predicated on that unimpeachable goal: Growth. Continuous, predictable, profitable growth. No matter how we frame it, nothing in this world can continue to grow indefinitely without choking itself out. Equilibrium, homoestasis, is one of the defining qualities of life. And the dominant business model, every word about the inviolate Economy, is based on indefinite growth.
Back to Carson: as soon as I see a homeostatic business model that values the health and well-being of its employees equally at every level, a business that gives back to the earth everything it takes, that leaves a job site as clean as it was before, a business that works to find ways to collaborate with other businesses for the greater good of the global community, rather than aiming to destroy its competition, a business that recognizes and acts upon the premise that what we do now impacts many generations after us, THEN I will say "OK Ben, you make this government run like that business."
Until then, Dr. Carson, not only will you not get my vote, you'll get my arguments as to why no one else should vote for you either.
So what do I know, anyway? Not much, but I suspect a lot, and one thing I suspect is that a government should operate more like a family than a business. In a family, we have to find a place for everyone, and we don't just kick out those who are struggling. In a family, we acknowledge each other in their fullness, warts and all, rather than limiting our value to what each member can do in the moment. Of course, in families, some pull more weight than others, some take advantage of others, and there are some we'd frankly love never to see again. But in a family, we work through all of that lower-selfish humanness, because we know, in some deep place of knowing, that we are related, and our fates are bound together inextricably.
I also suspect this: if we don't find a way to get past this dominant, adolescent ethic of short-term profit at everyone else's expense, our human family is in big trouble.
Because I am highly critical of Rupert Murdoch's agenda, and of the manipulative and heavy-handed rhetoric that characterizes Fox News, I was immediately suspect of Ben Carson, knowing nothing about him prior to that moment. But I am always willing to hear people out, even if they are endorsed by Fox News, so listen I did.
I heard him speak of the need to make our own way, of the disempowering effects of becoming reliant on the government to meet our basic needs, and so on and so on. It's the typical Republican Bootstrap line I've heard many times before, usually from white men, and occasionally white women, coming from a place of privilege and unquestionable opportunity. It's a common argument, that America provides all of the opportunities to succeed equally to everyone, and if you're not succeeding, it's your own damn fault. It assumes, of course, that everyone really does receive the same opportunities, an assumption that is beleaguered by overwhelming and well-documented evidence of inequity in school funding, police profiling, prison demographics, to name but a few. I have to say, I do find the line a little more convincing (just a little) coming from a man of color, raised in Detroit by a single mom working a couple jobs to make ends meet, which is probably why Republicans are falling over themselves to support Carson as a candidate. And, to a certain extent, I too believe in the ethic of teaching a person to fish rather than giving him or her a fish; I'm a teacher, and I've many times seen the empowerment that comes when under privileged kids learn tools to help them make their way in the world. But we simply can't pretend that the inequities don't exist. They do, and therefore, it's not a this or that, Welfare State or System of Inequity, kind of equation, and pretending that the same opportunities exist for all hard workers equally doesn't make it so.
Setting this first stirring of dissent aside, I kept listening to Ben Carson. He cited the current $18 Trillion debt and then he said, essentially, "If God allows me to get to the White House, we're going to change this government to work more like a well-managed business." (I'm only paraphrasing a bit.)
And if for no other reason than that, he lost me right there.
My Republican friends, or some of my Libertarian friends, might say "well what's wrong with that?" Efficiency, a balanced budget, sensible spending and investment decisions. These are things woefully lacking in our government. True, all true. But here's the most important question: What is the central purpose of a government? To make profit for its shareholders, or to administer the resources of a society in order to provide for the security and well-being of that society?
Some of the biggest problems with old-school capitalist notions of business, as I see them, is that core concepts like "profit" and "cost" have been far too narrowly defined. Cost is hardly ever measured with respect to the environment as a result of contaminated water, or air, or radioactive dump sites, for example. Profit is only ever measured from the perspective of the share-holders and the owners, and not with the overall well-being of all the workers and environments that created it, and it is only ever measured in small units of time, annually, or even quarterly. If earning a lot of revenue this year means that your great-grandchildren will be facing droughts, or floods, or cancer from unimaginable toxins, can you truly say you profited?
Sure, more and more businesses are looking toward sustainability models, and some forward-thinking capitalist theorists are writing about these costs, with measuring tools like the Triple Bottom Line. That gives me some hope. But still, all of the business models around today are predicated on that unimpeachable goal: Growth. Continuous, predictable, profitable growth. No matter how we frame it, nothing in this world can continue to grow indefinitely without choking itself out. Equilibrium, homoestasis, is one of the defining qualities of life. And the dominant business model, every word about the inviolate Economy, is based on indefinite growth.
Back to Carson: as soon as I see a homeostatic business model that values the health and well-being of its employees equally at every level, a business that gives back to the earth everything it takes, that leaves a job site as clean as it was before, a business that works to find ways to collaborate with other businesses for the greater good of the global community, rather than aiming to destroy its competition, a business that recognizes and acts upon the premise that what we do now impacts many generations after us, THEN I will say "OK Ben, you make this government run like that business."
Until then, Dr. Carson, not only will you not get my vote, you'll get my arguments as to why no one else should vote for you either.
So what do I know, anyway? Not much, but I suspect a lot, and one thing I suspect is that a government should operate more like a family than a business. In a family, we have to find a place for everyone, and we don't just kick out those who are struggling. In a family, we acknowledge each other in their fullness, warts and all, rather than limiting our value to what each member can do in the moment. Of course, in families, some pull more weight than others, some take advantage of others, and there are some we'd frankly love never to see again. But in a family, we work through all of that lower-selfish humanness, because we know, in some deep place of knowing, that we are related, and our fates are bound together inextricably.
I also suspect this: if we don't find a way to get past this dominant, adolescent ethic of short-term profit at everyone else's expense, our human family is in big trouble.
