(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Want a Successful Democracy? Ensure that Our Government Meets Human Needs Equitably [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-18 Hands up: Name an essential human need that is met equitably by private enterprise. Does it work for education, housing, healthcare, or pay? Anybody? Anybody? No one? Well, that’s, because simple observation tell us that the much-vaunted unregulated market invariably ensures superiority for the wealthy, mediocrity for folks of modest means, and inadequacy for folks who struggle the most economically. Our daily experience confirms this, yet pushing competitive market persists as a policy choice. A tenant in a privately-owned building reported to me that when a complaint about persistent lack of maintenance was reported to a city official, the reply was, “You get what you pay for.” The durability of that callous government-abetted attitude contributes to the much-lamented divisiveness that characterizes the current ugly political environment, tearing American cohesion apart. Toxic resentment abounds. When people don’t get what they believe they deserve, they resent those that have more. However, when folks that have less, demand what their rights, the prevailing perception is that it comes at the expense of others. In other words, “Your gain, is my loss,” is ongoing driver of resentment and a constraint on equity. As a result, we are experiencing societal sepsis with all the systemic failures the term implies. Deep-seated and increasingly open racism drive and exacerbate the spreading sickness. The causative poison is inequity driven by the continued irrational commitment to meeting human social needs through private enterprise and competition. The sickness is not inevitable. We can reclaim our government to meet human needs equitably by organizing in our communities and workplaces. High-quality education, health care, housing, and a job with decent pay are personal needs, but not only. Each parent wants a high-quality education for their child. We each want the assurance of good medical care. All of us want a secure safe, decent place to live. Every worker wants a fair wage that supports their needs. However, inequity means not just personal but societal suffering as well. When we each struggle alone, it is neither efficient nor just. The absence of collective action guarantees a few winners and lots of losers, resulting in divisive competition for artificially scarce resources. The persistent failure of private personal solutions to meet social needs is as destructive as any infectious virus. Case in point: Public schools were conceived as social unifiers for the common good. While well intended in principle, in practice schools have not avoided the forces that tear our society asunder. Gender, race, religion, disability, and immigrant discrimination have always insinuated themselves into American schools. America never fully embraced education equity. Funding K-12 public education through real estate taxes combined with past and current intentional housing segregation replicates and exacerbates socio-economic inequity. The Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations took that inequity a step further with their starve-the-beast strategy to purposefully undermine the effectiveness of public education and other government-sponsored social functions through critical resource deprivation. Ubiquitous though it remains, inequity is not immutable. For several decades beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared Dejure school segregation unconstitutional, increased inclusion–while always contested–was the trend. Social movements drove the enactment of laws prohibiting discrimination based on race and gender. With decades of pressure, schools slowly became more responsive to students with cognitive, emotional, and physical challenges. Programs were developed to address challenges routed in economic inequity. At the same time, escape routes through private religious and secular schools coexisted for the far smaller slice of Americans who could afford the tuition. Progress notwithstanding, in the last several decades we have experienced back-sliding, rather than increased equity. There is a reason. Conservative ideologues–abetted by Democrats trying to stake out an imagined middle ground between right and left–pushed hard and successfully on the superiority of running everything like a profit-making business because, they claimed, government and the bureaucracy that accompanies it is fatally flawed. Lean and mean was the guiding principle. That was not just an evidence-free notion, but demonstrably false. Lean only begat mean. Increasing government support for charter schools–privately managed and governed but publicly funded– and vouchers for private schools will expand escape routes, inequity, and divisive resentment. Rather than succumb to the falsifying evidence, the superiority of market forces over government-led assurance has spread. The zombie refuses to die. Competition among schools for students–the raison d’etre for charter schools–never produced more effective or equitable education. Across the last decade in particular, the private housing market bequethed sky-high rents and unaffordable mortgages. Private health insurance, hospital consolidation, and unregulated drug prices made people sicker not healthier. Decline in union membership resulted in longer hours and more dangerous working conditions for insufficient pay. For too many, the government has come to be seen as an agency divorced from, if not antagonistic to meeting human needs. That is not predestined to continue. We can take care of one another by ensuring that we need human needs for all of us through government action. That is an essential feature of a successful democracy. Arthur H. Camins is a lifelong educator. He writes about education and social justice. He works part-time with curriculum developers at UC Berkeley as an assessment specialist. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone. Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arthurcamins [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/18/2147821/-Want-a-Successful-Democracy-Ensure-that-Our-Government-Meets-Human-Needs-Equitably Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/