Who's Gonna Pay?

I'm really sick of that question. "Who's gonna pay?" is effectively just another way to shift blame and responsibility for the things we all know are essential, things that must be done, things that can't not be done. So why ask the question when the answer is so damn obvious..?

We're all products from the environment we live in. That's just a fact. Sure some things we're born with, like the color of our eyes and hair, the color of our skin and the size and shape of our nose. But the fact that some of those physical traits influence our mental development is a product of the society that judges us on those traits. No matter how we look at it, it's the environment, the society, the climate, the everything surrounding us, that shapes how we turn out as individuals. If you don't believe that, if you don't accept the obvious truth of that fact, if you believe that who and what you are is purely the result of your own talents, efforts and merit, then this post is not for you.

This environment that shapes us as individuals is itself shaped by our collective beliefs and actions. No one individual is responsible for the state of the society that shapes the individuals within it. But it's the beliefs that are primal in this relationship, as beliefs inform actions. The question then becomes: who shapes those widely accepted beliefs? We all know the answer; beliefs are shaped from the top down. Where there's no such thing as a trickle-down economy, there's very much a trickle-down belief system. Beliefs trickle down from the top of our established hierarchies, be they spiritual, cultural, economical or combinations thereof. And those beliefs inescapably serve the needs of the ones making them rain down. Once again Karl Marx explained this in when he explained that the leading ideas of any age, are the ideas in the leaders of that age.

The age of Christianity is over and done with; we now live in the age of capitalism, as it is the overarching paradigm by which every aspect of our lifes is shaped. And therein we find the root of the question "who's gonna pay for it?" This failed experiment called capitalism has as its foundational premise the establishment of collective benefits through purely individual incentives. It's the idea that collective needs are best served if all individuals concentrate on their own needs. It's the ludicrous assumption that the public interest is best served when no one serves the public interest. I hope that this begins to illustrate how, when the public interest isn't served at all, when roads and bridges begin to fail, education and healthcare become too expensive and utilities fail while being too expensive, no one feels responsible and everyone reacts with misdirected anger at the unfairness of it all.

"I pay my taxes! What the hell is the government doing with my tax dollars!?!" Well, the government does exactly what capitalism asks of it; as little as possible to serve the public interest, and as much as possible to serve the individual needs of the individuals at the top of this trickle-down belief system. It breeds a culture in which the phrase "greed is good" gains traction, where contributing to the common good is seen as foolish and being a thief of your own wallet, a society that reveres the insanely rich as insanely competent, talented, industrious, heroic even. And the poor are seen as individually responsible and 100 percent to blame for their lot in life. In a world that's like never before in history giving us the tools to connect with each other, the atomizing forces of capitalism have caused loneliness like never seen before. If, on the other hand, we were to live in a society in which we feel like we're taken care of, because we take care of each other according to our ability to do so, how different would our world be?

Who's gonna pay for it? We all do. And we do it according to our ability to contribute. It's easy and it's the essential idea behind communism; from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Thereby making it a collective responsibility. Combine the individualism embedded in capitalism with the collectivism in communism, and you get social democracy; the Scandinavian model, as it's known nowadays. There are some things that should never be left to the whims of private interests in a marketplace, like education, healthcare and essential utilities like electricity, water and I would include internet access there as well, because how can you even begin to claim to be a functional democracy without providing every single one of your citizens with access to the public square? These are our collective responsibilities and no one should ever have to ask who's going to pay for them. Watch the below linked video to see what the profit motive has done to utilities in America. Spoiler alert: it's quite the horror story...

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