Islam - not as innocuous as we "liberals" might like it to be

Before I get into why I think that that we should firmly resist any attempt by Islam to gain a foothold of control over how enclaves of American society work – as has been the case in parts of Europe over the course of the past decade - a word about the human use of free will.....

As regards free will, as long as people don't impinge in an unjustifiable or unfair way on the comfort or well-being of others, I'm not going to object.  I might not exactly like what I'm seeing or hearing, but in as much as I value others being tolerant towards me when something I'm doing doesn't exactly sit right with them,  I owe it to society to keep my complaining to a minimum.  In that sense, I have a somewhat liberal outlook on life.  Labels are misleading, however.  If you're an arch conservative, you may see other mid-rank conservatives as liberally inclined.  Whatever you want to call what I subscribe to, I consider it a practical usage of the Golden Rule.

Since people have various understandings as to what the Golden Rule means, I need to be more precise about my own interpretation of it.

I know that many believe the Golden Rule means the same thing in every given circumstance.  In the real world, applying it one way all the time will inevitably trip you up.  For my part, I believe that the Golden Rule can be interpreted positively, from an inclusive point of view, or negatively, from an exclusive point of view.  

Because free will can be used either with love, or with indifference, if you feel the other party is as well-meaning as you are, things will probably work out optimally if you treat that person as you would LIKE to be treated.  On the other hand, if you feel the other party is a calculating person who is out to take cold-hearted advantage of you without remorse, the optimal approach is to treat that person as you believe you would DESERVE to be treated if you tried to do similarly.  For best results, when using the Golden Rule, you need to think like a Doberman Pinscher - a wonderful pet to its family and well-meaning visitors but a formidable deterrent to any malicious intruder.

Within the global collective I subscribe to, when the Golden Rule is applied positively, members attempt to be as considerate toward others as they believe those others would be toward them.  When practiced with pure intent, this courtesy is enjoyed equally by all members, the mighty and the meek, alike.  In that exercise, both my wife and I try to go beyond the minimum.

But not everybody warrants being treated that way.  The fox may put on his best face, but the hens know better than to let him in the coop.

As regards those who, because of their proclivities, fall outside the collective I belong to - those who have no problem denying others the regard they reserve for themselves - to the degree they blithely perpetrate upon others what they themselves would experience as unpleasant or distressing, if they step over the red line of what can be tolerated, they are owed nothing but whatever consequences will relieve society of the burden of their choice to offend.

Don’t take this to mean I’m an advocate of excessive measures in responding to negative behavior - of killing the patient to cure the disease.  I’m not - just what will be conclusively efficacious.  When an individual offends beyond what can reasonably be tolerated, there should be consequences.  In ascending order of degree of severity, those consequences should go roughly as follows:

Expressions of disapproval

Interdiction by legal demand

Civil action in court

Charging with a crime

Fining sufficient to deter re-offending, with or without a mandate to compensate

Interdiction by police action, up to and including lethal response, if necessary

Arrest

Arraignment

Trial in a criminal court

Conviction requiring imprisonment

You’ll note that I did not include capital punishment.  I don’t think that society is ever made better by the cold-blooded killing of offenders, however heinous, by state action.  On the other hand, if criminals get themselves killed in the course of police trying to prevent them from harming innocents or injuring officers and no preferable option exists in the moment of interdiction, then so be it.

This is the dark side of the Golden Rule, and as dread-filled as it may be, it is necessary for the greater good of society, at large, for those with authority appropriate to the occasion to respond in that way.  When the offense is being perpetrated by a group of people, the same line of reasoning applies.

Thanks to that logic, we happen not to be living under the thumb of an ironclad global dictatorship called the Third Reich.  Using the Golden Rule in this manner – first negatively and later positively - the United States and its allies not only put an end to the Axis Alliance, but also helped enormously to rebuild both Germany and Japan, as modern democracies, after their governments had surrendered unconditionally.

In the best of circumstances, if we remain both vigilant and diligent, we can thwart abuse before it occurs by denying would-be malefactors the openings they seek.  In the event the offense intended has been successfully committed, however, a sure response must ensue to compel the perpetrator to make such amends as is deemed fitting AND to discourage a repetition of the bad deed. Failure to do so only encourages malefactors to go one better with their next act of victimization.

This is the interpretation of the Golden Rule I learned in boarding school - protect the weak, resist the strong who go too far and give bullies what-for until they mend their ways.  Once those ends were achieved, everyone was happier for it and things worked much better.

So, while I have a liberal outlook on anything I think won't make a permanent bad dent in either me or my society, it doesn't go any further than that. The brand of liberalism that I definitely don't subscribe to is the lean-over-backwards-as-far-as-they-want-you-to-and-expect-to-be-respected variety, in which nakedly tendentious logic is used to maximize the good side of a potentially inimical thing while minimizing the bad side, on the assumption that being nice to everyone compels everyone to be nice to you.  Obviously, that kind of turn-the-other-cheek approach doesn't always produce the best results for either people or the social groups they belong to, especially when dealing with an ambitious religion which, by virtue of its intrinsic nature, contains a virtually inseparable mix of lambs in the open and vipers in the grass.

In my opinion, all too much of that kind of apologist liberalism has been in evidence in the media, of late, as regards the issue of whether our Western way of life can easily co-exist with Islam, without potentially irreversible damage being done to both the freedoms we cherish and the diverse panoply of social functions that are rooted in those freedoms.

And while we waffle on the issue, not wanting to be politically incorrect, the structures that underpin our liberties are quietly being infiltrated and undermined by doubt, indecision and a growing sense of dread.  One day, not too far ahead, we may well find ourselves waking up in shock and having to reel in a whole lot of backsliding in a heavy-handed way – like in Egypt, under al Sissi - ironically, because we tried to be too nice for too long, instead of being firm and crystal clear from the outset about what kinds of Islamic thinking have to be left behind by immigrants from countries where that religion has gained such power over social mores and the processes of government.   We cannot afford to allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of false security about this issue, thinking that because America absorbed so many immigrants as it grew, absorbing Islam, lock stock and barrel, can’t possibly hurt us.  It most certainly can and it already has, in the form of terrorist attacks mounted by Muslims residing in - or having legally entered - the United States.  The scale of such attacks ranges from epic to abortive.  The literature on the particulars of those attacks is extensive and it isn’t what I want to focus on.   The only useful point is that they have been occurring, and with Islamic State in the picture now, along with the continued presence of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other radical Islamic organizations spread around the world, there can be little doubt that hostile operatives have been entering the country and connecting with sleeper groups looking for ways to do damage with high media potential.

