What everyone deserves to have
I've got some ideas
Last week, I made a list of what the government was not for. A few of you responded in the comments with some ideas of your own — thank you!
It’s a big question, and I’ve spent most of the week thinking about how to eat this elephant.
At its most basic level, the government exists to protect the rights that we’ve decided — or that someone’s decided — we should have, and to provide what we (or someone) have decided we all deserve.
So let’s start there: what rights should all people have just for having been born? This is the point where there tends to be lots of agreement. For example:
Should you have the right to live, and keep living? Most of us can agree that yes, we should.
From there, of course, things get stickier. For some, “the right to live” means that you simply don’t directly take someone’s life. For others, me included, “the right to live” means that you make sure everyone has access to the things they need to live.
Because if we have the right to live and keep living, then we need certain needs to be met: we need food, water, clothing, shelter. Healthcare and education is nice, too!
At this point, we must answer a fundamental question, put very well by The Peaceful Revolutionary (whose work I highly recommend, by the way):
Do you believe that people have a fundamental right to access the resources they need to survive (food, water, shelter, healthcare), or should access to these necessities be determined by one's ability to pay for them?
Well, we know that at least for now, and especially with the cuts being made by the Trump administration, all of these things are increasingly only available to those who can pay for them.
Something to pay special attention to in this question is the use of “ability to pay” rather than “ability to work.”
Because the assumption is almost always that if you have money, you’ve worked hard for it. For plenty, though, that’s simply not true. Even when people have worked, the amount of money one has to show for it often depends more on the economy and society in which they’re working and how it values that work during their working years than on how hard someone works or how talented they are.
En fin: if a person can pay, we don’t care if they “worked for it” or not; it’s about the money, not what they did for it.
If you agree with me that “no, people should not have to pay for their basic needs,” then where do we go from there?
This is the point where we need to get real creative.
It’s very hard to envision a world different from our own since we haven’t lived it. This, I believe, is more due to a lack of imagination than to options besides the one we’re in right now.
The main thing to remember, however, is that we do have the resources for everyone’s basic needs to be met, and then some. There is enough food, enough land, enough warm, smart people ready and willing to dedicate their lives to the common good. So really, all we have to do is figure out how to make sure all of these resources are available for all of us rather than a select few.
“There is enough, let’s share” should be every government’s motto if you ask me.
There’s a story — I don’t know if it’s true — that Margaret Mead, when asked about what, to her, was the first sign of civilization, responded that it was a healed bone. Why? Because it meant that instead of leaving an injured person behind, others had taken care of them.
It’s certainly something to consider: our social evolution, while there’s been conflict, has relied more than anything else on cooperation among ourselves to move forward. We are capable, even if we need to split off into smaller groups to remember it, of taking care of each other. We’re literally built for it. Cooperation, not conflict, moves us forward.
We know very well, too, our capacity for selfishness and greed. How can we nip it in the bud every time? This is not about “the community versus the individual”; communities are made up of individuals.
In these very trying times, let’s hold on to that sliver of hope: humans have lived peacefully together before, and we can do it again. We just need to organize.
This is the question. Unlike the US, at the end of WW II all of Europe was devastated and most governments realized that everyone needed help, and so they created a robust social safety net to help the population survive and the economy recover. The US, then wealthier and more powerful than ever before, chose a different route.
I live in a community that has no water -- unless you're willing to pay for a private contractor to deliver it. I mean, we used to have municipal water running from our taps -- for which we paid a monthly bill based on usage. The municipal water company actually gave you a discount if you paid the yearly bill in the first three months of the year. No more. Enormous high-risers have invaded the underground pipes, and with enormous pumps, transported that water 12 storeys and higher to rooftop swimming pools. So people living at ground level have no pressure, no water.
The only way to fill your tonaca is to pay additionally for a tanker to come around and fill it -- when you've already pre-paid for yearly service! So you're paying double for something that, as you put it, "everyone deserves to have." No water to wash dishes, to flush toilets, to clean yourself, your clothes and your casita. It can make you very sick. And the water delivery companies very rich.