Posted on by Fred

Surviving Dependency and Poverty

My life is entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers.  I discussed this at some length in “Willy Loman and Me” last week.  This forces the question of how someone survives this way.  As opposed to the somewhat self indulgent, if, I believe, beautifully artistic whining I did last week, I would like to see if I can offer some help to others who are in similar situations.  

I know many people are worse off than I am.  There are hundreds of thousands of unsheltered people.  I have a home.  There are more without medical insurance.  The state pays for most of my insulin and doctors’ appointments.  They pay for every time I have to go to the hospital.  There are others who go to bed hungry more often than I do.  I have an Unofficial Patron Saint who sends me enough grocery money to eat.  I hope, however, that all of these people have someone, at least a dog, to love them.  Love, I believe, is the key to overcoming the horror of being dependent on others who can, at any time they choose, without any obligation even to provide a reason, stop supporting you tomorrow and leave you helpless.  They are well within their rights to do this.

It’s easy to feel defeated, degraded, and relatively worthless in such situations.  If, however, you can find some love in your life, you can focus on that and distract yourself from the humiliation.  You can remind yourself that what you do matters to someone else.  The love in your life is a welcoming light in the distance.  You can still make a difference for someone else.  The love is a warm campfire.  You can still be the cause for someone to hang on another day.  The love is a guiding star.  You can make someone smile.  Love is the sun. Don’t dismiss these acts of kindness as insignificant.  They’re not.  How do you know?  Someone does those things for you, and you make it through the endless darkness that night can sometimes seem to be.  You don’t get to quit while you can still make a difference.  

I know I won’t be able to change the world, but I look for the ripple effect.  I make just enough difference in your life that you make just enough difference in someone else’s life so that they have the power to change the world.  



Sail away, away

Ripples never come back

Gone to the other side

Sail away, sail away

—  Anthony George Banks, Mike Rutherford

In short, first keep your chin up.  There are a nearly endless set of reasons to feel defeated.  Hemingway,  however, taught us that “Man is not made for defeat.  A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”  Can you find a way to get up off the mat one more time?  No?  Okay, are you still breathing?  You are?  Fantastic!  Excellent beginning.  You just lie there and breathe for a while.  Feel those beautiful, blessed breaths.  When you’re on the mat, if you will just keep breathing, in my experience, someone will come and help you up.  It may take a bit, but as long as you can keep breathing, help is still available.  Believe in that.  Sometimes, that belief is all we have.  

What makes people want to help you?  I’ve been thinking much about this.  I get far more help than I believe  can possibly deserve.  I also spend inordinate amounts of time on the mat.  Why do people keep helping me up, bandaging the cuts over my eye, and helping me to heal the bruises?  I have a guess.  I could be wrong.  I’m wrong with frightening frequency, but when I find out I am, I can move one step closer to being right, and that’s helpful.  I think it has to do with what the Romulans called Absolute Candor.  

I almost never speak with anyone except you, my listeners (all 50… on a good week… of you) with only a few exceptions.  I talk to my best friend on the phone several times a week.  I talk to my mother every afternoon at 4 PM.  (It keeps getting moved up because she keeps falling asleep earlier, and now she’s having physical therapy due to her broken ankle, so that’s the best time.)  That call might go ten minutes.  And every week or two I get a phone call from the man who saved my life.  That’s it.  Why is this?

It’s my reaction to my time in California.  It’s also a cumulative effect of the nearly 60 years I’ve spent doing very poorly in general conversation.  When I was in a classroom, I was masterful.  The moment I stepped outside of it, I was a bumbling mass of nerves.  In college, I would go out dancing 5 nights a week.  Can you imagine?  (Actually, I would rather you didn’t.)  I would make my best effort to talk to people in those days of yore, and it rarely went well for any length of time.  Have you ever tried to talk to someone when the band is playing?  Yelling is essential, and I’ve never been comfortable yelling.  On those rare occasions I accidentally became friends with someone, I frequently talked too much, probably to compensate for the fact that I talked so little to anyone else.  And this was a reaction to the fact that in high school I was among the least cool of the people you would ever meet.  That dates back to the insecurity caused by the fact that the first time I ever asked a girl to dance, which, for reasons passing understanding, was when I was in 3rd grade, she laughed at me.  And there you have it.  A psychoanalysis of my entire life in one paragraph.  

What does this have to with Absolute Candor?  I smoke more weed than you do, so it takes me a little while to get there.  It’s coming, I promise.

I live the overwhelming majority of my social life on Facebook.  I know how to use no other social media, and I’m too old and too tired to want to learn, so while I appreciate the offer you were about to make to teach me, I’m going to decline it in advance.  What I have is enough for my purposes.  There are people I know there, as well as well over a thousand people I don’t, and some of them read what I write once in a while.  They comment.  I respond.  We communicate effectively, and, for the most part, kindly with each other.  I get my social interaction there.  

And the reason, I think, that so many of them seem to like me is that I’m as honest as I know how to be.  If that sounds like I’m qualifying it, it’s because I am.  I feel like I have to because of what occurred during the 64 days I lived in a tiny trailer in California.  The number of times I was called a “Fucking Liar” is higher than I care to calculate.  That would require me to relive memories I would rather forget.  It was “four score and upwards” I’m sure.  And the thing is, I never thought I was lying. (If you’re new here, you can go back and listen to “Episode 124: Unlocking The Gate,” which tells the story of my two months of Hell in The Golden State.) 

I was speaking what I believed to be the truth in every conversation, but there seemed always to be a way to twist what I said into a lie, so… I decided to stop talking to people.  Perhaps in oral communication I lie without knowing it.  I wonder if there’s a psychological condition like that.  I certainly never intended to say anything I knew to be untrue.  I may have been mistaken, particularly about things like what day or time it is, or because my memory is practically worthless about many things, especially in my more distant past, but I never made a statement that I knew to be false.  As far as I know, that’s what it means to lie.

If I can carefully control all my communication, I can be as certain as possible that I’m telling the truth.  I often Google things about which I’m unsure, in hopes of getting it right.  I frequently say, “I could be wrong.”  I could.  

I share my life in the most honest way I know how.  When things go well, I write joyful posts.  When things go poorly, I say so.  I’m as objective as I can be about what I write, and I rarely use people’s names.  I don’t care to embarrass those who have helped me, and I make it a rule to avoid attacking anyone who is not a public figure by name.  When I have unfavorable things to say about an individual, I leave their name out of it.  I have no desire to hurt people.  I don’t wish to soil someone’s name in public.  

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; 

‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands: 

But he that filches from me my good name 

Robs me of that which not enriches him 

And makes me poor indeed.

— Iago, from Shakespeare’s “Othello” Act 3, Scene 3

When someone visits my page, they can feel sure they’re going to hear about my adventures in living.  Many people have gotten to know and love my dog, Speedy Shine, now.  They have been kind about my appearance, even while I recognize it’s not at all one of which I’m proud.  I do my best to behave kindly toward my friends, and many of them reciprocate.  Some are simply unimaginably kind.  