This still doesn’t cover the more extensive, worldwide picture of the threats we face from attackers using isolated texts from the Quran to justify their actions.  Resolute apologists are quick to defend the global Muslim community against culpability for failing to firmly excoriate terrorists who cherry-pick fragments of scripture to justify their barbarous acts - acts that make an utter mockery of seminal tenets of decency that humans originally created religions to promulgate and protect.  I have no patience with that kind of apologism.  Here’s a link the reader might click on:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3452533/ISIS-execute-15-year-old-boy-beheading-caught-listening-western-music-Iraq.html

Try to rationalize that!

Since 1978, we and our democratic allies have been in a highly contentious global struggle with people motivated by a 7th Century form of Islamic aspirations - the ideal of Islamic rule of the whole world.  As slow as people in this country have been to acknowledge it, the great divide in the human race today is between The Radical Islamic World and the Liberal Democratic World.   We have numbers and better technology on our side, thus far, but they’re catching up fast and, in terms of visceral appeal and intensity, they have us beat by a mile and a half.

Back in 1776, when the forefathers of this nation mandated a separation of church and state, doubtless they were reflecting on the religious interference of the 120-year colonial period predating independence.  How much more adamant they would have been had they been able to see into the future and reflect on the rise of Radical Islam, from the Philippines through to Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent, the Levant, southeastern Europe, and northern and sub-Saharan Africa.  How right they were.  If enlightened government is what we truly want, we can NEVER allow it to be any kind of handmaiden to religion – especially not Islam.

Why especially not Islam?  Because Islam is an insatiable thing, a hundred-headed Hydra, content to conquer by fear and force what it cannot seduce.  And why are people so afraid of it?  Because its seminal texts can so easily be interpreted by its defenders and proponents to advocate death for those who either oppose it intellectually, forsake it or in some way offend it.  Every day, people in Africa, Asia and the Levant die by the hand of their neighbors, having been convicted by some Shariah (so-called) court, because they said or did something that, in this country, we simply assume to be a protected use of free will.  Here's a shortlist of sins that fall into that category; idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, heresy, converting to another religion (apostacy), insulting Allah or the Prophet, infidelity, promiscuity, prostitution, cultural immorality (like listening to, or playing, music or dancing), homosexuality, trans-sexuality, sodomy, and bringing dishonor of some kind upon one’s family.   At the same time, under Islamic law, one can keep slaves, beat a wife, and impregnate a 12 year old girl taken as wife.  

There is no way to stop people from interpreting Islamic scripture darkly.   Unlike Christianity, which is firmly rooted in the New Testament injunction to walk in the path of unconditional love, above the inclination to judge, Islam stresses the importance of doctrinal obedience to the deity.  The Quran is not offered simply as food for thought.  It is law and the required consequences for offending said law are, all too often, extremely harsh and primitive.

Such ideas are not compatible with the systems of law we have so painstakingly wrought to protect individual freedom throughout the (so-called) Western World.  It’s an absolute certainty that intractable social frictions arise when people attempt to marry the two mindsets together.  Nowhere in the world do I see where any such attempt has peacefully succeeded.  Look to recent developments in France, Holland and Germany to see what I mean.

One huge question we have to ask ourselves is whether the kind of inter-activeness that information technology has created - the web and all its spin-offs - can continue to be as liberal as it is while madrasas in highly restrictive Muslim theocracies invoke hell-fire and damnation, in the name of Allah, upon the Western World for its licentious excesses, while impressionable young men aching to be loved and possessed by something much bigger than themselves, hang on every word.  I doubt that many westerners can comprehend how savagely all-encompassing that fervor can be.  Consider the case of the Pakistani boy who, after being falsely accused by the local imam and fellow villagers of blasphemy, cut off his own hand and presented it to the imam.  Even more telling is the subsequent approval of said action by family and the overwhelming majority of others in the community.  Any who might have disapproved weren't coming forward to talk to the press.  The fear of retribution for daring to express a contrary view is well justified.

 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/01/pakistani-boy-cuts-off-his-own-hand-after-accidentally-committing-blasphemy

That's the psychological entity we're dealing with here and, like it or not, it has inveigled its way into controlling the way governments in many parts of the world work, slowly dragging them backwards in time to the kind of relationship between religion and government that existed in Europe back in the Dark Ages.

Even before I became aware of Islam’s recent awakening, there was one thing I was absolutely insistent about:   that government of the people, by the people, for the people and any kind of religion should NEVER be co-mingled.

During my close-to seven decades on this planet, I've had plenty of time to observe how people think and act, me included.  I've also been able to use the very serviceable education I received to indulge my interest in books and articles about how societies work and what role thought forms (like religion, popular culture, ethnic culture, political ideology, schools of philosophy, ethics, party politics, nationalism and even language) play in shaping trends for the better or worse in the condition of the structures we depend upon, not simply to live, but also, to make the most we can of our lives.

I was introduced at an early age to the seductions of two great thought forms – the doctrines of the Anglican Church (courtesy of two draconian boarding schools), and apartheid, the all-encompassing political system of the only reality I had subjective experience of before the age of twenty-three.

Growing up in South Africa under apartheid, I was faced with a stark choice between two very different ways of being.  The apparently easier path was to unquestioning compliance; that the status quo was how my reality needed to be; that the grown-ups who had made it that way had good reason to do what they did and that the best way to go was to work with them, as best I could.  Under that regime, as a white person, I was expected to understand that I was genetically superior to anyone who wasn't what I was.  An adult role in some kind of supervisory position over those who weren't white like me was so expected that it was never even discussed.

The decidedly more difficult path lay somewhere in the murky realms beyond the point where the easier path was rejected.  In those realms, everything you were told would be subject to intellectual scrutiny.  Schools of opinion would receive no automatic assent.  Liberalism, conservatism, progressivism, libertarianism, privatism, populism, any kind of "ism", in fact, all were open to deconstruction, analysis and deemed worth assessment.

