Month: January 2000

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Our Moral Decline

A number of things happened in the 1940’s and 50’s that created many of the social problems we have today.

Firstly, people started to do pretty well for themselves. They made money. And, thanks to the huge government subsidy of the auto industry (especially the Interstate system in the U.S.), many people could afford cars.

Secondly, developers began to build a new type of residential community: the suburb, which was designed around the principle that everyone would have a car. The suburb was located away from the downtown (cheap land), which meant a lot of people had to drive their cars around in order to get to work. Public transit doesn’t work very well in the suburbs because of all the winding streets and the low density of population.

Thirdly, effective birth control allowed families to reduce the number of children they would have. This, in turn, allowed women to re-enter the work-force more quickly. It allowed numerous families to send their children to college who otherwise couldn’t have afforded it. It changed the character of the family.

Fourth, the tax base shifted away from the inner city and out to the suburbs. As a result, city governments lost their ability to pay for the upkeep of downtown areas. These areas decayed, housing prices plummeted, the poor moved in with even more social problems, unemployment among the inner city poor soared, drug and alcohol addiction increased, and so on and so on.

In the 1960’s, this was all no secret. Sociologists and social scientists understood very well the negative effects of urbanization. Lewis Mumford wrote some sensational, amazing books on the development of cities. We studied them in high school as late as the early 1970’s. Too many people living too close together tended to develop strange behavior patterns. Most of us have heard about the girl who was raped and murdered while dozens of her neighbors leaned out of their high-rise windows and listened, and not a single one of them decided to call the police and go to help her.

The suburbs are no better. Instead of communities, where people know each other and interact with each other at local businesses, and operate schools together, and build playgrounds together, and help each other out, people barely know their own neighbors, because they can travel to see their friends, in their cars, and you don’t want to get too friendly with a person who lives just 30 feet away from your lawnmower.

But nobody could do anything about urbanization. Or was it just that we were all complicit in urbanization? We all wanted our own homes with a back yard and a driveway. And we never blame ourselves for society’s ills, so we blame hippies or blacks or other minorities, or a decline in “family values”, or softness on crime. That way, you can elect fascist leaders, give more money to the police, sentence people to thirty years in jail for possessing marijuana, and execute developmentally delayed adults for murder. This, apparently, is more satisfying to some people than reconsidering the huge subsidy to the auto industry.

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Cities

Why do we, the taxpayer, pay for roads? Ever think about it? Whether you want to or not, you kick in thousands of dollars every year to pay for roads.

Well, you say, you like the roads. You use the roads a lot. But what if someone told you that you could save a lot of money if we just got rid of most of the roads and spent about half as much money on public transit? Who says this is the only way to move people around?

Have you ever thought about cities? Cities suck, big time. I know, there’s all sorts of glamour and excitement about “downtown”, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about suburbs and neighborhoods and freeways. I’m talking about the homeless and the panhandlers and squeegee kids. I’m talking about traffic tie-ups, pollution, and over-crowding. Cities suck, big time.

Why do we have so many problems in our cities? Whenever people talk about big social problems, like drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and crime, they tend to blame social and cultural developments. Kenneth Starr and his repressed buddies on the Republican Right, like to blame the sixties, with all that evil rock’n’roll and anti-authoritarianism and draft evasion and lifestyle experimentation and, later, feminism. That’s why our society is falling apart. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to blame our oppressive economic system. We don’t share enough of what we have with those in need. We need to pour money into projects that will revitalize our cities. We need a higher minimum wage. We need more development.

No one seems to realize that cities, with all their problems, didn’t happen by accident. Most of us used to live in the country. Then, around the turn of the century, we began to mechanize the farms and build factories. So jobs moved from agriculture to industry, and industry located itself in cities, because they needed the transportation and support industries and other resources that were located in the cities. So people moved to the cities. These people needed places to live. So developers started building houses and apartment buildings. As more people wanted to live close to their jobs, the prices of these houses went up higher and higher. People were forced to move into apartments, or farther and farther away from the downtown.

