Rethinking or Redefining Socialism
I guess this title raises red flags in the minds of most Americans. It is not really my intent here to have any serious analysis of Socialism vs Capitalism in this musing. I watched a movie the other night, I think titled Who Should We Invade Next?—or something like that. The Director Michael Moore, an overweight unkempt sleazy looking sort of character, is quite a ‘unique’ character. He is some sort of a Columbo in the political world, whose mission seems to keep prying into matters that annoy the political right.
But again, the purpose here is not to focus on Michael Moore but to focus on what several leaders in several other countries had to say about how they handle certain matters in their country. I immediately became suspicious of at least some of it and there has to be more to it than just appears on the surface.
The movie begins with the absurdity (on purpose) that the Chief of Staffs asked Moore to come advise them on military matters. They pointed out that the U.S. had not outright won a war since World War II. We lost in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon, and more recently in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. With, to be charitable, good intentions, we failed to get the wonderful results we expected. This is quite frustrating for Americans. All this military firepower and we can’t win any military interventions. Some say we lost because we didn’t kill enough people. Then again how many people are we suppose to kill before it becomes unethical? We killed 2 million in Vietnam, millions more in Iraq, etc. Hussein killed like 20,000 Iraqis in 10 years, we killed millions in less years. We certainly won the killing contest in every invasion. We now have become a lot more hesitant to send too many troops anywhere. Some say what is the point? Others say we have an obligation to keep on sending more troops. Let’s leave that debate in limbo.
At any rate, in this scenario, at the beginning of the movie, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ask Moore to invade other countries and bring back good things he finds existing in these countries. Michael Moore dressed as a combat soldier is pure Abbot and Costello, but each visit to a different country raises some interesting things to ponder.
His first visit was to Italy where he met with middle class workers and several CEOs of major companies. The first two workers were a policeman and a supplier of something or other to companies. By law they have 8 weeks paid vacation. If they get married they get 15 days paid honeymoon days. If they have a baby they get 5 months paid vacation. In December they get double pay for the month. If they don’t use all the vacation one year, it carries over. They get two hours for lunch. He talked to the President of the Larding Company and the CEO of Ducate Motorcycle Company.
Both of the above said they didn’t mind that they didn’t make as much profit as they would in America, and stated: “What’s the point of being richer?” They deal with strong unions, feel it is healthiest if both labor and management are strong enough to restrain each other from excess.
Of course all this vacation time seems excessive to Americans, but I would guess they don’t have as much unemployment as we do since more workers would be needed to cover all this vacation time. Still, I would need to get a more in depth explanation. On the other hand it is what it is.
Moore then went on a high speed train to France to examine school lunches. All schools in France have modern cafeterias where lunch is treated as a class that lasts an hour. No lines, the food is brought to their seat at the table, a 4 course meal with healthy food, plenty of water, and they are taught about healthy eating habits. None of the students at the table ever drink stuff like Coca-Cola. The menus are similar no matter where the school is located. Once a month the School Chef meets with a representative from the Mayor’s office to ensure quality healthy free lunches. The school menus are rather impressive.
Taxes in France are high, as they are in most of advanced modern countries. Those interviewed said they didn’t mind high taxes as long as they get something back. In France they get the basics like we do in America, plus huge money for the arts, high speed rail system, good schools, nursing care, 4 weeks paid vacation, paid maternity leave, paid school lunches, day care, free college, free health care, and so on. In the United States citizens pay themselves for all of the above, but don’t call it taxes, and of course only some have the money to pay for the extras.
Sex education is taught in schools, but not abstinence as they do not consider abstinence a method of birth control. In Texas, only abstinence is taught in schools and they have the third highest teen pregnancy in the nation. The Governor of Texas responded that in his personal experience abstinence is very effective.
Moore then invaded Finland since they are ranked number one in Education in the World, to steal their educational system. In the 1960’s Finland and the U. S. were tied considerably back in the pack in educational rank. By the 2000’s Finland was ranked #1 and the U.S. had fallen further back.
Moore met with the Director of Education and this is what he was told:
At least for the younger children there is no homework, at most 10-20 minutes. They go to school 20 hrs/wk. They have one of the shortest school days and shortest school weeks in the world. Most kids can speak multiple languages. There are no multiple choice exams. There are no standardized exams. It is illegal in Finland for any private school to charge tuition and private schools are virtually nonexistent as a consequence. The purpose here is to make sure the rich support high educational standards in all schools since their kids will have to be in one of them. Interesting approach, and all kids benefit.
Most of this perplexes me. My initial take is that our ranking in the world is not impressive because the education for the non affluent in our country is often abysmal. Affluent communities do well in educating their students but the ever growing less affluent population suffers from very poor schools.
The teachers interviewed almost always indicated they taught in ways to make students happy.And they wanted the younger kids to have plenty of time to play. I need to think about all this more. Maybe by the time I get through reviewing all this in the different countries to which Moore went, I will have more personal thoughts.
The next stop was Norway, Moore went there to steal their prison system. Moore interviewed the head of prisons in Norway. Prison in Norway is totally based on rehabilitation. In regular prisons the prisoners live in group house units in which only they have the key. They do not wear prison uniforms. For 115 guards there are 4 unarmed guards. Only punishment is to lose their freedom. In America, 80% of prisoners are back in prison after 5 years. In Norway it is 5%. In the maximum security prison system the prisoners are in cells to which only the prisoner has the key. According to the prisoners themselves, they have no fights, no rapes, each has their own private shower, TV, and most take courses and spend a lot of time in the library. They have their own recording studio. The guards have no guns. Maximum sentence is 21 years. They avoid revenge since they don’t want to promote hatred in their society. At least so they say.