In pursuing that path, I was part of a distinct minority, quite a few of whom ended up in prison for going a step too far with their ideas.

We were not a homogeneous group.  Groups could be targeted and deactivated too easily.  Opposition was a more private thing, carefully shared.  Inevitably, bits and pieces of just about every school of thought would find their way into what became your own unique belief set.  Understand now, there is a world of difference between factual reality and a belief set.  Unlike religion, which requires that you believe all kinds of stuff you will never be able to prove, a belief set is composed only of those ideas you like and can update any time you want - ideas which, to others, may seem weird, even nuts.  The vital difference between a religion and a belief set is that you're the master of your belief set.  Try to do that with a religion and you run the risk of being accused of either heresy or blasphemy.

In following the more difficult path, I did so not because I was a wise or good person, but more because that's where my nose and my appetite for life experience led me.  A lot of it was like trying to get around the house immediately after a late-night blackout.  One tends to bump into a lot of things before you begin to become better oriented.

It took me an incredibly long time to realize how tightly bound I was to the habits of thought I had collected during my life.  Some were just dormant dead-weight, of little consequence, either way.  But others were more like invisible minders - meddling ghosts from the past, ever ready to insert themselves at some critical point in time, in a way that was not constructive or in my best interests.

Believe me, I know what it is to be a boy whose mind is caught in the grip of religion.  I know how dangerous that can be to one's well-being.

Before the age of eighteen, it is safe to say, the mind of the person known by my name at the time, was completely owned by the Anglican Church and the school I was banished to by my parents (much to my dismay).  The most prevalent feeling I experienced during those years was dread, greatly exacerbated by the guilt produced by my first timid explorations into the world of sexual contact.  So great was my fear of "God", that, after the first time I touched a girl's breast (I was perhaps 13 at the time) I thought I would be divinely punished, even to the point of not surviving to my sixteenth birthday.  I thank the onset of a flaming passion for British and American rock and roll for delivering me from the grip of those dark, religiously-driven imaginings.  There just wasn't enough room in my mind for both fixations.

I remember clearly the moment the great apotheosis exploded into my consciousness.  I was in my first car, a Wolseley 1100, waiting to give my sister a ride home from Herschel Girls' School, when it came to me:  if God was indeed infinite, then I had to be an expression of that infiniteness; if not, then God was, at best, nothing more than some sort of finite entity.  The idea that I should let some kind of entity, however large, possess my free will was completely unacceptable.  I liked the infinite concept better.  That way, I was God, being the being I was.  And if the rest of me had, in whatever way, contrived to make the dimension into which I had popped in 1948, it sure as hell would not have been for the purpose of living under the thumb of a religion that made you feel condemned to hell for having manifested the kind of interest that had caused humanity to survive for tens of thousands of years.  It was such a liberating insight that I threw open the car door and pranced around like an idiot in the parking lot.

Now, let me be clear, that insight did NOT lead to a wholesale collapse into the arms of rejecting anything that physics could not prove.  I'm no literalist.  My personal belief set goes way beyond the material causality of this world.  But that's not the object of this essay.

The object of this essay is to draw attention to how vigilant we need to be in maintaining the primacy and the integrity of our painstakingly wrought secular legal system over whatever any in the collection of religions we host put forward as doctrine, with a special emphasis on Islam, simply because so many of that persuasion are headed this way.

I came close enough to being permanently inducted into an external thought form to know how dangerous and powerful such beasts are.  It took me many years after coming to the States to cut loose cultural baggage from my former life that was making it harder for me to live in the US.  Yet, anything I experienced was nothing next to what boys in the Islamic world are subjected to.  It is hard for me to imagine how anyone of those poor boys could completely purge his mind of such mental conditioning during a single lifetime.  These young men are now being displaced by the tens of thousands from the areas they grew up in through actions of war.  They are mixed in with the great flood of refugees headed for what they see as a safer and possibly more prosperous life in countries like Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, England, Canada and the United States.  A minority of them will find peace and prosperity where they end up.  The rest will struggle as perennial outsiders in a strange land.  Their struggles will eat at them.  Between days of tranquility, there will be days of despair, days of anger, days of disaffection and days when they wonder how much better life would have been if only they could have continued to live where they grew up – the simplicity of it, the spiritual purity, the beauty of the land.  They will brood about it, make no mistake.  Those are the hours when disgruntled men seek the company of others who are going through similar troubles.  Those klatches are where enrollers to the cause of radical Islam’s grander objectives do their sworn work.  Nearby, their American-born children will sit, absorbing every heartfelt word – as enrapt as any student in the madrasa “back home”.

Despite this, so that we may continue to rightfully proclaim ourselves a great nation, we cannot turn these newcomers away wholesale.  The righteous are known best by their actions – by their magnanimous readiness to relieve suffering, by their brave acceptance of grand inconvenience in making provision for those who have been displaced, by their patient acceptance of setbacks as an inescapable component of making progress, by their wisdom in learning how to discern the difference between a possible foe and a potential friend.

We must progress beyond political jargon and move more expeditiously toward a system of vetting those coming this way, to the greater long-term benefit of ourselves and the whole human family.

To that end, I have a practical suggestion:  we, the people, have to define, far more clearly, what we are prepared to accept as legitimate religious activity and what we regard as unlawful activity.  For my part, I think religious activity must be regarded as falling into the general class of not-for-profit entities that provide a multitude of different kinds of service to the individual and not in some special class of its own.   Under that definition, legal boundaries on the activities of religions become far clearer.  A secondary benefit would be the making of a much better firewall between religious activity and the legislative process.