So how do you get these people to work? How do you get them to sports stadiums and art galleries and malls? You have two possible options. First, you can build a whole bunch of buses, trolleys, and streetcars, so you can move fifty or sixty people at a time fairly efficiently. Doesn’t that make sense? Why have sixty huge automobiles clogging up the streets, filling the air with carbon monoxide, wandering around looking for a place to park, when you can have just two or three streetcars? The streetcars drop you off and then get out of the way. Cars stay there, taking up miles of valuable real estate. Look at all the parking lots and parking garages in the downtown of any major city? They are ugly and useless. The cars just sit there all day. They just sit there, waiting for the owner to finish his work or his shopping or whatever. What a waste!

Public transit isn’t the only alternative we’re talking about here. New York City had developed a very interesting, complex set of pneumatic tubes throughout the downtown area in the early 1920’s. These tubes moved small items through large buildings fairly fast and efficiently. Then General Motors got some of their cronies elected to city council and they voted to replace the pneumatic tubes with stinking, clumsy, big GM trucks. This was not a magical strategy developed by the “free market”. It was sabotage. [added July 2004] The pneumatic tubes didn’t work perfectly, but neither did the trucks. The question is, if you invested 40 more years of development and refinements into the pneumatic tube system, what would you have?

You can spend so little on public transit that you make it necessary for anybody who can afford it to buy their own cars. The result, in Chicago and other major U.S. cities, is that only the poor and destitute use public transit. Nobody listens to the complaints of the poor, so public transit is often poorly maintained and unsafe. All the money goes into highways instead, and cops to patrol the highways, and signs, and lights, and parking lots. When all those people in their own cars clog up the streets, you just keep adding new highways to accommodate them. And when those highways get clogged up, you start demolishing neighborhoods and dividing communities with great big ugly freeways. And when they get hopelessly clogged, like the 401 is now, every day, from Mississauga to the Allen Expressway, you suddenly realize that you have a serious problem with no solution. That, in fact, is what they now realize in Toronto, Canada’s fastest growing city. They can’t build any more freeways—it’s too expensive and people are too smart: they won’t let you just plow their neighborhoods under anymore. But the 401 can’t handle all the traffic coming into the city. So what do you do? If you’re Toronto, basically, nothing. People waste hours and hours every day sitting in their cars staring at the trunk of the car ahead of them. It is not unusual for a citizen of the metropolitan Toronto area to spend four hours of his day, every day, sitting uselessly in his car. Chances are also pretty good nowadays that he’s driving a four-wheel-drive sport utility, sold to him on the illusion that it would provide him with a liberating sense of adventure and freedom.

What many people don’t realize is that the government pays a huge subsidy to the automotive industry by providing us with endless highways, traffic lights, streetlights, bridges, freeways, police, and parking spaces. And don’t forget the cost of hospital emergency wards which spend a lot of time treating victims of accidents. The subsidy is way, way more than it would have cost if the government had simply developed public transit more effectively, and required car-makers to make their own roads and bridges. Hardly anyone would own cars today if that had happened. Think about that, the next time you start rhapsodizing about how great the “free market” is. Do you love your car? Well, you can love your car because every taxpayer in the province is chipping in to make highways for you to drive on.

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The Prison Franchise

Mike Harris wants to close down Ontario’s prisons. They are expensive and inefficient.

Whenever someone from a conservative political party says “expensive and inefficient” you know he has friends waiting to make a lot of money with a backroom deal– and he is about to announce a new privatization scheme. Sure enough, Harris wants to privatize Ontario’s prisons. He wants to pay private companies to incarcerate Ontario’s criminals.

Don’t we all believe that private companies are more efficient and effective than government? There’s something to the idea. Most private companies exist in a competitive environment. If they are inefficient or lazy or slow, they get squashed by those powerful rivals. In theory, this means that most private companies are smarter, quicker, and more responsive to changes in the marketplace than governments are.