It was on to Portugal where Moore met with the Head of the Police. In Portugal no one can be arrested for using any kind of drugs. Since the Government has done this, the level of drug usage has gone down, and therefore less people are causing trouble. Health care is free, and anyone can go for help to get rid of drug dependency. In America millions of people go to jail for drug use, especially minorities, and people convicted of drug use can never again vote in 35 states. Of all the people in prisons across the globe 25% of them are in American jails.
Moore then headed to Germany. In Germany they have a 36 hr work week but get paid for 40 hours. The factories are painted bright colors with many windows. Hardly anyone has a 2nd or third job, they laughed at such an absurd idea. Moore visited the workers in a pencil factory. If a worker feels stressed they can go to a spa for a week and the government pays for it. The attitude is that if everyone takes care of their neighbors, life is better for everyone. By law the Supervisory Board for any company must be composed of 50% workers. In the U.S., Corporation Board members are invariably wealthy well known people who are paid huge amounts of money to rubber-stamp management. Moore talked to a CEO who insisted the workers on the Board make good suggestions. It is against the law for any supervisor to contact a worker who is on vacation. No emails can be sent to workers after work. This seems odd.
The last place Moore went was Slovenia. There College is free, even for Americans who come over there when they can’t afford college in the U.S. The American students over there claim high school classes there are more difficult than college classes in the U.S. That could be biased. 100 different courses are taught in English. When the government tried to charge for college the people revolted and college reverted to being free. When tuition goes up in America not much happens.
Moore’s last stop was Tunisia, a Muslim country in Northern Africa. Interestingly the women, with the support of many men, revolted years ago and the voters passed a women’s rights addition to their constitution. After this they forced out a dictator and the conservative Muslims in their Congress voluntarily resigned. Moore interviewed one of those who resigned. His comments were interesting:
He said that power wasn’t everything, that government should stay out of personal lives, that government should be separate from personal lives. So now how women dress, for example, is their decision with no government penalties. As is abortion. Ok, this summarizes what Moore found out about several aspects of life in these other countries which were much different than in the United States. So what are we to make of all this? How can some of these countries do things so against what we do in America and yet have more success in a particular area? First of all, Moore just picked out the good things noteworthy in these countries and did not talk about the bad things. We have already made the point that the reason why the U.S. does not do well in certain areas compared to others is that we do very well for some of our citizens and do very poorly with other citizens and these citizens who get the short stick in America pull down the scores of those who do well.
In the United States we feel it is wrong to provide everyone good health care, and good schools, that communities are responsible for doing this for themselves. In reality that means affluent communities can provide good schools and good health care while poor communities can ill afford quality anything. In these countries the citizens expect the government to protect employees with good salaries, good vacations, good health care, good everything. They would agree with Lincoln who stated that Labor comes before capital. Given what we know about chronic stress and what effects this has on all body systems, something that was laboriously covered in a 6 part musing, there is no surprise here that these countries have taken the science of chronic stress seriously, and their governments have moved to ensure that all children and in fact all citizens are given safe, healthy environments so that chronic stress is minimized for all citizens. They obviously understand drug abuse and the causes of violent behavior better than Americans. These countries believe the precept that violence begets violence and we tend to think violence is the answer to violence.
One of the biggest reasons the U.S. falls behind in these areas is quite simple. We spend 59% of our budget on military defense. None of these countries remotely spend the percentage of tax money on military matters. We have different priorities for our tax monies.
At some point in America, and time is running out here, the science of chronic stress and it’s impact— especially on children, is going to force changes in our priorities. We cannot continue via poor schools, weak teachers, poor health care, dangerous neighborhoods, treating drug addiction as a crime instead of a medical problem, and treating incarceration as a purely punitive exercise—do all this and expect adult children from these environments to overcome the often permanent effects on the body from chronic stress during their formative years.
I saw this movie after I had written the 6 part musing on chronic stress and violence. These nations have already moved to make sure all the children have good food, good health care, safe neighborhoods, are free from drug wars, and have the 5 psychological support systems in place so they can limit their physiological responses to any chronic stresses. These support systems remain in place for adults too, so everyone has the maximum opportunity to have a more contented life.
We can continue to insist that Government is not going to do any of these things, not in a nation of strong, independent, everybody make their own success on their own, and if we continue to leave millions of our young people unprotected from chronic childhood stress and few, if any, of the psychological defense mechanisms are made available to them—and then, on top of all this, make it legal for everyone to arm themselves with weapons of war in public——well, we are already beginning to see, big time, the consequences of such policies.
For us, our becoming Baghdad west is just beneath a cauldron of tense desperation, and once it explodes, a very complex society such as ours, could collapse virtually overnight. No class, no gender, no race, no culture, no political party, no religious group—no one is going to escape. Of course it will never be the end of the world, it never has been, and of course the evolutionary process will continue—but in evolutionary years not human years, and thus the consequences for individual members of any species may well be universally disastrous . Humans have the intelligence to avoid all this, but seemingly not the willpower or judgement to do so.
We like to say that in America, you can become anything you want to become—it’s up to the individual. That has some truth, only to the extent you are not raised in the wrong environment, in which chronic stress and all the associated increase in stress hormones which accompany that stress, which imposes permanent alteration in the function of your varied body systems—including growth, immune system health, emotional balance, ability to make sound judgements, memory storage, memory retrieval, learning skills, likelihood of depression, permanent anxiety, diabetes, auto immune disease, some cancers, and the list goes on and on. No responsible government ever does this to whole communities of children, and good government creates an atmosphere where the welfare of all trumps the right of anyone, or any group, to provide only good formative years environment and human rights for themselves.