I share what I find interesting in life, and people respond.  I try not to bore my friends by sharing more than matters.  You’d be surprised how rarely I write about my time in the bathroom.  I sometimes feel like I’m writing my autobiography in real-time online.  One of my favorite features of Facebook is seeing my memories every night.  I like to see where I was, and compare or contrast it to where I am.  I like to believe there is growth.  I think people like to see us grow.  I think people like to help others grow when they can.  I could be wrong.

I proceed on the assumption that people are, as a general rule, Good.  I don’t believe most of us have any interest in hurting anyone else.  I know that’s certainly not true of everyone, but I believe it applies to the majority of us.  If I’m right, I can be safe writing about my life.  It’s something like a well-written reality show.  I know… that’s an oxymoron.  We are all drawn to stories.  True stories are often our favorites.  I write mine as accurately as I can.  I believe that’s why I have many friends.  I’m a good writer.  I’m lousy at speaking to people who don’t understand me.  Understanding me requires that you knew me long ago when I was more secure around other human beings.  

So, to survive the feeling of dependency, focus on the love that surrounds you, and add to the world as much of it as you can as honestly as you can.  This improves your chances of keeping the support you have.  Be willing to lose someone if keeping them means compromising your principles or your honesty.  That will cost you more than whatever they’re contributing to your life.

That’s Dependency.  What about Poverty?

First, it’s about minimizing your needs.  The first example that comes to mind is eliminating your car.  For some people who have to get to work every day, this is impossible.  I understand.  (If you’re working, it’s unfair for you to be living in poverty.  This show is trying to change that aspect of the world.)  If, however, you can do without it, you save a ton of money.  If someone gave me a 2022 Camry or Lexus tomorrow afternoon, I would certainly thank them.  They would be an Unofficial Patron Saint in my Gratitudes for the rest of the life of this show unless they specifically asked not to be.  And then I would sell the car as promptly as possible.  It costs me too much to own.  

Insurance where I live is something in the vicinity of $200 a month for a basic car.  For a nice one, it would be much more.  I don’t have $200 a month.  It’s unlikely I will ever have $200 a month.  I can’t pay the insurance.  Gas prices, even though they are dropping and will probably continue to drop, are still prohibitively high.  If the car isn’t new, it will probably require maintenance and repair often.  I don’t have the money for that, either.  If I were to buy a car, the car payment, by itself, would finish me.

So, I live without a car.  If I need to get somewhere, I use Uber or Lyft.  I try never to go anywhere at all.  That saves more money.  

Since I have limited money, I prioritize.  Rent is the first thing I do when I wake up on the morning of the third of the month.  My Disability check is there, and before I even get to the bathroom, I’m paying rent.  Without a place to live, everything else is irrelevant.  

Next is my phone.  It’s due on the 4th.  I have to have that.  I need to communicate.  When those are paid, I ask my Uber Driver Friend, Wally (not his real name), to get me my cigarettes.  I need to make it through the month without a nervous breakdown.  I order groceries, and the first thing that goes in the cart is my Diet Pepsi.  It’s over for me without caffeine.  Then I look to see if I have any money left.  I usually have very little, but I still have Patreon coming in a couple of days.  It usually arrives on the 6th.

The rest of the month is about deciding what I need most.  As soon as Miss Maudie Atkinson (no, that’s not her real name.  She’s the neighbor in To Kill a Mockingbird.) sends grocery money every month, I order pork chops and hamburger.  I need protein.  Those are my special treat dinners.  I don’t eat vegetables.  I eat a lot of frozen burritos and more ramen than I would prefer to eat.

Anything left is saved so I can get groceries for the rest of the month, and for the little things I may need.  This month my ultra powerful Desktop Computer that my nephew built for me when I retired in June, 2016 died.  No, I couldn’t afford to replace it.  I tried to get someone to fix it within my budget.  (I was hoping for $100 or less.)  I was unsuccessful.  The only person I could get to come out wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he couldn’t get inside the computer because it has a lock on it.  I lost the key five moves ago.

I took the problem to Facebook.  Someone offered that night to buy me a new desktop.  I was blown away.  That hasn’t happened as of this writing, but it was still incredibly kind of him to think of me.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he changed his mind for any number of perfectly acceptable reasons that are precisely none of my business.  The thought gave me an evening of ecstasy, and I’m grateful for that.

Many people tried to walk me through repair possibilities.  Nothing worked.  I was grateful to all of them for their efforts.  

Someone suggested getting a dongle that I could attach to my MacBook Air that would allow me to use my big monitors and extend my screen.  He even posted a model I could use from Amazon.  It was $276.  I’m sure it’s excellent.  It’s entirely out of my budget.  

I did several Google searches and finally found something that would do what he suggested for about $45.  That was, if I am exceptionally careful for the rest of the month, within my budget.  I just hooked it up a couple of hours ago.  It’s working beautifully.  I couldn’t be more pleased.  I would still love the new desktop, but if that doesn’t happen, I can make it work with what I have.

That’s sort of a key to surviving poverty.  Find a way to make it work with what you have.  Clothing and furniture need to be functional more than fashionable.  The only furniture I own now is a bed a kind person gave me four or five years ago.  The rest is left over from my landlord.  The furniture is financially worthless, but I can sit in the easy chair, and I’ve slept on the couch several times.  I have a couple of desk chairs.  One I got from a Thrift Store several years ago.  The other was a gift.  I don’t remember the last time I bought clothes.  These are fine.  I need to wash them at some point, but the dryer here doesn’t work, so I have to fit sending them out into my budget.  I’m hoping for next month.  The dongle took precedence.   

Try to save enough money to treat yourself, just a little bit, once in a while.  Sometimes I order Uber Eats. They’ll deliver Church’s Chicken or Jason’s Deli.  When I have a little extra, I get those.  I feel happy until I feel guilty.

I don’t even consider the possibility of cable.  I have a few streaming services that are much cheaper and allow me better choices than 900 difficult to navigate channels filled with enough commercials to make Holden Caulfield suicidal.  I think engaging ideas found in television shows is part of what makes me able to write.  I would be nowhere without Star Trek.  I have just started watching its polar opposite, The Handmaid’s Tale, and the horror causes catharsis that sends me to the keyboard.

Finally, I try to accomplish one thing a month.  I had to get the backyard cleaned out to make it safe for Speedy Shine.  That was one month’s money.  I had to make the kitchen sink stop leaking.  That was some of my money and some of my landlord’s during another month.  I don’t ever want to ask him to repair anything here if I can possibly avoid it.  I’m getting it at half price.  I’m enough of a liability as it is.  I don’t want it to cost him extra for me to live here.  I had to have bookcases so I could unpack my books.  There’s little point in owning them if I can’t actually read them.  I tried lots of cheap ways to do that, but I finally wound up getting some concrete bricks and pieces of wood, and I had my best friend’s current boyfriend pick up the stuff at Home Depot and put them together for me.  That was a couple of months worth of money.  

I can’t possibly do everything at once, so I choose what seems most urgent, and I do that first.