To my mind, the only legitimate roles for any religion are the following: 

*The presentation of a religion’s basic articles of faith and its reason for being

*The sharing of writings that underpin a religion’s approach to its reason for being

*The advocacy of human virtues such as compassion, appreciation, gratitude, forbearance, reason, consideration, self-discipline, courage, discretion, temperance, honesty, loyalty, genuineness, respect for both self and other self, gentleness, strength of purpose, personal grace, vision, artistry, inventiveness, flexibility, hopefulness et al, without stooping to pass judgment on those who fall short (to fall short of perfect is, after all, to be perfectly human)

*The providing of relief to those who suffer

*Encouragement for those who strive

*The doing of work that makes the world a better place for all, regardless of affiliation

Activities seen in places where Islam is stronger than government that must be made illegal include (though not be restricted to):

*Edicts, or fatwas, in which clerics incite congregations to treat targeted individuals in a certain way (often, harmfully)

*Edicts pronouncing individuals as heretics, apostates, heretics or some other form of enemy of Islam, Allah or the Prophet

*Incitement, before a gathering, clearly calculated to diminish respect for, or the security of, or generate hatred towards other persons, other groups (regardless of what judgments those gathered may share about such outside groups), other religions, other sects of the same religion

*Incitement aimed at subverting respect for the organs of government, standard government process, the laws of the land, officials of the executive branch, representatives within the legislative branch, members of the judiciary or appointed public officials

*Any kind of deprecation of cultural or recreational activities accepted as legal in the USA

*Hosting or providing material support to any entity whose purpose is to engage in any of the above prohibited activities

Raising money on behalf of any Islamic entity other than the raiser itself for any purpose other than those included under the general umbrella of activities accepted under law

Speech can hardly be considered free if a targeted victim, innocent of wrongdoing, is paying some kind of price for it. 

If those restrictions are rigorously enforced, the way Islam expresses itself here in the USA should end up being roughly on par with the way other religions express themselves in this country.  If not, and there continue to be attacks by people professing to be jihadists, Islam will face the prospect of a showdown with an American public that is fast finding its reserves of tolerance running out.  Nothing can long stand that continues to act as a passive conduit for the kind of unspeakable violence that Muslim radicals have perpetrated on this nation.  Egypt has paved the way with suppressive action that makes anything the US could come up with look tame.

Last, I’d like to dedicate this essay to the memory of Ayham Hussein, the boy who was beheaded by ISIS jihadists in Mosul for listening to pop music.  Those that did this aren’t just fiends, they’re enemies of one of the most sacred gifts the Creator bequeathed humankind – the ability to hear music as something infinitely more meaningful than just sound and to be affected similarly, regardless of origin or language, by each of its myriad forms.  How can you be such a virulent enemy of this celestial gift and not be an enemy of the Giver?  It’s the one great language we all share, the Tower of Babel notwithstanding.  Can anything be closer to the true voice of God?

  

One way to push back against unconscionably high pricing of life-saving drugs

I was absolutely outraged (yes, the word is overused, but this piece of news really got to me) today. I happened to be in the bathroom when something caught my eye.  It was the headline to a report on a copy of the Wall Street Journal that had been put over a box of potatoes we grew and have stored in the coldest part of our temporary home (an old restaurant we are slowly restoring).  I had to read the first sentence in the article twice just to make sure I hadn't misread I thought I had read.   A German company by the name of Turing Pharmaceuticals had bought the rights to sell a drug used to treat toxoplasmosis called Daraprim from an American company and then raised the price of a single pill from $13.50 to a mind-boggling $750.  In the collective wail of protest that had ensued, another company, Express Scripts Holding Company had taken steps to secure the services of a drug compounding company in San Diego - Imprimis Pharmaceuticals - to make an alternative using the same active ingredient, primethamine, that would be more affordable.  The result is a pill of equal efficacy that costs - get this - $1!!!!!!

There are two co-supporting reasons that Turing was able to charge $750 for a pill that can be made for less than a dollar - the desire by health insurers to drive premiums as high as the market will support, and the intensity of the will to live, on the part of the afflicted.  To really get your head around this, you need to understand that, within the system currently in existence, your primary importance as a patient in some facility, seeking treatment for a disease that can kill you, has less to do with your inherent value as a human being who needs to be saved than it does with the ability of your desire to live to help drive the currents of a giant river of money that moves out of the hands of premium payers (and their loved ones) into the hands of higher-than-average earners throughout the insurance/medical/pharmaceutical complex.

Note carefully, I did not say physicians and nursing staff, who are the front line of care (though some physicians may indeed be driven more by what they can get out of the suffering of others than the tenets of Hippocrates).  What I'm talking about are people much further up the food chain - those who, increasingly, determine the conditions under which physicians and nurses obtain employment and how much is to be charged for services and materials applied in the provision of medical care.

 If your dislike for the current system is to be anything more useful to society than impotent resentment, it helps to realize that, from the point of view of the Complex, you're really nothing but a faceless shunt.  As a faceless shunt, you are forgiven for not being nice in the face of  those who have subtly schlepped you into having to accept what you know is the financial equivalent of date rape.   You need to be moved enough to throw open the window and yell with all your might that you're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

So here's my two cents worth:  Every company operating as a corporation falls under the jurisdiction of the society in which it is registered and licensed.  From the license-holder's point of view, there are certain inherent advantages to being licensed, which are counterbalanced by certain caveats. On the up side, the license restricts the ability of outside parties to hold employees of the company to account for failures of performance in the conduct of business.  The flip side of this protection is that the company must abide by such regulations as society deems it needs to enact for the preservation of the greater good.  In simple terms, the issue of a license to a corporation amounts to a contract between society and the officers of the corporation that basically says "Be earnest, be honest, honor the Greater Good of That Which We Are  and we will protect you against those who seek to hold you personally accountable for performance that falls short of their desires or expectations."

This contract works best when society is unflaggingly insistent that it be observed and upheld, without exception.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I definitely DO NOT support the the idea that it is OK for society to apply anything other than the minimum amount of corrective action as is needed to render an outcome sufficient to bring the underlying social contract back into balance.  Some support the idea that draconian penalties, that put fear into the hearts of others contemplating similar violations, are the most cost effective way for government to keep corporate misbehavior in check, along the lines of "Spare the rod, spoil the child".  In today's world of not-so-tough people, that approach may save some money at the government level, but it also suppresses both legitimate economic activity and business incubation, as principals act to create a wider margin of error for themselves, under the influence of fear. Fear is what holds dictatorships together.  We aver rule-by-fear in this country - a republic forged to uphold as much personal liberty as our form of social order could sustain.

