[Dialogue] rampant socialism

[Wayne Nelson]

A couple things.

- - When I was bitten by a Massasauga Rattlesnake, I spent a week in
hospital and went through something like $12,000 of anti-venom ­ not to
mention the pain medication and daily blood tests for 3 weeks and every 2- 3
days for another 2 weeks etc.  If I had to pay for all that, we would have
been pretty well broke. Heap on top of that surgery and regular visits to a
specialist for a torn ligament, treatment for a broken wrist and a few other
results of my adventures. The Ontario Health Insurance Program, which I pay
into through a salary deduction, literally saved my life.

- - The 2001 Massey Lectures, by Janice Gross Stein of the U of Toronto¹s
Munk Centre for International Studies, is called, ³The Cult of Efficiency.²
Broadly, they were a response to the surge in strong, ideological right wing
thinking ­ reduce the role of the state in human affairs. It¹s not too
difficult to see that they were also written in a fairly direct response to
the Ontario conservatives of the day led by Mike Harris and Jim Flahrety who
has become our federal Finance Minister and the Alberta conservatives led at
the time by the infamous Ralph Klein.

She makes the point that health and education are ³public goods.² Her
lectures are about the public good in post-industrial society. Public
education and universal health care are her primary examples. Canada¹s
public health care system was developed in response to Tommy Douglas¹
insistence that health care was just that. A basic public good.

> "This is a time of excitement  and innovation, but also contradiction,
> passion, and fierce  polemics in our public conversations. As modern
> democratic  societies begin to move through the processes of
> post-industrialization,  We as citizens are re-imagining the role of the
> state. We  speak more and more about efficiency, accountability, and  choice,
> and we're redrawing the face of the state as we experiment  with new ways of
> delivering public goods."

She says that efficiency and the separation of public goods from the public
sphere has become an ideology a cult ­ a cult of efficiency. With Mike
Harris and his common sense revolution, that ideology revolved around one
principle ­ saving government money. Cities are still struggling to recover
from his forced amalgamation and the devolution of social service costs.
Ideologies do exactly that; focus entirely on one value and limit the
perspective to that. Blinders like they used to put on horses.  Her lectures
are pretty good. See - http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2001.html - - -
- 
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/search?keywords=the%20Cult%20of%20effici
ency&pageSize=10  

- - A recent essay in the Toronto Star  was about the reduction of the world
into two camps ­ us and them ­ the good and the evil. Us is us and them is
everything that is not us ­ Arabs- communists, socialists etc. As I see it,
we¹re trapped in a form of retrogressive 21st century political tribalism.
In Ken Wilbur¹s terminology, it¹s an evolutional step down the ladder.
Walcom says most of the industrialized world is stepping away from that. He
points to Obama¹s recognition of the world interconnected, dynamic
complexity and contrasts it with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper¹s
high contrast morality.

- - The conversation is about what it means to be a healthy society. How
does the state play a role in a hyper-developed world? How does a society
strike a healthy, positive balance among the various social processes? What
does it mean for us to live in a society that has become focused on
individualism and private rights. How do all sectors of society use their
strengths to move the conversations beyond the either/or that takes us into
nowhere-land and reduces everything to the lowest level of partisanship and
social devolution. What is the shape of innovation in the 21st century?
People who holler about Œthe violation of Œmy rights¹ are wearing tee shirts
with the words, ³ Kick me, I¹m a victim² written in big, bold letters.
People who are willing to build a society for the sake of their own personal
gain and the advancement of their social class wear one with, ³Get out of my
way, I¹m a bully² in even bigger letters. Are either of those examples of
what it means to be human?

Seems like we need a new way to talk about these things.

\\/


< >  < >  < >  < >  < >
Wayne Nelson - ICA Associates Inc
ICA - 416-691-2316 - - - Cell ­ 647-229-6910
http://ica-associates.ca


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