Unless you happen to be Microsoft.

This is the simple myth that America lives by. It’s partly true. It’s also partly untrue. The U.S. has a private health care system in which hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors all compete for your business. Canada has a government-run monopoly on health services. Which system is more competitive, efficient, and cheap? Surprise! The Canadian system is at least three times more efficient than the U.S. system. Why? Because there are some advantages to a government-run monopoly. First of all, the government is able to control costs by negotiating the rates for medical procedures with the doctors. In the U.S., the market is supposed to keep doctors prices low. Right. Like you’re going to go shop around for a cancer treatment and see if you can get a discount from that “big box” medical centre out near the highway. Yes.

Secondly, there is much less duplication of services. Some U.S. cities have five or more Magnetic Image Resonance machines, each of which cost millions, and each of which sits idle most of the time.

Thirdly, the Canadian system is actually run quite well, thank you, by people who know their jobs.

Fourthly, the Canadian system doesn’t have to skim off a certain percentage of profits for greedy corporations.

Anyway, back to the prisons…

Privatizing prisons is quite popular in the U.S. there are thousands of them, run by several companies. Unfortunately, they haven’t reduced costs quite as much as expected. In fact, some studies show that they haven’t reduced costs at all. And when you think about it, why would they? A privately run prison must provide all of the same functions that a state run prison provides, plus, it must provide a profit for the owners. Now there is only one way for the owners to create that profit: and that is to run the prison more cheaply than the state does. That means less staff, less training, less programs for the incarcerated, and less medical care. Less food. Cheaper food. Smaller cells. More over-crowding. Less control.

In fact, this is what is happening to the publicly owned prisons as well. State after state is going to court to try to reclaim control of their prisons. Wait a minute… reclaim control? That’s right. They no longer control their own prisons. Why not? Because about 20 years ago, lawyers for the inmates began filing lawsuits against various state governments alleging that the prisons were so badly run, so decrepit and vermin-infested and dominated by sadistic long-term convicts that sentencing any person to spend time in them constituted “cruel and unusual punishment”. The courts investigated and agreed and seized control of the prisons. Many states still did nothing about the horrendous conditions.

Now, not only do state governments want to treat criminals like animals, they want to contract out the service of treating criminals like animals.

Unless you really believe that these corporations that own these prisons are seriously interested in rehabilitation and whatever.

The truth is this. Governments find it unpopular to treat prisoners too, too badly. Sooner or later, some muckraking journalist comes along and uncovers the dirt and then those liberals will demand reform. Or, as we have seen, the courts will step in and order expensive improvements. Some idiots actually think that prisons should have some rehabilitation programs. Some real idiots actually think that prisoners should be treated with some kind of dignity and respect, even though they have committed awful crimes.

You have to remember that when rich people commit crimes, they don’t go to prison. So when rich people privatize prisons, they know very well that no matter what, they themselves are never going to end up in one of those prisons.

So the goal of privatization is to append a flattering objective to a contemptible practice.

Now, wait a minute. If a private citizen or company locks me up in a room and threatens me and forces me to eat disgusting food and prevents from leaving…. isn’t that kidnapping? You bet. So why is not kidnapping when a private company does the same thing, even if it’s with permission from the state? How can the legal government assign rights that are normally only given to duly-constituted civil authorities to private individuals employed by a for-profit corporation?

Would it be legal for a state government to allow the mother of a murder victim to decide on and execute the punishment of the offender? It certainly would not be. But then again, never over-estimate the intelligence or ethics of twelve years of Republican-appointed judges. The Republicans have shown, over and over again, that they are willing to appoint relatively unqualified people to the position of judge if they share the “correct” ideology. Clarence Thomas, a manifestly undistinguished jurist, immediately comes to mind. And these judges, who were appointed too late to have an influence on the earlier court-ordered prison reforms, have been trying to undue their effects piece by piece. And they have ruled it is legal for a private company to hold people prisoner on behalf of the state.