This can all be gone tomorrow, but at the moment, I’m typing at my computer on my big keyboard attached to my little MacBook Air, looking at it on the monitor that is connected to that same surviving set of circuits, which was, itself, a gift.  The Carpenters are singing “Top of the World” to me.  (Someday, I’ll be rich, and I’ll be able to license the songs to which I refer, and I’ll just put them in my show.)  Speedy Shine is lying on the chair behind me.  My soda is on the Home Depot box that pretends it’s a table next to my desk.  My bong is still half full, and it’s sitting a foot or so to the left of my keyboard on the desk.  In short… I’m doing just fine right now.  And right now is all any of us have.

I ain’t gonna dim my light for no one.  Don’t you, either.

Posted on by Fred

Willy Loman and Me

WILLY: Oh, yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska.  He was an adventurous man.  We’ve got quite a little streak of self reliance in our family.  I thought I’d go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man.  And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman.  And he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed merchandise in thirty-one states.  And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers — I’ll never forget — and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living.  And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.  ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know?  When he died — and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston — when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral.  Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that.  In those days there was personality in it, Howard.  There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it.  Today, it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear — or personality.  You see what I mean?  They don’t know me any more… If I had forty dollars a week — that’s all I’d need.  Forty dollars, Howard.  Howard, the year Al Smith was nominated, your father came to me and…  I’m talking about your father!  There were promises made across this desk!  You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see — I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance!  You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit!

Willy Loman and I have much in common.  We both spent our lives doing what we thought was the best thing a person could do.  For him, it was selling.  I was never any good at selling.  I don’t think Willy was either, but I know that about myself, and I don’t think he did.  

I spent my life teaching Elementary School because I thought it was the best thing a person could do.  It was a chance to change the world by influencing future generations.  I earned enough money to support myself in a modest fashion, and, at the height of my financial success, I owned a house.  Well done, me!  

Funny, y’know? After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive

— Willy Loman

Funny, you know?  After all the classrooms, and the students, and the meetings, and the years, you end up worthless either dead or alive.  

Willy at least had life insurance.  I had a policy once, I think, more than 30 years ago, but I know nothing about it today.  When I die, no one gets anything.  My nephew might want the computer he built for me back.  I hope someone will wipe it entirely clean before anyone sees its contents.  On the other hand, I’ll be dead, so what of it?  I have a TV.  It might get you $20 at a generous Thrift Store.    It won’t cover the cost of getting rid of all my books, and movies, and music that no one else will want since you can get them all now on your phone and they require no physical storage space.  

After 29 years of teaching, the government for whom I taught has decided I’m not worth the money it costs to pay rent in the cheapest place in town.  Forget utilities, ignore groceries, perish the thought of even owning a car, no money for entertainment of even the cheapest variety, and to hell with the dog.  

Willy thought life was about being well-liked.  I never did.  On the other hand, for reasons passing understanding, I seem to be.  I say this because it’s only the fact that people love me that keeps me alive, both financially and psychologically.  

I’m alive because my best friend’s boyfriend is renting me his old place for half price, which is the very maximum I can afford and still make it to the end of the month.  I’m a liability to him.  He could sell this place, pay off all his bills, and have enough money in the bank to live comfortably for quite some time without ever setting foot in a workplace.  I’m screwing up his life simply by being alive.  He would never say that, because he’s a kind man, but that doesn’t change that objective fact.

And that isn’t enough to sustain me anyway.  I have another friend, who I really ought to call a Patron Saint in my Gratitudes if I can get her permission to do so, who sends me grocery money every month.  The state of Arizona believes I deserve $20 a month to buy groceries.  And then they cut it off, apparently, this month.  I didn’t even get that.  If not for my friend, I would live off nothing but ramen and pretzels. 

The generosity of my landlord and my friend still isn’t enough to sustain me.  I couldn’t pay for my phone (one of The People on The Porch tells me I could get a free phone service, but I’m too scared to try.), my cigarettes (yes, I know I shouldn’t smoke.  I’m working on that.  Life is stressful when one’s existence is a liability.  Giving up an addiction of more than 30 years is more difficult than you probably think.  It doesn’t go well for Speedy Shine when I go too long.), any of the streaming services that are much cheaper and infinitely better than cable, or the ability to do anything extra.  I bought a DVD rack a couple of months ago, and my guilt is still overwhelming.  I nearly ran out of food because I did that.  It was $50 on Offer Up.  

With Patreon and Anchor, I make enough to make it to the end of the month.  If I stopped doing my show, I would be psychologically and financially ruined.  Every time I lose a supporter, I go into a depression for at least an hour or two.  Speedy Shine has to remind me that I’m worth loving.  He gives me kisses sometimes, and he knows how to cuddle better than any living being I’ve ever encountered.  

There is always a lot of talk about who deserves what.  I hate all of it.  I spent my life doing what I thought was right, and today I have no sense of independence.  I depend on far too many people just to survive.  And the minute I say that, you can be absolutely certain that someone is saying, “Well you should have…” or “Well, you shouldn’t have…”  Those words always make me angry.  And since anger is caused by fear, I must ask what I fear.  What do those words make me fear?  They make me fear that people will suffer.  They will be homeless.  They will be hungry.  I don’t like that.  And why do they suffer?  They suffer because of Judgmental Bullshit.  

We have convinced ourselves that there is only one right way to live, and it’s ours.  Those who don’t conform to our standards deserve to suffer.  No.  They don’t.  

I don’t know why someone made the choices they did at any given moment.  Maybe I would have made a different decision.  Maybe, in those circumstances, I wouldn’t have.  There’s really no way of knowing.  As it turns out, I’m not God.  Are you?  And, if you think you are, could you please send me a little of whatever you’re smoking?  It’s obviously better than what I can get at the Dispensary.

My best friend of 13 years, who I know better than nearly anyone on the planet, frequently makes decisions that mystify me.  She dates men who don’t make her happy.  I know this because I’ve spent 13 years hearing about them.  She knows they make her unhappy, but she continues dating them for years after she knows this.  Is that the decision I would make?  No, I don’t think so.  So, shall I decide that she deserves to be unhappy, and should I therefore make no effort to help her?  No, I don’t think so.  She’s no better off for that.  I love her, so, even though she makes decisions I don’t understand, I do all I can to help her.  And she’s saved my life more than once.  

If I can’t understand her choices when I’ve known her so well and so long, how am I supposed to understand the choices of a stranger?  How does it help me to pass judgment on the homeless.  “If they didn’t want to be homeless, they should have…” Are you kidding me?  How do you know why they made the choices that inevitably wound them up in a place where they have no shelter for the night?  And who are you to pass judgment on them?  

I made a set of decisions that wound me up being entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers.  How do I know which ones were wrong?  Did I make a decision that caused me to become diabetic?  If I did, what was that decision?  How would you suggest that I go back and change it?  Q isn’t coming by this afternoon to offer me the opportunity to change a moment in my life.  And when he offered it to Captain Picard, it went very badly for Jean Luc.  Marc Antony offered me an opportunity in “Horace’s Final Five.”  You might want to listen to that to see how well that went.  (It’s Episode 50 if you’re new here.)

“Well, you should make more money off of your podcast!”  

I would love to do that, but I’m not a marketer, and I don’t want to spend any of the little time I have left in an effort to become Willy Loman.  I’m not getting on Discord and Twitch.  I don’t understand them, and I don’t have the mental capacity to learn anymore.  If someone wants to be in charge of marketing my show, I will be happy to split with them any extra money they make for me.  It turns out no one is offering to do that.  So, as Kenny Loggins is singing right now, “This is it.”  He and Michael McDonald seem much happier about that than I am.  