So, before I make my suggestion as to how extortionary drug pricing might be brought to heel, just understand, I'm certainly no advocate for high-handed government action, however well-intended.  In fact, I myself have suffered grievously as a direct result of heavy-handed, government ordered, corrective action.  As a consequence of my erstwhile landlord being required by the city of Seattle to dig up and rebuild the sidewalk next to his building to abate an incursion of hydraulic oil from an ownership of several decades prior - an incursion he had nothing to do with, nor any knowledge of - not just once, but three times, I lost my own business.  In the execution of that demand, my landlord expended so much money of his own that he had to sell the building to recover financially.  By arrangement with the new owner, my landlord would get the space I was renting and the new owner would take the space he was using.  I was out on the street and had neither the money nor the will to relocate.  You can imagine how I felt about it when my landlord told me that the ground test had shown that natural decomposition had taken contamination down to the point where only one year more was needed to reduce levels below that where no remediation would be required.

Now that the reader knows where I'm coming from, let me get to the meat of this post - namely, government push-back against drug pricing that holds a knife to the rope a patient is clinging to, for life.  If the Wall Street journal can dig up an instance where a pill that can be produced for less than a dollar gets jacked up with a $750 price tag, a single government office in some back room, with a couple of good computers, a reliable phone system and two field-tested ex-reporters, with only one mission to fulfill, can track down a whole lot more.

Every instance of inexplicably high pricing, where the consequence of not receiving the drug involved holds the potential for dire consequences to a patient - death, failure of a vital organ, loss of a sensory system, loss of manual ability, loss of ambulatory ability, loss of speech, mental failure, unabated pain, etc - should be inducted into a methodical process that begins with investigation and, based on the outcome, may proceed forthwith to expropriation of the right to sell to the government alone, as sole agent, at a price related solely to such outlays as have to be made to purchase raw materials, turn them into the packaged finished product, plus a conscionable profit for the addition of value, marketing and distribution to patients in need of the drug, plus whatever costs the government incurs in the exercise of its duty.  This condition must pertain until the producer of said drug contracts with the government to sell the drug at no more than x times the benchmark set by the government - the numerator, x, to be set by an independent panel whose sole obligation is to see that the program retains sufficient persuasive force to produce a cessation in unjustifiably high pricing of vital pharmaceuticals, throughout the USA and all its territorial possessions.

The whole process has to be transparent to be effective.  There must be a grace period, following the opening of any investigation giving the company the opportunity to adjust its pricing to a level it believes will be consistent with the end result that going through the full process would render.  It is far better to nudge people into doing the right thing than to force them to do so.  Nudging respects the dignity of those involved; force crushes it.

The Affordable Care Act - affordable for whom?

Never

We've got to find a quick way out of here, or we can stay here and rot.

We, living shadows in the smoke and beer, resenting all we never got.

We've got to claim the age and make it ours; put down our fears and just begin.

We'll make no deals, we'll take no captives, we'll play the game to win!  Yeah!

Somewhere back there someone is fooling you - you're skunked enough to think you're free.

Too duped to know this one is ruling you - you slave for what you cannot see.

The only one who knows what's good for you is you, within, it's yours to own.

Don't beg for handouts, don't play the victim, your soul is not on loan -

Your soul is not on loan.

Chorus

The architect of your intellect calls you but the urge to disconnect stalls you,

Do you cringe and genuflect to some insect who expects you to defer? 

Never!

You're caught up in the old, enticing view:  the law will honor what you own.

A potentate who'll just be nice to you - forbid the thought, you stand alone.

Remember what you call the Infinite - if infinite, then who are you?

Don't let the dreaming forget the dreamer or what you came to do -

Or what you came to do.

Chorus

The lyrics above are those for a song that I wrote back in 2006. It can be heard at http://hashtonealley.mymusicstream.com/track/never. What moved me to write the song was my concern over how unquestioningly America's newest generation of adults seemed to accept the status quo with respect to what government was or wasn't doing. Since it's modern inception back in 1776, democracy has always been as much an opportunity for the wicked as a refuge for the good and only the unflagging vigilance of those who are it's masters - that is, the People (the Greek words, 'demos' and 'kratos', meaning 'people' and 'rule', respectively) - has allowed it to gain credibility with the passage of time. Otherwise, it is remarkably susceptible to being manipulated for the selfish purposes of the powerful at the expense of the weak. Conveniently for them, the powerful can afford to have representatives probing 24/7 for opportunities to tweak the making of law in a way that favors them disproportionately and, even singly, in some cases. The poor, on the other hand, must go through an arduous process of forming organizations fueled by the collection of chump change to be able to match the forces arrayed against them.

Of the poor, the young poor are the least organized and the most vulnerable. They're at a stage of life when solipsistic immersion in one's own trivial affairs and all the challenges of developing a true and dependable self identity lay an all-consuming claim on one's time and energies. Additionally, the best and brightest of them are overwhelmed by the challenges tuition and hard-scrabble employment put on them. There just simply isn't much left over in terms of resources or attention for the average young adult to participate, in concert with others, in the protection of their collective interests. I've been heard to say on more than a few occasions that America eats it's young for breakfast. As if this bias were not enough, in the last twenty years, the young have had the developing front of information technology descend on them like a tsunami. While there are definitely opportunities for preservation and defense of social equity available through the internet, the overwhelming bulk of activity is clearly distractive and, unless one is intellectually and spiritually committed to not being negatively entrained in internet content, one can waste a lot of one's life in front of a computer screen, to no good long-term end.

All of the above was true back in 2006 and, ten years later, it is only more pertinent. The writing of the song, 'Never', was an attempt to use popular media to jolt consciousness among music lovers toward being more circumspect with respect to what government was up to.  

