Reading recently about the book The Trap and the film Sicko got me thinking about the kind of freedom we have in this country, and some of the small and large manifestations of it I've been noting lately.

There's an enormous amount of wealth being generated in this country, an unprecedented amount. And at the root of it is not the much-vaunted wealthy investors and entrepreneurs, but the incredible sum total of productivity by average workers. And with all this productivity and wealth, where is the average American left? Spending their lives in fear and doubt about being able to live into old age without starving or not being cared for. Wondering whether they'll be able to afford proper care and education for their children. Hoping they or their loved ones don't get sick or hurt, because they don't have insurance or the right insurance. Working for years just to pay off debt from their own education.

Is this the America we want?

I'm not talking about an alternative such as pure socialism or communism. Obviously, capitalism creates a great deal of money and possibilities. But instead of raising the overall level of society, it seems that too much of that energy is simply turned into more fuel for reaching ever-higher peaks of wealth for the benefit of a shrinking few. Our society has given itself to the capitalist system, but capitalism is forgotting to give back to the vast majority of citizens.

The point isn't that everyone should be equally rich, that no one should have to work, that no one should have less than anyone else. That's a fantasy. The point is that in this country, which is supposed to be based on ideals of freedom and Christianity, it's simply wrong for the majority of the country to live in fear and doubt about the most basic of human needs--health, education, and shelter. In the long term, the economy wouldn't skip a beat if we as a nation decided that health care and education should be free. If anything, the shock to the economy would be a healthy, reality-based adjustment. And the resulting workers would be happier, healthier, and better able to realize the liberty and pursuit of happiness we like to believe is our ideal, furthering the independent, inventive spirit that we like to hold as a uniquely American trait.

(Could it be that this is not the actual ideal aspired to by those running our economic machine?)

So if someone wants to be wealthy and avaricious at the expense of others, so be it. But let it be within an overall civic system that puts the basic needs of people first--let it be after they help subsidize the basic necessities of the millions of people who are actually responsible for their wealth. Beyond those basic needs, let capitalism be the cold, winner-takes-all bloodsport that conservatives seem to revel in and defend so much. But let's just set aside enough, compel enough contribution from our overflowing coffers of wealth, to relieve that suffering and remove the obstacles to opportunity. We don't have to pay for anyone's dream or ideal life--we just have to be decent.

Now, as to our free society:

We can own .50 caliber tank-piercing rifles for personal use, but in many places (such as my own state) we can't choose how to birth our own children (with midwives), we can't buy or sell raw milk without navigating absurd legal tangles, we can't grow a fabulously versatile crop (hemp) that would create vast amounts of wealth for farmers, we can't breast-feed a child in public. Our notions of freedom are curiously skewed toward the big winners in the capitalist scheme, and curiously harsh toward the average individual. Advantages are piled upon advantages, freedoms upon freedoms, so that if you can't climb the initial rungs of the greed ladder, you're left out.

Corporations can pollute every body of water in the country to the point that most water found in nature is dangerous to drink, and they can manufacture plastic products which leave chemicals of unknown safety in every single citizen's body, and they can genetically modify seed and food in ways whose safety is unknown and market it to the public, all without accountability. But if someone wants to sell the milk from their cow to their next-door neighbor without a permit, they're a criminal.

Something is very wrong, and very askew, with how our notions of freedom have evolved in this country. The good news is that we have all the elements in place for a tremendously healthy society. The bad news is that those elements are horribly out of whack and have become a monstrous, gluttonous machine, existing for its own abstract sake instead of the sakes of the real, living people who give it life.

Labels: Culture, Ruminations