Willy Loman had big dreams.  All of them were failures.  I avoid big dreams.  I can fail perfectly well without them, and I would prefer to save the accompanying disappointment.  

I don’t say he’s a great man.  Willy Loman never made a lot of money.  His name was never in the paper.  He’s not the finest character that ever lived.  But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him.  So attention must be paid.  He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog.  Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.

We live in a world controlled by money.  It works out well for some, and it’s a curse for others.  It’s not the world I want.  I work to change it, nearly every week on this show.  I don’t get anywhere.

What a proposition, ts, ts.  Terrific, terrific.  ‘Cause she’s suffered, Ben, the woman has suffered.  You understand me?  A man can’t go out the way, he came in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something.  You can’t, you can’t — You gotta consider, now.  Don’t answer so quick.  Remember, it’s a guaranteed twenty-thousand-dollar proposition.  Now look, Ben, I want you to go through the ins and outs of this thing with me.  I’ve got nobody to talk to, Ben, and the woman has suffered, you hear me? 

BEN: What’s the proposition? 

WILLY: It’s twenty thousand dollars on the barrelhead.  Guaranteed, gilt-edged, you understand?  

BEN: You don’t want to make a fool of yourself.  They might not honor the policy. 

WILLY: How can they dare refuse?  Didn’t I work like a coolie to meet every premium on the nose?  And now they don’t pay off?  Impossible! 

BEN: It’s called a cowardly thing, William. 

WILLY: Why?  Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?  

BEN: That’s a point, William.  And twenty thousand — that is something one can feel with the hand, it is there. 

WILLY: Oh, Ben, that’s the whole beauty of it!  I see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand. Not like — like an appointment!  This would not be another damned-fool appointment, Ben, and it changes all the aspects.  Because he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me.  But the funeral… Ben, that funeral will be massive!  They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire!  All the oldtimers with the strange license plates — that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized — I am known!  Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey — I am known, Ben, and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all.  He’ll see what I am, Ben!  He’s in for a shock, that boy!

That’s what comes of deciding that money matters more than people.  I understand the choice Willy makes.  (If you’ve never read or seen Death of a Salesman, Willy kills himself after this discussion.  It’s more than 70 years old, so I’m not going to listen to whining about Spoilers.)  It’s a decision I consider every night before I go to sleep.  It’s one Speedy Shine convinces me not to make.  No one gets $20,000 if I die, but lots of people will be financially better off in many ways.  If the world really is all about money, it’s difficult to conclude anything apart from the idea that world would be better off without me.  The government even gets to save $1363 a month.  

Is it just possible that there is something that matters more than money?

LINDA: Forgive me, dear.  I can’t cry.  I don’t know what it is, I can’t cry.  I don’t understand it.  Why did you ever do that?  Help me Willy, I can’t cry.  It seems to me that you’re just on another trip.  I keep expecting you.  Willy, dear, I can’t cry.  Why did you do it?  I search and search and I search, and I can’t understand it, Willy.  I made the last payment on the house today.  Today, dear.  And there’ll be nobody home.  We’re free and clear.  We’re free.  We’re free… We’re free…

All the quotations in this episode are from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

Click to access filedownload.ashx

Posted on by Fred

The Omelas Problem

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room.  It has one locked door, and no window.  A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket.  The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is.  The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting.  It could be a boy or a girl.  It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded.  Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.  It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops.  It is afraid of the mops.  It finds them horrible.  It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come.  The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes–the child has no understanding of time or interval–sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there.  One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up.  The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes.  The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear.  The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes speaks.  “I will be good, ” it says.  “Please let me out.  I will be good!” They never answer.  The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often.  It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day.  It is naked.  Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.  They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas.  Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there.  They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery…

They would like to do something for the child.  But there is nothing they can do.  If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed.  Those are the terms.  To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

This is The Omelas Problem.  Everyone can be happy, but the price is the endless suffering of one child.  She’s makes it clear in the story (and I can’t recommend highly enough that you read it… It’s brilliant!  I’ll drop a link in the transcript.) that there is no other way it can work.  The rules are unchangeable.  This is the foundation on which the problem rests.  You have two options, and two only.  You can stay in Omelas and enjoy the paradise created by the child’s sacrifice, or you can walk away from Omelas and find somewhere less idyllic to live.  In neither case can you affect the child’s fate.  It will continue to suffer no matter what you do.  What is the morally correct choice?

I’m not going to pretend to know.  I would like to think that, as a matter of conscience, I would choose not to live in such a society, but it’s clear that helps the child not at all.  The child’s sacrifice is, in my case, wasted.  I derive no benefit from his suffering.  Others do.  I don’t.  This doesn’t end his suffering.  It doesn’t even mitigate it. 

So, I can see that I might choose to stay.  My conscience would probably hound me endlessly.  My Prosecutor would never stop.  I would hate myself.  The happiness to be gained by his sacrifice is, again, wasted in my case because I can’t be happy knowing the price being paid for my happiness. 

Ms. LeGuin has presented us with an unsolvable moral problem.    Fortunately, we don’t have to solve it because that’s nothing like our world.  Everyone in our world is free, and few of us are happy.  That’s a fair assessment, isn’t it?

I think our moral problem is a bit more nuanced.  We don’t have one child suffering; we have many millions of people suffering.  We don’t have everyone living the idyllic life of Omelas.  We have a few living in their own private paradises. 

While the Rules of Omelas are unchangeable, the rules of our world are not.   Star Trek: Strange New Worlds recently took up this problem, and they had a line I loved: “Let the tree that grows from the roots of sacrifice lift us where suffering cannot reach.”

Our history is replete with both sacrifice and suffering.  They come in nearly infinite varieties, and they affect nearly everyone at some time or other.  We’ve made sufficient sacrifices to grow a tall, broad, powerful tree, but it fails to lift us high enough to avoid the suffering of uncounted homo sapiens. 

We have the resources to end much of the suffering right now.  We have enough to give everyone a home, to feed everybody, to provide power for the whole world, and to provide medical care for all.  We absolutely can do that.  We choose not to. 

The moment I suggest anything of the sort, people will begin shouting, “Yeah, well who’s gonna pay for it??”

And we instantly tumble into the delusion that money is valuable.  We believe nothing can be done without money.  Why do we believe this?  Why is it impossible, even for a moment, to question that idea? 

In the last few weeks, I’ve taken you to a place where you could choose your own Universe, I’ve let you hear from a Time Traveler, and I’ve described the suffering in our world in horrible detail.  Can I get you to travel along this flight of fancy just a little farther? 

Let’s start by recognizing that money, in fact, has no value beyond the value we have assigned to it.  If aliens invade Earth tomorrow afternoon, I promise they won’t come to get our money.  It’s worthless to them.  Our water might well be valuable.  Our oxygen, our cattle, our farms, and even our people might be resources they could use, but money?  No.  They see no practical function for bits of cotton and linen or digits on a computer. 