Right here, I must go on record as saying that I believe that the only system of health care that truly serves people on a socially equitable basis is a responsibly and honestly managed universal, single-payer health care system, in which physicians are guaranteed a good income, protection from unfair lawsuits and freedom from onerous paperwork obligations. Further, I do not believe that Americans should be subsidizing the rest of the world for drug development through the insurance rates they're paying. It's a burden that should be shared internationally under the aegis of a rigorous process of general accountability where governments are the first purchasers of large lots of drugs in a competitive in a free, international market. The last thing that individual needing health care should have to do is to have to prove eligibility before treatment. That's insane. And yet, that's the system we have today under the ACA. It is simply ridiculous to assume that America's most intellectually challenged - literally, tens of millions of people - should be able to arrange for themselves insurance contracts that suit the needs of a personal future they have no means of divining. It is that psychological factor that insurance milks. The most fear-prone give up everything they can spare to try and have that base covered. How often have you heard people say, if you think you can't afford insurance, you should ask yourself, how can you afford NOT to have insurance? What a trite piece of propaganda that is. It's a convenient play on words that selectively omits consideration of all the other financial priorities forced on one if one is to live a halfway fulfilling life in today's economy. From an objective point of view, that same argument turns a blind eye toward the huge diversion of cash it proposes, that would exit the consumer demand sector for the coffers of insurance corporations, their management and shareholders, none of which would be good for the American economy, as a whole. No one has yet been able to show how complete compliance, with all the demands of the ACA, could possibly occur without leading to an implosion of consumer demand and another deep recession, if not depression. Couldn't those architects of the ACA, with all the informational resources available to them, not see how burdened the consumer side already was with excessive rents, high housing costs and astronomical tuition fees? Where was the extra money supposed to come from, if not out of the consumer economy? Yes, we heard all kinds of justification how new market conditions imposed upon the health care industry would lead to lower costs, most of them remarkably tendentious, while those of us who said this couldn't be affordable were labeled as simpletons and kneejerk naysayers, as if these reservations were politically motivated. The fact is that some of the best and most analytical minds had already done the basic math - not much more than addition and subtraction - and found that the imposition of this Act would have negative economic consequences. But, the passage of the ACA was not driven by math. What it was driven by was a mishmash of conflicting, political stances that turned the original idea of the public option into a Frankenstinian compromise.  

As the 2016 deadline approaches, we can feel the panic that's out there at every level. Noncompliers are in a state of frantic denial, while legislators whose reputations are under the spotlight for the votes they cast, are in a state of disbelief that the Act has failed to force Americans to comply. In addition, insurance rates have not dropped for the American public, as a whole, but only risen as insurance companies seek to defend themselves, financially, against being obliged under law to accept all who apply, medical preconditions notwithstanding. Any fair-minded person in their right mind wishing to preserve the solvency of their business would do the same, and when the market is literally captive, the reasons against not raising prices simply evaporate. Basically, the ACA has put freedom-loving Americans in the position of coraled sheep waiting to be financially fleeced. From a constitutional point of view, it boils down to this: technocrats versus traditional American values of freedom of choice. One can be forced under the Constitution to pay a tax, where the process under which that tax is paid is equally burdensome to one and all. But the government is constitutionally barred from forcing individuals to buy services from private parties in a system of exchanges that has highly variable impacts on individuals based on their means, their intellect, their literacy level, their health condition, their geographic location or other factors. To imagine that somehow that would constitutionally equable is - forgive me from using the same word again - insane. We should either go back to the system we had before, in which individuals could at least hang on to some remnant of what they earned and apply that to what they felt best served their interests, given the very personal circumstances they each faced, or push through to the public health care system I've described above.  

What to take away from the song above, is that a universal health care system will only ever arise in this country when the 'demos' in the word, democracy, find their 'kratos' in the word democracy. Until then, all we will ever have is Frankenstinian accommodations that rumble Rube Goldberg-like, erratically into the future, leaving a trail of broken lives and unfulfilled promise behind them.

Replace the word "landlord" - a semantic relic - with less intimidating synonyms anywhere possible

Before I say anything, let me assure the reader,  I know the word "landlord" is not going to go away anytime soon.  People will use it in everyday conversation because it's what they've become accustomed to using.  The official use of words in government regulations, however, can - and often is - changed by decree, if the old usage is considered, somehow, retrograde.  Language evolves with usage and the meanings attached to words can shift with time.  The need for semantic upgrade in official documents is evident when one compares old versions of laws, specific to particular considerations, with the current form that has evolved over the years from those original forms.   Sometimes, the reason a law is upgraded is because the old language is not congruent with the way we speak about the subject involved in modern parlance.  In yet other cases, new aspects of constitutionality are brought to light by bright minds, requiring an upgrade in the way law concerning that subject is interpreted.  A more subtle form of outdatedness in legal semantics occurs when law fails to keep pace with evolution in social constructs or social norms.  This writing addresses itself to the question of whether the word, "landlord", suitably reflects our society's ongoing movement toward inclusiveness and the need to reconcile the strong and the weak under one flag, in accordance with the aspirations laid out in our national constitution.

Though we don't often use them - at least, as yet - there are a number of synonyms for "landlord" that we should start getting used to using in any documents that carry legal authority - city regulations, rental contracts, court judgments, et. al.   Consider the following:  "lessor", "housing provider", "property owner", even "rentor" (an archaic, but useful, word with neutral power connotations).

The origins of the word "landlord" go back to times preceding Europe's industrial revolution, when tenant farmers, routinely referred to as peasants, were all too often subjected to extremely onerous  extractions of the product of their toil, for the right to continue living on lands owned by wealthy families.  The person holding title to the land they lived and worked would demand to be addressed by their often illiterate tenants as either, "M'Lord" or "M'Lady", so that the requisite differential in status might be abundantly clear, right from the outset.  Failure to do so would be an expression of unforgivable effrontery. A very typical pictorial representation of a peasant petitioning consideration from a lord is that of a man clutching his cap anxiously with both hands in front of him, hunched over in a posture of supplication, as if his very life, and that of his family, depended on it as, indeed, it very often did.

Once the Industrial Revolution began to fuel the almost insatiable need for a vast array of products during the most active years of European empire growth across the globe, peasants were no longer chained to the land they grew up on.  Anyone of any useful age who could be employed in any entity, private or public, engaged in this unprecedented expansion of sovereignty over foreign lands.  No country could hope to be part of this rush to empire without being willing to field a large enough navy and army to spearhead and protect new fronts of expansion.  This required men, equipment, materials and equipment, the provision for which drew heavily on populations previously locked in land deals with those that lorded it over them.  Males of a previously inescapable lowly status now had a plethora of different options they could pursue, not just at home, but across the world.

Though their housing realities no longer approximated the primitive conditions from which most had extracted themselves, those they now rented from in cities were still called "landlords", since it was customary and no other word arose as a reasonable alternative.  Indeed, deferring to custom, the word insinuated itself into law, even though those it referred to bore little resemblance to the original lords of the land such former peasants had left behind.  Even those who were fortunate enough to rise to much higher relative status, still referred to those they paid rent to as their landlords.

