Mike Kinsley's Commentary in the Camera (WP column: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy of Silence, July 6), that Republicans are not talking about Bush's "reputation for being dim" nor his occasional abandonment of Republican ideology — because they just want him to get elected — seems accurate enough. In it, he quotes Bush's statement that his "vision" is guided by the principle that ... "Government should be ... whenever possible, market based."
That a government should be "whenever possible, market based" is a major policy statement, even a kind of meta-policy, an underpinning philosophy of government. It reminds me of Reagan's days, when he was once challenged that the United States has no energy policy. His answer, paraphrased here, was characteristically naive nonsense: We do have an energy policy, he said, it is called the Market. Bush wants to have the entire government become "market based." I take it more seriously.
Economic lore, myth and plain propaganda continue to bombard our consciousness and to impose themselves inappropriately on our culture. Economic nonsense, with notions such as not-possible "free-markets," "The laws of supply and demand" and the like, are produced, packaged and bandied about indiscriminately as pop-economics for mass consumption. Economic thinking is fast becoming the paradigm of a contemporary America that is starved for understanding and meaning. Economic-speak, such as "I bought into it," is in. Our market economy, having evolved historically into prominence, has been working well within its prescribed roles and traditional markets. Because of this success as an efficient forum for the exchange of commodities, a more general infatuation with markets, way beyond what one can realistically expect of any market, seems to keep growing.
Advocates are busy promoting the market mechanism as worthy of an extended role in new areas. There is a strong push to figure market-like mechanisms for medicine, health care, education, even the environment. We now have national-scale experiments of for-profit corporate medicine, health care and education, with dubious results.
As I write, pieces of the human genome are being patented for future sale on the open market, ahead of any clarity about consequences. Political influence is bought and sold in its own vast markets. Bush advocates using a portion of social security moneys, once a safety net given in trust to be managed by the government, to be used to speculate in the stock market.
Let us now also have our government become "market based," says Bush, displaying once again his ex-oil-executive values, this time aiming at the governance of this country. I am certain this sounds like music to corporate business; but it should sound the alarm to all those concerned about the future of human values and that of democracy in our government.
Note that this proposal comes at the same time that Congress, while recognizing the direction of needed change — as in reinventing government,or campaign finance reform or a workable health care system — is displaying an increasing inability to act and to make difficult, long-term, public policy. Compared with deciding about our future by enacting good public policy, "Let the market decide" is a treacherous way out of our difficulties. Have you noticed that Bush's vision equates 'government' with the executive branch, ignoring the Congress altogether? Rather then affirming the role and responsibility of Congress in our system of government, this proposal sounds perilously close to a Bush's bid to reinvent government by bypassing (even what little remains of) the interests of people in Congress.
Why should you bother? Because this is serious, even beyond the choice of our next president. Jacques Barzun, among the greatest living historians, says (in 'From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural Life,' p.781) about this phenomenon of our time: "Such a failure of will, which is to say the wish without the act, is characteristic of institutions in decadence."
A "whenever possible, market based" government would depreciate human values and subordinate them to the only values the market can recognize: Money and measurable things. A market-based government will tend to see us not as people, but rather as objectified potential buyers ('end users' is the term) and small-time sellers of commodities and skilled labor; merely greedy and fearful 'economic agents' of the market, stripped, as it were, of a human soul and dignity. A market-based government will have a peculiar kind of 'economic rationality.' It will serve primarily those with 'market power': Large corporations. It will have no memory, no morals and no compassion. It will be blind to retired people, the elderly, the disadvantaged and the poor since these people live and function mostly outside the market. Let us keep the market, however, for those things it does well, and frame it in a useful, appropriate setting, outside of government.
As to governance, worthy U.S. presidential candidates that I can look up to would stand on higher ground than Bush does. They would be people of stature and accomplishment who now want the privilege to serve a bigger purpose. They would say: Life is the measure of all things. They would dedicate themselves to the long term well-being of all people and to the challenge that "...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I hope beyond hope that Bush's vision of a market-based government is only a passing, freakish nightmare.
Meir Carasso received a Ph.D. degree in Engineering from the University of California in Berkeley. During his 33-year professional career in energy policy formulation and analysis he worked for the U.S. and California.governments and in private industry. He lives in Boulder.
Copyright 2000 The Daily Camera
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