A bottle of water has more inherent value than a hundred-dollar-bill.  The value of that bit of paper is that it can be traded for lots of bottle of water.  More people believe in the value of money than believe in any form of God.  It is The One World Religion.  It’s more powerful in our world than all the Gods we have ever posited.  I’ve never heard of any church that doesn’t need it.  Have you? 

I’m asking you to do something even more difficult than questioning your religious faith.  I’m asking you to question the value of money. 

Is it possible we could have done all the things we’ve done without money?  I think so.  Why?  Because we did.  Money isn’t supernatural.  It’s an invention of ours.  It wasn’t handed down to us by a God.  It wasn’t the Obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It is an invented means of motivation. 

W.C. Fields, I think, (please don’t trust my memory.  It’s faulty at best.) had a great line in a movie once.  He asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars.  She thinks it over a minute, and finally says she probably would.  He asks her, then, if she would do it for a dollar.  She gets deeply offended and asks him what sort of girl he thinks she is.  He responds that they’ve already established that, and now they’re just haggling about the price. 

If I offer a bear a million dollars not to kill me, it isn’t going to have any response to that.  I will be dinner, or not, based on its whims.  Money is a magic that is effective exclusively on humans. 

When I taught Elementary School I used a token economy.  It was designed to get students to do what I wanted them to do.  If you answered a question in class, you got a ticket.  If you turned in your homework, or you stayed quiet while someone next to you is talking, or you remembered to push in your chair, or you lined up when I asked you to, or you did anything else I wanted you to do, you would earn tickets.  Tickets could be exchanged for property or privileges once a week.  Students worked very hard to get tickets.  I managed to control a population using something that was, in fact, worthless. 

By the end of the year, students would figure out that tickets were stupid, but by now, most of them were doing what I wanted them to do even without them.  The tickets had accomplished their goal. 

Now that I have some space from it, I wonder if I could have accomplished my objectives in other ways.  All of my students were capable of all the things they did.  The Beatles knew this.

There’s nothin’ you can do that can’t be done
Nothin’ you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothin’ you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
Nothin’ you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved
Nothin’ you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy

All you need is love

  • Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

We have enormous amounts of suffering, much of which could be promptly relieved by giving everyone enough money to survive.  We can’t do that because… why, exactly?  We don’t have enough?  It isn’t water or oxygen or cattle.  It’s not a finite resource.  We can just make some more and hand it out to everyone.  Of course, if we do that, it will cause runaway inflation and money will lose its value.  What value is that?  The value we assigned to it?  That’s the only value it has. 

The tree that has grown from the roots of sacrifice is strong enough to lift us to a place where there is no suffering.  We choose not to allow that because somehow we believe if we don’t have so many people suffering, our world will collapse.  But, you and I don’t live in Omelas.  We live on Earth.  We can make our own rules. 

Change begins with imagination.  Work on imagining Omelas.  See what ideas spring into your mind.  Then let’s see what we can do to make a better world in which there are no children in cellars, and everyone gets to Shine in their own way.  We can do that.  I know we can.  Let’s work on that together.

I love you.

Posted on by Fred

To Be a Billionaire is Inherently Immoral

Did you know that if you had a billion dollars, you could spend a dollar a minute, every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year for the next 1900 years? I looked it up. It’s much different from being a millionaire. If you’re a millionaire, you could do the same thing, but for less than 2 years. To possess a billion dollars, then, is to have more money than you could likely spend in 19 lifetimes. It’s more than enough for you and the next 18 generations of your family to be certain it’s unnecessary ever to do a minute of paid labor of any sort. You are as financially free as anyone could ever want to be.

That’s great, Fred, but what’s immoral about that?

When a person has more than he can possibly use, it seems to me, that person has an obligation to the rest of the world that has made this possible for him (or her). There are those who have recognized this, and I admire them for it. J.K. Rowling gave up her status as a billionaire by donating more than $150,000,000 to charity. She’s helping to improve the world. Good for her. Good for any billionaire who does what she does. Bill and Melinda Gates are also to be congratulated. But… here’s the thing: we still have homelessness.

But, the homeless didn’t earn their money. Why should those who worked hard and earned money be required to help the lazy?

“It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

— Abraham Lincoln

It’s true, I suppose, that billionaires have toiled and worked to earn bread, and that the poor and homeless are eating it, but the slaves are the poor, not the wealthy and the powerful. It has always been so. It will always be so.

When you have more than you need, you can help others without hurting yourself. To fail to help is, to me, unwarranted selfishness. I have been the fortunate recipient of more help from my friends and family than I have deserved, and each time someone else reduced, by a not insignificant amount, their ability to do things for themselves because they did things for me. This is what it means to be a decent human being. It is the recognition that others are as important as you are. It is an understanding that each person’s suffering is, to some extent, your own. It is an understanding of what John Donne told us all those years ago:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

It’s estimated that Jeff Bezos is worth more than $115 billion. What does this mean? It means that he could spend enough, every minute, to send my roommates and me to Outback for dinner. And he could keep doing it for 1.9 millennia. We can do this, ourselves, perhaps 3 times a year.

It’s estimated homelessness can be abolished for 20 billion dollars. Bezos has the money to do this 5 times over, and he would still have enough to spend $15 a minute until the year 3920.

I don’t expect people to hurt themselves to help others. But, I really don’t see how Mr. Bezos could possibly be hurt by helping millions of people. I don’t know why Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates, or any of a host of others don’t end world hunger, end poverty, and end homelessness all by themselves. If you can do good, and you can do so without endangering yourself, how is it possible to choose not to do it?

Forbes claims there are 607 billionaires in the United States right now, with a combined worth of 3.111 trillion dollars.

Yes, Fred, but those people did something extraordinary to earn that money. You have no right to demand they give it away.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” – Adrian Rogers

I agree with Mr. Rogers to the extent that it’s wrong for one person to work for something without receiving the benefits of his labor. Where I disagree is how much that labor is really worth. In most cases, I think the labor is worth much more than it is paid. In many fewer cases, I believe the labor is unimaginably over priced.

I congratulate Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates for their accomplishments. I am grateful to them for the things they did. They absolutely deserve wealth for their contributions to the world. But… THAT much wealth? They have (or had) more money than they could ever spend. It becomes pointless to have more. There’s nothing more for them to do with it. They can already buy anything they want at any moment in time. They’re never going to worry about having enough for a pack of cigarettes, let alone paying rent, or going out for an evening’s entertainment. I don’t deny they deserve that. I’m happy to contribute to that. Again, they earned it.

But… when you have more than you could spend in 19 lifetimes, it seems to me that one is simply a dragon hording his treasure. It may be yours, but it doesn’t serve you in any way. It could be serving a much higher purpose than adding to itself. If you leave a billion dollars in an average savings account, doing absolutely nothing, you get 2,000,000 a year in interest. It’s just sitting there. It’s not buying anything. It’s not adding to the economy. And you get 2,000,000 for absolutely nothing. Jeff Bezos could have more than a hundred such accounts. That’s 200 million dollars a year for… what exactly?

It’s not their job to take care of the citizens. It’s the job of the government.

