Tree-conomics
Oct. 7th, 2011 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bodlon
Several years ago I was reading a book on Buddhism (I want to say it was Steve Hagen's Buddhism Plain & Simple, but I wouldn't swear to it) and encountered an image that's stuck with me for years.
Consider a tree in a field. At first glance, it's a singular thing with obvious boundaries. The bark is here, the leaves are there, the roots burrow tangibly into the earth. Tree. Easy-peasy.
When we observe a tree, though, the boundaries begin to blur. It breathes in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen. Its leaves fall, are broken down by microbes, insects, and annelids to make rich humus, which in turn becomes part of the soil, becomes food for the tree and other plants around it, all of which might be food for other organisms. It runs on sunlight. It drinks up water from the ground below. Many of those things which make up that apparently singular tree now were not part of the tree before. Some of those same things may not be this time next year. It constantly takes things in while returning things to the system in which it exists.
The tree in a field teaches us, among other things, about interdependence. Living things are not a static, singular things in a vacuum. They're part of a larger whole, with which they interact as a consequence of being.
If you'll indulge a pun, this concept of interdependence is the root of my primary objection to the current strain of social and fiscal conservatism, and in particular its tendency to take either public infrastructure for granted, or to demonize it.
For example, today I woke up in a house built (I hope, but occasionally question) to a building code, where I have water and electric service provided by a city utility cooperative. I drove my car (the safety of which is monitored by an inspection requirement each time I renew my state-issued license plates) on a public road to my day job at an institution which funded in part by the state. For lunch, I purchased food from a vendor (also inspected for safety, selling products which are hopefully also inspected for safety). And so it goes.
This infrastructure -- safe and adequate roads, reliable and safe water and power, product safety, licensing, etc. -- is what makes general quality of life possible. With so few exceptions as to be meaningless, every time you use a toilet, go to bed without having a rational fear of roving bandits, or have the option of calling a professional or volunteer force of first responders (i.e. 911 or equivalent) you are the beneficiary of public infrastructure.
Public infrastructure comes, unsurprisingly, from the public. We pay for it with the taxes on our income, certain kinds of property, when we make purchases, etc. Sometimes we pay for things we feel like we're not using. I have no children, for example, but my city property tax funds the local school district. As an individual, though, I benefit from a healthier, more robust whole system. I may not have children, but I benefit from living in a mostly-literate populace where people can function more or less independently in general, and as a society.
As a worker, I've paid continuously into a fund that will care for me in the event that I am suddenly disabled, that will ensure at least some degree of financial security, and will do the same for other members of my family. As a child of a single, low-income parent (much of our household income prior to my teenage years came from my grandmother, who in turn received military pensions for her work for the Army and my grandfather's service), I was given the opportunity to start my education early in an effort to offset the very real effects of poverty on social mobility and educational success. And, because I didn't just have tens of thousands of dollars laying around when I graduated from high school, I utilized Pell Grants and government student loans to complete my degree.
So when a candidate or group starts to complain about taxation and blames a culture of entitlement, I call shenanigans. Not just because I see a group of people being short-sighted about programs the benefit the whole community by ensuring that people are fed, housed, educated, and given access to basic human services, but because not one of these people could be where they are and do what they do without the public services they conveniently ignore in the name of preaching self-sufficiency.
Today's staggering example of the end result of that thinking is this article about the city of Topeka and Shawnee County, Kansas. About a month ago, Shawnee County stopped prosecuting misdemeanors because of lack of funds. The burden has fallen to city governments, and so Topeka's City Council is toying with the idea of repealing a bit of city code that addresses domestic battery in order to force the county to do its job.
It's no secret that we're living in one of the worst economic downturns the world has seen since the Great Depression. Likewise, it's no secret that the banking crash was caused by the the very rich - those who have much - engaging in predatory and ill-considered banking practices made possible by deregulation, lack of regulation, and loopholes. And yet, when the economy comes up in political discussion, it's not these practices and the groups engaging in them (corporate, private, or institutional) that are under the magnifying glass.
It's us. The public. We, the ones who pay for and construct and depend on that infrastructure to exist.
The problem is not a case of those who have little or those who have a middling amount sucking the system dry. Those who would claim this are deluded, misinformed, or actively lying to you. The problem is that people are buying into and acting out an ideology that believes in shrinking the revenues that support things that all of us use. Some are doing it out of greed, others out of fear, and some out of some misguided belief that each of us should be able to exist in a self-sufficient bubble, each paying his or her own way completely and in every circumstance. Coupled with the genuinely elitist (and practically Calvinist) idea that those who have much are magically entitled to keep all of it instead of making a proportionate contribution to the overall whole (while the rest of us are forced to submit to deeper and deeper cuts and pay more on the dollar than the very rich), it's no wonder that schools are considering four-day weeks, libraries are struggling, and the legal system is starting to break down in Kansas.
Individualism is a cultural and social good, but the philosophy that one need not contribute to the success of the whole defies both logic and nature. What's happening in Kansas is the real inevitability if we continue on this path. It's getting past the point where "those people" (the poor, the elderly, the uninsured, the unemployed, the disabled, etc.) are suffering. We're demolishing the rule of law.
The ilk that didn't much love the New Deal in the 1930s sure as hell don't like it now, but the principles of Relief, Recovery, and Reform are just as wise and necessary as they were 80 years ago, and we're fools if we don't recognize the way those forces are dismantling the amazing, hard work of our ancestors. Me, I'm smart enough to know I can't grow all of my own food, pave all of my own roads, build my cars and houses with my bare hands with all of my own tools. To borrow from our Secretary of State (albeit in another context), it takes a village.
This is not punishing the successful for their success. Human endeavor is awesome. This is also not about lashing out at the rich simply for having more (though I confess to moments of outrage when I am tempted). This is about expecting the government to stop bowing to those who have so, so much at the expense of those who do not. And really, those who do not have enough are the vast majority, on whose backs the very rich are standing.
If they want to use our roads, our telecommunications systems, our water and electricity, the labor of our people, and so on, they need to invest in that infrastructure. Even a tree knows that.
(Image source: DeviantArt)
This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com
no subject
Date: 2011-10-07 11:33 pm (UTC)Is fabulous.
And if I did tagged bookmarks, it would be going under 'Why I Am A Progressive' to remind myself when I get too far down.
Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 08:52 pm (UTC)Similarly
Date: 2011-10-08 11:34 pm (UTC)A metaphor I've been using a lot lately is gardens. When you want to fertilize a garden, do you just pile up all the fertilizer in one corner and assume it's going to "trickle down" to the rest of the land? Wealth is the fertilizer of the economy, and piling it all up in one corner doesn't produce any better results.
Re: Similarly
Date: 2011-10-17 12:09 pm (UTC)Thanks for the link!