I’m lazy so I don’t want to write a hundred pages about why this is a stupid idea. It just is. Sorry. I’d love to spend a week in the library so I can refer to you specific documents that show what a stupid, sorry mess the U.S. prison system is, but I have a job, so I can’t. But there’s one thing readily apparent to everyone: the Americans love to punish criminals. They love to see them suffer. They love capital punishment. They love long, long prison terms. For everyone who commits serious crimes, except the rich.

The Americans are on this vindictive schtick and it’s pure barbarism. It makes me wonder if you can even call the U.S. a civilized society. It certainly calls into question the intelligence of the average American voter. For about 30 years now, the U.S. has been throwing scores of people into prison and lengthening prison terms all in the name of being “tough on crime”. I would like just one of these people to give me an objective measure that will show us if and when this program is succeeding. When does the crime rate go down? When can you show me that it is having some positive effect? Can you show me that the benefits outweigh the costs? When will we finally see the slightest indication that we are winning the war on drugs?

They can’t and won’t because they are wrong. Longer, tougher prison sentences do not reduce crime. If they did, the U.S. would be the most crime-free nation on earth, and Canada and Europe would be infested with criminals. Instead, it is quite the opposite.

Privatizing prisons is a very bad idea. Mike Harris thinks it will save money and provide more “efficient” services to Canada’s justice system. I think it will result in scandals and abuses as these private companies try to cut costs to make bigger profits. Harris thinks, so, who cares? They’re criminals. They don’t deserve to be treated with respect or dignity.

The net result will be an increase in man’s inhumanity to man.

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This Crazy Millenium

This Crazy Millennium

Well, I’m sick of the Millennium, so I’m just going to talk about the century for a moment instead. No other century is remotely comparable to the 20th in terms of significant changes to society and technology and religion.

Now that we are at the beginning of the last year of this century, it is an appropriate time to consider what the really significant events were of the past 100 years. It’s not that hard. Here they are, in chronological order.

  • The Development of Cinema
  • Industrialization
  • The 1917 Communist Revolution
  • The Automobile
  • World War I
  • Radio
  • Flight
  • The Depression
  • Government Intervention in the Economy following the Depression
  • World War II
  • The Development of Atomic Weapons
  • The Birth Control Pill
  • Television
  • Feminism
  • Rock’n’Roll Music
  • Personal Computers
  • The Internet
  • Biochemistry and Genetic Engineering

Now, what was the most significant development of the past 100 years? I mean, in terms of sheer, brute influence on all of our lives. Surprise—none of the above. We hardly notice the most significant development because we don’t notice the forest for the trees: urbanization.

What happened was this: with the invention and development of automobiles and other technologies, people were able to move to cities in massive numbers. In 1900, we were an overwhelmingly agricultural, small-town society. In 2000, we are overwhelmingly urbanized.

How significant is that? All of the other important developments of this century were radically shaped and influenced by the simple fact that most of us began to live in cities instead of small towns and villages. Anyone who has lived in a small town or village understands this immediately. The city is huge. It is anonymous. It is economically powerful. It is commercial. It is rich. It is filled with competing interests. It is sophisticated, fast-moving, complex. It is concentrated, organized, chaotic. It is full of people, cars, buses, buildings, devices, police, stadiums, hospitals, universities. It is, in the minds of many people, utterly empty and devoid of human values.

Christians like to point to rock’n’roll or the movies or literature or comic books or the Internet or whatever as being responsible for the “decline” of public morals in this century. First of all, there never was a public morality like they imagine it. Secondly, it was never those things anyway. All of those things were only possible because of urbanization, and all of them were given content and meaning by the insurmountable fact that we all lived in cities and had developed an urban mentality.