I agree. As I have written many times before, to the extent that any civilization includes homelessness, poverty, hunger, a lack of education, or insufficient medical care for all of its citizens, that civilization is a failure. It’s my opinion we should have been doing something about this 40 years ago. Instead of the clearly failed “Trickle Down Economics,” that increased the already, even then, widening Income Inequality, we should have been spending the money to make sure everyone had a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, schools to attend, and the healthcare they needed. I believe we should be doing much better at this by now. The government has the primary responsibility. But, many people will disagree with me on this. That is an argument for a different essay.

This is not political. It’s personal.

The fact that people with this kind of power allow homelessness to exist is simply wrong. There is no alternative case that I can see. If you can make a convincing one, I would love to hear or read it.

They allow these things to exist in the world, when, with no significant effort, they could end them.

I can’t save these children.

I can’t give this man a place to sleep.

I can’t get these kids a washer and dryer or a home in which to connect those appliances.

All of this suffering is going on, right now, today, this very minute, and any billionaire could end it simply by deciding to do so. Failure to do so is immoral. What right have you to more than you could ever possibly need when others will never have enough to be sure that they will have a place to live next week? It doesn’t matter to me whether you earned it by saving the world or by enslaving your employees. You are equally morally bound in either case.

When you are willing to recognize this old man’s right to exist is precisely equal to your right to exist, that his suffering is unnecessary, and that we should value him as highly as Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest, you will have begun to be morally enlightened, assuming you’re not already so. When the billionaires take positive action to end suffering, they will have erased my contempt, and they will have earned my gratitude and admiration.

Until then, being a Billionaire is Inherently Immoral.

Posted on by Fred

“One Planet, One People… Please?”

Nearly 40 years ago, when I was an adolescent running around in as much of a hormone haze as I now am surrounded by the Fog of Idealism, I was as madly in love as a boy could be with a girl whose intellect and compassion I admired nearly as much as her physical form. When you’re 16, it’s difficult to see much beyond appearance. Or, at least it was for me. Perhaps today’s adolescents are more enlightened than I was.

Among the reasons I fell in love with her was her Idealism was seductively attractive to me. She was a member of a religion of which I had never heard, called Baha’i. I had, even then, no supernatural beliefs, but I loved the idea of unity that was at the core of her religious beliefs. She had on her car a bumper sticker that has the unique status of actually affecting me. It said, “One Planet, One People… Please?” I have never forgotten the words. Now, I believe, she’s off living with her husband on a farm somewhere, and we say hello to each other occasionally on Facebook, but we don’t really have a serious friendship anymore. Her influence over my thinking, however, has only grown in the intervening decades.

She was the water and sunlight that made the seed planted a decade earlier grow and flourish. What planted the seed? It was Star Trek, of course.

I’ve been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and I often think of how The United Federation of Planets evaluates a new civilization. They consider not only its technological situation, but how that civilization treats its people. And, because they’re looking at alien planets, the societies they encounter can have any number of traditions, values, and ideas. They try to be respectful of all of them.

This is the Preamble to their Constitution:

We, the intelligent lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of intergalactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and

to reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent lifeform rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent lifeform person, to the equal rights of male and female and of planetary social systems large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and mutual respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interplanetary law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

And to these ends

to practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

to unite our strength to maintain intergalactic peace and security, and

to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods that armed force shall not be used except in the common defense, and

to employ intergalactic machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all intelligent lifeforms,

Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Written by Franz Joseph (Published in the Star Fleet Technical Manual)

I believe the general ideas expressed above are a good starting place for our world. They are asking for us to respect fundamental human rights (although, since they’re dealing with many other sentient species, they refer to them as lifeform rights), to make social progress, and to keep peaceful and friendly relations among the different species.

In order to be admitted to the Federation a planet must have a one-world government. And this idea frightens the hell out of people today. I don’t understand why this should be the case.

One need not forfeit individuality to recognize one’s membership in the human race. Yes, different cultures have different values and traditions. They have different religions. They have different economic structures. Their skin colors and languages are different. Some have different ideas about sex. But, they all have blood, hearts, lungs, and all the other organs all human beings share. We all need to eat, to have a place to sleep, to have medical care, and to be able to spend our minutes in the ways that we choose without harming others.

We have decided, by some sort of universal consent, that time and money are traded one for the other. We have further decided that if one cannot or does not trade time for money, or find other ways of collecting enough of it, a person has little value. Your human value is determined by your market value. And that is simply wrong.

First, let’s recognize the we are at the summit of humanity.

200,000 years ago survival was our only concern. It was all the earliest humans could do to avoid being eaten, or to find a way to eat, themselves. Shelter was whatever they could find, and medical care was, for any serious purposes, non existent. But we did survive, and we did it because we worked together. No single human could have flourished then, and it’s doubtful one could now. If one of us is doing well it’s because of the contributions made by others for the last 200 millennia.

We have always made life better by working together, but we began to segregate ourselves into different tribes of one form or another. They can be based on specialization, on shared beliefs, on gender, race, or ideology, or national origin or citizenship in a particular country. But the tribes are there. The separation is there.

I submit the separation is counter to continuing to improve our world. Instead of trying to defeat each other, we need to try to cooperate with each other to find the solutions to our shared problems, and to find ways of making life more pleasant for all of us.

Another element common to all of us is that we have limited time on Earth. We can discuss afterlife at a different time, but our time here is extraordinarily brief. Few of us will be here for an entire century. None of us will be here for two. And, to our knowledge, that’s all the time we get. Ever. Once a minute is spent, it can never be recovered.

You and I will each get, perhaps, 50 million minutes. Why should we need, in the 21st Century, to trade so many of them for dollars? Most of us won’t even get a dollar per minute. If you earn $52,000,000 in your lifetime, you’re among the very few. This world works very well for the few. It works very poorly for the many. “The needs of the many,” as Spock would remind us, “outweigh the needs of the few.”

This doesn’t mean the few should be forced to give their dollars to the many. I’m not advocating that. Instead, I would like to see the dollars of the many used to benefit the many instead of the few. We have enough to ensure that all of us have the basics of survival. We can eliminate the need for slave wages by ensuring no one ever needs to take a job that pays less than a person’s minutes are worth just so one can keep living for a few more minutes. Instead of being about survival, money becomes about flourishing financially.

What would this world look like?

Everyone has enough money for food, rent, utilities, and clothing appropriate to the environment in which they live. Any decent civilization would provide that to all of its citizens. Those that don’t are never viewed well by the Federation.

Everyone has medical care sufficient to keep one not just alive, but healthy. Dr. McCoy never asked anyone for an insurance card. Had the Captain asked him to, he probably would have said, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bureaucrat!”

Everyone spends their minutes in ways that are meaningful to them, and that contribute in unique ways to making the society a better and stronger one.

Everyone is appreciated as the individuals they are. No one is expected to conform to the expectations of others, so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. Each of us chooses our own path through life.

Isn’t this world impossible?

No. It’s not. Flying was once “impossible.” Going to the moon was even more “impossible.” Communicating in the way you and I are this very moment was also once “impossible.” Things are impossible only when we decide they are impossible, or they are expressly forbidden by the laws of physics.

What do we need to do to bring about such a world?

First, we have to agree that we want to. Then, we need to try.

What are the logistics?