Very conveniently for those who owned and rented out premises, the word "landlord" crossed the Atlantic with nary a dent in its hull.  Not even the War of Independence lent reason enough for lexicographers to float an alternative more in line with the egalitarian aspirations of the Founders.  I say "conveniently" because higher extractions of rent are possible when subtle inferences, inherent in the structure of the rental relationship, induce the tenant to feel inferior to the one who owns the property being rented out.  It is the rarest of tenants who in no way fears the person who holds the power to obliterate his/her tenuous grip on security (which, for most tenants, hardly qualifies as security).  For the so-called free market to work the way it's supposed to, buyer and seller have to be on a level psychological playing field with one another.  Price point resistance on the part of the buyer needs to match the profit incentive projected by the seller.

That felicitous condition would be noticeably advanced if the word "landlord" were to be replaced by a less inherently intimidating synonym, wherever possible, in whatever writing governs affairs in the business of renting - legislation, contracts, court documents, judgments, et al. In time, the new usage would start to be reflected in the press and in general speech.  I don't, for one moment, think that a change such as this would do much good on its own; it needs to be part of a much wider set of measures applied to the situation to make rent pricing more like Walmart pricing.

In the meantime, here we are today, with rents being charged that completely deflate the hopes and dreams of young adults.  As for seniors who are forced by circumstance to rent and facing increasing difficulty finding adequately-paying work in the job market, the results of being priced out of one's home can be very grim - homelessness, depression, illness and an untimely death are common stories.  When accused of extortion, property owners are quick to claim justification, on the basis that they are just doing business the American way, breaking no laws in the process.  Maybe so, but should we just let the matter rest there and offer nothing, in response?  Clearly, I, for one, don't think so.  In fact, I think it grossly irresponsible to limply capitulate to the current situation.

I'd like to be able to "read the tea leaves", as they say, but the number of bets I've made that have come true suggests I'm not very good at that.  So when I say that I sense a change in the air, with respect to the public attitude toward rent prices and rent conditions, better take it with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, when I was growing up in South Africa, I would insist to my conservatively-minded parents that the days of "apartheid" were numbered, to which assertion they would respond with unvarnished derision, calling it Pollyanna thinking.  Those who keep up with African affairs know how that turned out.  So here's hoping that what happened to the psychological differentials in South Africa - specifically, their wholesale implosion - might occur in the rental market in the USA, in the not-too-distant future.

Lateral assistance - very important, very under-rated

Individuals of conscience - those who cannot help but care about the condition of others, relative to the comfort they, themselves, are enjoying - are often moved to want to share what they have in excess of their own needs.  Simple enough, nevertheless, they're also often perplexed about how best to disburse what it is they want to give away.

 Deciding how to give away significant amounts of one thing or another that you have to others who might need that thing, in a way that leaves one satisfied that the highest good has been achieved by that action, can be surprisingly difficult.  Will the recipients be made more empowered by the giving, or will they have been made more dependent by the time the initial utility of the gift drops off?  Will intermediaries extract more than is fair?  Will vital peripheral structures and local exchange systems be undermined, to the eventual detriment of the surrounding community's sustainability?  Can I trust those with whom I will be obliged to interact to act honestly and honorably?  What conditions or expectations, if any, should attach to the giving?  These, and many others, are the questions that complicate the kind of giving that those who aspire to being thought of as philanthropists typically face.  For the purposes of this essay, I will refer to that kind of giving as vertical giving - from one much more wealthy to some multiple of others who are very much poorer.  Actually, if one were to get really technical about the number and relative wealth of the recipients, you'd probably call it vectoral giving whose degree could be graphically represented.  Giving with a relatively high degree of interpersonal connection and mild wealth differential would have a low vectoral gradient, while typical philanthropic giving by the ultra-wealthy to thousands of unknowns in another country, deemed less developed, through a large organization, would have a vectoral gradient pretty close to 90°.  Many high-profile organizations dominate the field of charitable giving .  A lot of what they take in goes toward highly compelling advertising, solicitation activities and sustained follow-up.  Their presence in the public eye is so compelling that the, arguably, greater social value and viability of other options for delivering help - particularly those occurring within a mild vectoral gradient - can easily be overlooked.

This observation is not meant to cast aspersions on the activities of well-established charities.  Far from it.   There are those that do indispensable work,  alleviating hunger, illness and homelessness, both here and abroad.  Nevertheless, the overall record of that sector of the social charity establishment is paternalistic, effectively undermining the very reasoning that would lead the recipients to become more self-reliant - the kind that arises when self-empowered people work productively with other self-empowered people to improve the communities they call "home".  Even the best of these organizations must, inevitably, run afoul of this, to some degree.  In the case of the worst offenders, the only kind of self-empowerment they promulgate is that enjoyed by career professionals looking for politically-correct, long-term financial security.    No small number of well-researched investigations have shown that negative social indicators, particularly with respect to relative poverty, remain stubbornly entrenched among population groups most often targeted for such giving.  Indeed, in the worst of cases, local self-reliance has been badly undermined by the well-meaning activities of large, top-down-managed, charitable organizations.

Before we rush to judgment on the activities of large charities, however, placing all the blame on them for the persistence of poverty among those they attempt to help, we should pause to consider whether their efforts might have been more fruitful had society not used their entrance into the picture to rationalize cutting back on investment in more traditional forms of social assistance, when these organizations entered the picture to help.  The most obvious forms of traditional support I'm referring to include not just those tax-sponsored activities and institutions initiated and run by government but, also, those initiated by ordinary folks, the kind I call lateral assistance - the kind of highly personal, low-vectoral-gradient assistance rendered by people, one-to-one, within the bubble of the private sector.  Perhaps it's a simplistic analogy to make but, for a stool to be useful, it needs a minimum of three legs and, in the case of overall giving by society, no leg should be considered as having failed if the other two legs hadn't performed close to as well.  When it comes to the sharing of resources, the legs I'm referring to are registered charities, government action and lateral sharing.

What kind of help, specifically, falls within what I consider to be lateral assistance?  Basically, any kind of giving where, 1.), the giver and the receiver fall under some kind of umbrella - a family, a friendship, a social club, an organization, a congregation, an ethic identity, a neighborhood or a general income bracket, for instance - that has the effect of conferring upon them the status of equality and, (2.), the giver and the receiver share a bond of reciprocal concern for one another.