What is an urban mentality? It is the embrace of mass culture and homogenization. In a small town, where everybody knows you, culture and religion and social patterns develop indigenously, influenced by local hierarchies and institutions, and closely monitored by everyone. We all know how difficult it is to go against the grain of a small community. We are held accountable for our behavior by our neighbors and friends and churches. We know the teacher. We know the grocer. We know the local mechanic. We have our own ideas about how to do things. We know what works here.

In a large city, we are anonymous and autonomous. We could go to church or go to another church or not go at all. We don’t even know our neighbors, let alone the grocer or the mechanic. We drive across town to visit our friends.

So how do we learn about our culture? What begins to shape the way we think about things? Mass media. Radio, television, the movies. This is why we have Hollywood and the NBA and Michael Jordan and Stephen Spielberg, and it’s why we had Elvis, and the pill, and the internet, and it’s why we’re going to have genetic engineering.

As much as we would like to flatter ourselves and declare that our ideas are shaped by the influence of other people’s ideas, the truth is that our ideas are also powerfully shaped by our immediate environment and our perceived needs.

The city has produced our culture. Our culture is hysterical. We’re like those little ants running around in circles around the ant hill that someone has just crushed with his big toe. We’re out of our minds, but we have no idea of where else to go.

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Having it Both Ways

The State of Virginia just passed legislation that tries to give some force to the so-called “shrink-wrap software agreement” you supposedly agree to every time you install a software package on your computer. The software industry is “ecstatic”. This is their “crown jewel” of legislative achievements. If you wonder what “soft” money in politics really means, this is it.

Now, the naïve and gullible reader will ask himself a simple and natural question: why? Why would the software industry be so happy about a law that seems to make it illegal to do something that it has, supposedly, always been illegal to do? That is, violate the shrink-wrap agreement on your software application?

For fifteen years, we have all been installing these software applications and clicking on the ubiquitous “I Agree” button every time before being allowed to install the application.

Imagine if you read in the paper tomorrow that the government of Ontario was passing legislation making it illegal to speed on our highways. You would be rightly perturbed. If this legislation makes it illegal to speed now, why did I pay my tickets before this legislation was passed? Right….

The consumer-citizen has the right to make a few logical deductions here and invoke the natural right of expediency in order to respond to this blatantly hypocritical piece of legislation.

1. All software issued before this legislation was passed can be freely copied and distributed as you please. Obviously if the shrink-wrap agreement now has the force of law, it did not have the force of law before. So go ahead– copy away! Give Office 97 to all your friends! Make sure everyone you know can play with Photoshop 5.0! Sell copies of Quicken 98 at your fruit stand! All of these products were sold subject to agreements that, according to Virginia, did not have the force of law.

2. Since the principle of secondary contract agreements that take effect after a transaction is concluded (the shrink-wrap agreement is entered into after you already bought the software, when you install it on your computer) is now enshrined in law, the consumer should also take advantage of it. For example, you can send a letter to Microsoft saying this: “Acceptance of my payment for Microsoft Office constitutes an agreement between Microsoft and the purchaser that the purchaser will be compensated at his average hourly wage for any time spent attempting to recover work that was lost due to the deficiencies and instabilities of Microsoft products.”

You may be aware of the fact that, in spite of the shrink-wrap agreement, which states that the purchaser must return the software to Microsoft and receive a refund if he or she does not agree to the terms, Microsoft virtually never, in fact, refunds your money. Neither will the store that sold you the Microsoft product.

So get yourself a good lawyer, because it’s going to be a ride. Here’s what might happen: Microsoft will reject the agreement and demand that you either agree to the shrink-wrap license as it is written or… or what? Return the product? Ha ha! Now, I’m not so cynical as to think the worst of everybody, but some people obviously will simply make a copy of the product onto a CD and then return the original disk to Microsoft.

Fat chance. Microsoft knows that.

If enough people try this, I think we could have a real movement going.