I don’t have a clue. I’m not an economist. I’m not a politician. I’m a drop of water in the Colorado River. There are experts in such areas. I suggest they work out the details, they do the research, they gather the data, and they work it out. And, to no one’s surprise, people have been doing this for quite some time. Buckminster Fuller spent most of his 87 years (not even the full 50,000,000 minutes we hope to receive ourselves) trying to figure out how to implement plans that would benefit 100% of humanity. The ideas are there.

What are some of the ideas?

Today, we are beginning the discussions about changing our economy in a way that benefits more people. Universal Basic Income is now a fairly well known term. It wasn’t unheard of previously, but no one really had any interest in it after it failed during the Nixon administration. Today, the idea gets airtime, although not much. Is UBI enough? No, of course, it’s not, but it’s a step in the right direction. Medicare for All isn’t enough, either, but we’re moving closer to the public health care we really ought to have.

frededer.home.blog/2019/10/01/which-are-the-people-who-should-die-for-a-lack-of-little-green-pieces-of-paper/

Living wages aren’t the whole answer, either, but they are at least one more piece of the puzzle.

frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

What Should We Do, Then?

The most important thing to do is to agree on our shared vision. If you see some reason to oppose the Idealistic vision I’ve discussed, I hope you’ll communicate to us what the basis or your opposition is. Why, in essence, should humans suffer unnecessarily?

Having done that, perhaps we can get a few more people to share it, and, in this way, we can begin, as little drops of water, to carve out the Grand Canyon. We can talk about the best ways of improving humanity, and we can share diverse opinions. We can find common ground, and we can move forward to become a world worthy of membership in The United Federation of Planets. I want very much to be qualified to join the Federation. Don’t you?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Vulcan ships had been monitoring our progress for the last century, and they saw that we have moved toward slowing the spread of racism, at least insofar as we have made it socially unacceptable, illegal in hiring, and making it possible for someone who was not white to become President of the United States? They would see that we have begun to accept that people can have sexualities that differ from the norm, and those differences are no one’s business but their own. We have even accepted their right to marry just as it is given to everyone else. The Vulcans could observe that women have won the right to vote, to be in power, and to live their own lives independent of men. They would see we have begun.

Yes, we have light years to go, but we have begun the journey toward not only the stars, but to the deeper unexplored realms of what humanity can actually accomplish. Let’s keep moving down that road, together.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

What You Probably Don’t Know About Poverty

I believe it is difficult to understand poverty until you’ve actually lived it. Reading about it is usually insufficient. You can’t really understand it until you are hours away from homelessness. You don’t get it until you aren’t sure what you’re going to eat, and you’re excited you managed to get a quart of milk so you can survive on cereal a little longer. You don’t conceive it properly until you’re forced to live with others, do all the housework, and pray to a God in whom you don’t even believe, that they don’t throw you out because you can’t possibly survive on the money you can make.

When you have to humiliate yourself twice a year at DES, you begin to understand. When you are doing your third GoFundMe, and being called an Online Panhandler, your understanding begins to dawn. When the car you had paid off gets repossessed because you had to borrow money on it, at obscene interest rates, to pay rent for one more month, your understanding deepens.

When it becomes month after month, year after year, you understand. When friends and relatives tell you what is wrong with you repeatedly because you don’t have enough money, you understand how poverty really feels.

It isn’t just hoping that things get better. It’s the fear that comes when they do. You realize this is almost certainly going to be followed by The Fuckening. It’s that unexpected catastrophe for which you had no opportunity to prepare. It always looms just around the corner. Your $750 car breaks down. Someone ends up in the hospital, and that costs work time, and that’s less money you have next month.

The Fuckening is when, just when you finally are making it, and you have enough money to make it this month, your landlord sells your house, and you have to find a new one in which to live. It’s when they hit you with a $140 bill you didn’t know you had so you can’t pay rent that last month, and they won’t take a partial payment because they’re a corporation and not a person. It’s when you have to beg your best friend’s boyfriend to rent you his old house because your credit is so horrible that no one else on the planet will, and now that you didn’t pay your last month’s rent, you’ll never get a decent reference when you do apply. Poverty is when you don’t even dare to apply because it’s a non refundable $165 for the three of you. You can’t afford to lose a bet and your odds are lousy. Poverty is paying $1400 a month for a 2 bedroom house that’s not worth more than $1100 a month. You have to pay that price, though, because it’s the only deal anyone is willing to make.

Poverty is having to show a friend your budget and pay 50% interest on a 3 day loan so you can put gas in your car. Poverty is your roommate getting chewed out by the cashier at Wal Mart because she’s using food stamps. It’s being belittled for not working hard enough, even when she works 40 to 50 hours a week, and she still can’t make ends meet. It’s when she gets to be humiliated by a cashier who is somehow, evidently, not on food stamps herself, because she must have some other source of income, and she needs to be better than somebody, and your roommate will do just fine. Sure, you can get her manager to chew the cashier out, and explain that’s not how she should treat her customers, but the damage is still done. And you can’t help but feel sorry for that cashier.

They say Poverty can actually reduce IQ due to all the stress and anxiety. I like to think I’m no stupider than when I had almost enough money to live alone. But the longer I live in it, the slower I become. I feel a little less worthy, each day, and I have to keep reminding myself I’m doing the best I can. I have to try to stay out of the hospital. I have to remind myself that choosing not to eat and taking 50 units of insulin is not really the answer, no matter how tempting it sounds. It’s wrong to make someone wish they didn’t love you so they could have been spared the pain of your demise.

The more you try to change the world, and the more you fail, the more you feel as though you really are as worthless as the Marketplace says you are.

Sometimes, if you write about it, it helps a little. Not much… but a little. And when you live in poverty, a little is all you can ever hope to get.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Which are The People Who Should Die for a Lack of Little Green Pieces of Paper?

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” – Adrian Rogers

Which are the people who should die because they lack Little Green Pieces of Paper? Let’s identify them quickly, find them, and give them each the shot we use to end the life of the dogs we love who can no longer live a decent life, and then get around to getting health care covered for everyone else.

I am not qualified to judge who is worthy and who is not. I don’t know their whole story, and neither does the worker at the welfare office punching information into a computer that will apply an algorithm to determine if they deserve any help at all, and if so, how much.

I understand the archaic need for The Puritan Work Ethic. I also know that Sloth was once considered a sin. It’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins, in fact. It shares its distinction with other equally evil things such as Pride and Greed. I don’t think Pride is a sin. I think Greed is. I know many people who believe Greed isn’t, and Pride is… and some who believe none of them are sins.

Early in our history, failing to work as hard as one can was, in fact, quite possibly lethal. Per Hansa and Beret, in Giants in The Earth, had to work ceaselessly in order to survive. He had to do all of the work of building a place to live: cutting the trees, making them into something he could use, and then assembling all the pieces to build his house. He had to raise his own food. His wife had an equal portion of difficult tasks to complete. There was no time for them to consider sitting down and reading a book, or even, most of the time, getting around to watching a nice sunset. They were simply too busy. Any moment spent not working put them in possibly mortal danger.

Ben Franklin told us that, “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden; it is forbidden because it is hurtful.” Sloth was undoubtedly sinful at one point in the history of our world.

