About Me

People have accused me here and elsewhere of all sorts of heinous things -- being a Democratic flack, a Hillary apologist, a wild-eyed radical, a "socialist" (whatever that means these days). So I'm posting the following, which is my response to a couple of comments in a thread at EA Forums. Now you know, from the horse's mouth:

I can appreciate your "null set" reference being a math person but it seems that you would rather live in a socialist society for one reason or another and your mind is made up that it is best. Not sure if that came from a 60's era college professor or the way your parents lived etc but, I have always thought that if one has the drive and the means to earn a comfortable living, then they should. Where would we be if say Andrew Carnegie grew up in a socialist society?

That's a pretty unrealistic picture of the way things actually work. It would be nice if the world were that clear-cut. First, what's with the "60s era college professor"? Did you get that direct from the RNC? Give me some credit please -- I'm a ferociously sceptical and independent person and always have been. And, just to set the record straight, my family was not well off, by any stretch; we were barely middle-class, and even that came later -- I spent my first eight years sleeping on a fold-down sofa in a one-bedroom apartment over a hardware store -- we were finally able to afford a small house a couple of years after my sister was born. And you better believe that I was thoroughly steeped in the good ol' American virtues of hard work and helping others -- they're as much a part of my identity as being gay or being blond. (Depression-era parents, and all that.)

What apologists for "capitalism" never seem to want to acknowledge when they're blaming poor people for being poor is the vast numbers of people who have been held back from implementing any drive they may have to earn a comfortable living. Square your philosophy with a country in which higher education is becoming the prerogative of the wealthy, and in which a good job requires higher education. There's also another basic component of capitalism as it's been practiced in this country -- economic discrimination on the basis of bias not related to performance. (If you don 't think so, go back and read the Ledbetter opinion -- it embodies all the immorality of capitalism and contemporary conservatism in one appalling decision. I'll grant that it's not entirely a function of capitalism per se, but the system makes it possible -- "business decisions" have somewhat the same status these days as religious belief.)

There's a strand of the American character that the Grover Norquists of the world don't want to deal with: being generous and helping others. No, I'm not saying that throwing money (welfare) at the problem is going to solve it -- it obviously hasn't. I'm not a socialist, nor am I even a Democrat, when all is said and done (I guess I have to confess to being a temporary Democrat, given what the Republican party has made itself into), and I'm all in favor of making lots of money and keeping it. (Well, sort of -- I've been strongly influenced by people who did make a lot of money and felt they should share their good fortune with those who hadn't had their opportunities.) (Update: By way of clarification, I'm referring to those areas of need which are just too huge for private organizations to deal with -- poverty, lack of health care, illiteracy, and the like, which are on a scale that I think demands government intervention. No other entity has the resources.)

But when you have a country whose history as an essentially capitalist society includes a long tradition of discrimination against racial, religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities, I have to take the dictionary definitions with a grain of salt. I'm afraid my only real ideology is pragmatism, with a social justice slant: it's got to work for the benefit of the largest number of people possible, and if you have groups people who've been shat on, you've got to do something to help them get past it. If not, why bother with having a society at all? We are living with a global economy, which we're getting a good lesson in right now. I don't want to leave managing that up to someone whose main concern is the size of his yacht -- I'm not a socialist, but neither am I a proponent of the Reaganite "greed is good" school.

Frankly, I'm convinced that if one has the means and drive to earn a comfortable living, one will. But then, we have to make sure that we're not in a system that routinely takes those things away.

The bottom line here is simply that there's no such thing as a pure system in real life. Life is too messy for that, which is probably a good thing. It's much more a matter of deciding to what degree socialism needs to be mixed with capitalism so that we can make the damned thing work.

***

I just want to add a couple of things: If I'm going to beat myself up about anything, it's about not being sceptical enough, sometimes. Like anyone else, I'm too willing to accept things I agree with, and I periodically have to stop myself from jumping on the bandwagon. Second, I am eternally grateful to my parents for giving me two things that seem to be fairly rare: the ability to take people as themselves, and value them for that (i.e., I'm basically color-blind), and a very pronounced passion for learning (another reason I detest people like Sarah Palin, who aren't curious). The universe is much more interesting that way, if somewhat unsettling at times.