Because of Per Hansa and Beret’s work, and the work of hundreds of thousands like them, our civilization has grown and prospered. No one has to build their own houses anymore. We can get our food at the grocery store. We have time to trade ideas on Facebook.

The idea that relaxing is evil, that someone who is unable, or unwilling, to collect large stacks of Little Green Pieces of Paper is somehow worse and less deserving than other people, is no longer valid. It’s not up to me to tell anyone how to live. It is, however, as a society, as a civilization, necessary to ensure that our citizens can all, at the very least, continue to live as long as possible.

No one deserves to be homeless, regardless of how much I may disapprove of how they live the life they have in that home. No one deserves to be hungry, even if I think badly of them. It turns out my values are not the only possible values to consider. I don’t have a monopoly on the truth, but I don’t want anyone to be without the basics of survival.

We all agree that everyone deserves a free and appropriate public education. That’s PL 94-142, and no one objects to the idea that all children go to school. We’ve done it that way for a very long time, and there’s nothing remotely radical about that idea now.

Why can’t we also have public health care?

I believe Health Care is a Human Right. Someone this morning told me it’s not, because I have no right to someone else’s labor. That’s an interesting point.

On the other hand, I never asked parents to pay me to teach their kids. I was paid by the state for my labor. The only right the parents had to my labor was that their taxes paid for it.

Why can’t the state set up public hospitals? Go, when you need to, without insurance, without a bill. You show up. The doctors and nurses fix you. You go home. All done.

Is it because Doctors would have to work for less money? No doctors want to work for teacher pay? Okay… then pay them properly. Are doctors, who I admire and respect, more important than teachers? If so, point to the doctor who became a doctor without any teachers.

Imagine this …

Sylvia is a 23 year old mother of a 16 month old girl, Christina. She works 40 hours a week as a shift leader at Olive Garden, and is earning $16.50 an hour. After taxes, she brings home $568 a week. Her total monthly income is $2272. Rent in her 2 bedroom apartment is $1400 a month. Day Care is $1350. Groceries for herself and her daughter run $250. The cell phone she uses to connect with the world has mobile hotspot and tethering so she can get online with her computer. She pays $150 a month for all that. Gas runs $100 a month. Utilities come out to about $250 a month. For just these basics of survival, she comes out $1228 in the hole every month. If she wants auto insurance to keep her car from getting impounded, that’s another $150 a month. Even though she owns her car free and clear (it’s a 2004 Camry), so she has no car payment, there’s no way she can survive on what she has.

Therefore…

She lives with her roommate, Bethany, a 25 year old Amazon employee who packs for shipping. She makes 15.00 an hour, also working 40 hours a week. This comes out to just under $2000 a month. She has the same expenses as Sylvia. Living on her own, she would be $300 a month in the hole.

Living with her roommate, Bethany has $575 a month left over. Sylvia has $947. They should be fine. They really should. Unless…

A car breaks down. That’s going to cost anywhere from $100 to $1000. They might be able to afford that, though.

Or…

They need new clothes, or they want to see a movie, or go out to dinner, or, God forbid, take a trip somewhere. Suddenly the money evaporates.

Or…

One of them gets sick. See, in the budgets above, guess what we didn’t consider? Yes… that’s right: Health Insurance

.

The average cost for health insurance without an employer paying for it is about $450 a month for an individual. It’s about $1350 for a family. They each need health insurance, and they can’t use the family plan to cover all three of them because Sylvia and Bethany aren’t married. Sylvia’s $947 is now gone. She has a baby to insure, as well. Bethany’s $575 is down to $125… and it’s not even enough to cover the difference between Sylvia’s earnings and her health insurance costs.

Health Insurance might cover as much as 80% of covered procedures. Rarely does it cover more than that. If your hospital stay is $100,000… and that’s a reasonably cheap visit… you still owe $20,000. How are the girls ever going to pay that? They’re finished. It’s really no wonder the suicide rate keeps climbing. When one loses hope, life is pointless.

Add to this problem that when one of them gets sick, the income for the whole household drops. They didn’t have enough to make ends meet in the first place, and now they have even less. Now they start figuring out which bills to pay, and which bills to blow off until they can afford them. And, when they’re late, late fees get added, and they’re in even deeper trouble.

What would be your solution to the problems these women face?

There are some I wish to eliminate off the top.

  1. It’s their problem, not mine! They should have…. whatever. This isn’t a solution. It’s dodging a solution. I have no idea what they deserve. Neither do you. I can, however, observe what they need. They need affordable healthcare.
  2. They should work more. Then they could afford it. I’m not buying this solution, either. You work LESS when you’re sick, not more. And, at 40 hours a week, they’re working full time. There’s little point in living if you can’t enjoy any of it.
  3. They should get healthcare from their employers. That would be helpful, but some employers offer it; others don’t. Even with insurance from their employers, they’re out of pocket any time they need to see a doctor. They really can’t afford to be.

Now, as Sherlock Holmes once said, “… when you eliminate the impossible, what ever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

I’m looking for a solution that allows these women to live a decent life. I have a suggestion.

In a few years, Sylvia will be able to send her daughter to school. This will eliminate much of the cost of Day Care. And… you know how much she’ll pay to send her daughter not only to be cared for, but actually taught, by highly trained professionals? Yes… that’s right. Zero dollars.

No one ever asks how to pay for public schools because we’ve had them since 1635. They’re simply accepted. There’s a LOT of debate about how MUCH to spend on them, and what teachers should be paid, and what they should be doing within those taxpayer funded buildings. But their need to exist is never even questioned. We all understand that education is essential to being a member of society. We actually punish parents who don’t send their kids to school if they don’t at least home school them.

I believe Education is vital. I would go so far as to say it’s a human right.

I believe the same about healthcare. And it seems to me the solution is the same as we used for Education. Let’s make it free and appropriate and public.

Public hospitals exist in which Doctors and Nurse and Staff are all employees of the state, just as Teachers and Aides and Staff are at a public school.

It costs nothing to go to the public hospital, just as it costs nothing to go to the public school. If you’re dissatisfied with the public hospital, you can do just as parents do when they’re dissatisfied with the public school: pay to go to a better one.

Now Sylvia and Bethany can make it again. If they get sick, they’re still going to take a hit on monthly income, but they have the money left to get by for a little longer.

I’m not going into the deep logistics of Economics here. I would suggest that if we have to raise taxes a bit to pay for it, then so be it. We won’t need to raise them so much that it costs an extra $900 a month, and every dime below the $900 is a savings for Sylvia and Bethany. And it’s a savings for all of the Sylvias and Bethanies out there. More importantly, it give us all the means to live a little longer. Isn’t that what we all want for all people?

A life spent doing nothing but working in order to do nothing but survive is a stolen life. There’s no point in living without being able to enjoy living at least a little. We’re not settlers in the wilderness anymore. We’re the crowning achievement of our species working together for 200,000 years to advance to a place where, finally, we can provide more than the basic necessities of life for everyone who wants them. Why don’t we do that, then? Let’s work together to make life better for Bethany and Sylvia and Christina, and all those out there like them, and all those who will follow them in the future. Let’s create a world in which we all want to live.