Why is this form of help so important to society?  Let's go through a shortlist that clearly differentiates lateral assistance from the more vertical types of help offered by governments licensed charities.

*The relatively deeper perception, on the part of the giver, into the complex nature of the potential receiver's life situation, allowing the giver to better assess the needs of that person and then tailor the giving more precisely to the needs of the receiver and, by such means, conserve funds available for providing such assistance
*Such help can be delivered in a timely way
*The delivery of the help is not impeded by an application process that might either intimidate, discourage or disqualify the person needing such help, as might be the case with some organization or government agency
*The potential for reciprocity, at some later date, is inherent to such giving
*The back-and-forth nature of this form of giving creates strong interpersonal bonds, in turn, strengthening society
*There is no lower limit to this form of sharing, as there is with institutional giving and government assistance
*There is no past-record, exclusionary factor that might be attached to the recipient that would completely block him/her from receiving assistance from a benefactor, particularly within the cocoon of a blood- or love relationship
*Such giving constitutes the largest form of help to individuals needing assistance in the buying of a home or the starting of a small business, among other things of social importance

As invaluable as lateral assistance may be, it is not an easy thing for government to create programs designed to promote the existence of it.  The biggest tool in the box - that of being able to compel parties to do this or that, if they wish to do one thing or another - is useless.  You can't compel people to exhibit the kind of decency that leads one to identify with another's needs, to the point of actually acting to render such help.  Does that mean that people in government should just give up on the idea of promoting lateral assistance?  I don't think so.  There is much benefit that government stands to gain by helping to increase the incidence of lateral assistance within the society it serves.  Every person who doesn't need to turn to government for assistance because someone within his peer group came forward with the right amount of help when it was of best use, translates into an incremental benefit for government.  Millions and millions of such people helped each year constitute a huge diminution of the demand for public assistance, along with a massive investment in future prospect, across the board.

One idea that comes to mind is made possible by the enormous leap in registering ability afforded the government by huge advances in information technology.  The old excuse that charitable giving counts toward tax deductibility only if the source of income from which it springs is greater than some arbitrary cutoff point, simply because the paperwork involved would be too voluminous to extend the same gratitude toward lower earners is no longer valid.  If the government were to expect of itself the same kind of rigor, creativity and flexibility found throughout the private sector these days, owing to great advances in IT, it could make deductible any amount of qualifying and properly registered lateral assistance, given to another, unconditionally without ulterior financial designs.  Giver and receiver would have to know one another personally.  How could such a thing be vetted for honesty? By giving each giver wishing to participate, a monitorable digital account reserved solely for such purpose, from which the recipients, using passwords, could withdraw amounts, at leisure, up to a defined limit.  Giver and recipient would have to qualify as peers under whatever qualifying umbrella accords them status as peers.

Another thing government could do is air public service ads promoting the value of lateral giving to society - the sort of advertising of good personal behavior that the state of Utah engages in to such good effect.

Nothing should be done, however, without first undertaking a careful analysis of how much good is currently being delivered by lateral giving and what kind of additional social returns could be had by investing public moneys in expanding rates of such giving.

Why the rental market is not deserving of free market status

Normally, the free and open commercial market is the best controller of the price charged for ordinary goods. Presuming that this principle can be extended to all things that are sold, is a mistake. Anyone who has actually owned and run a business, as I have, will have a much more nuanced view of the issue of supply and demand.

If one is to understand why rents are continuing to climb, in spite of an apparent abundance of supply, the issue of competitor psychology has to be investigated. Imagine the scenario in which you, a business owner, become aware that a competitor of yours is selling a comparable product at a lower price. Do you, then, lower the price you are charging? Not necessarily. In fact, it would be foolish of you to do so, if you knew, full well, that your competitor was about to run out of the stock he was holding in that product and would have a hard time replenishing his inventory of that item. Every savvy business owner would simply wait for his competitor's stock to run out and then, either do nothing, or raise his own price. Thus, it is how one perceives the competition's supply line that has the greatest influence on price-setting. Seen from this perspective, it is hardly surprising, then, that prices never rose in the wake of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing actions. The global race to the bottom, with respect to what suppliers were being paid, had another component to it, namely, apparent inexhaustibility. The general view was that competitors had uninterruptible access to an abundance in supply that was dirt cheap, which they could use to mount a discount price war, for as long as it took to freeze your product on the shelf at the price you were charging. As a result, retailers of food, clothing and just about anything else that could be produced at volume, kept prices in check.

A permanently inexhaustible supply of replacement inventory in housing cannot be produced dirt cheap and landlords know this. There may be a real score to be found, here and there, based on your luck, but that is, clearly, the exception and economic trends are not produced by exceptions. A rare steal is not going to depress the price of general housing, whether it's homes to own or homes to rent.

Another aspect of price competitiveness is the cost of dead inventory. A shelf of tee shirts or past-due food items has a really low recapture value on the salvage market. Not so with real estate. Getting back what you paid for something, plus some, is generally only a matter of waiting for the right swing in real estate values. If you don't manage to rent the house, so what? You're probably still making money off the long-term appreciation in its value. As long as the national population keeps growing, urban centers will continue to draw in an abundant supply of new renters and real estate prices will continue to rise. The apparent supply of housing, for the foreseeable future, will continue to fall short of the kind of supply that allows retailers to compete on price so effectively. It is simply naive to believe that market forces are adequate to keeping the cost of rental housing at a level where it does not place such a demand on incomes as to be a depressive force on the general economy. As things stand now, a very substantial slice of the general population must forego all kinds of other spending that prior generations, between 1950 and 1980, engaged in regularly. It is certainly not a good time to go into business in lines of retail enterprise that rely on casual and impulse buying.

The nut of the issue, with respect to price control, resides in how market sector principals regard their competitors' access to replacement inventory. If it seems inexhaustible, they will consider reducing their own prices, but, if not, they won't. It's as simple as that. And, in that respect, if for no other reason, the rental market resides in a category of its own, where customers can, and generally are, gouged for all they can afford to part with.

As a result of the above principle, the rental market should be regarded much more like the market for water or electricity. Housing, household water and household electricity are all essential to the prevention of discomfort. Without around a gallon of water a day, or so, you may well die, but beyond that, its consumption can only be construed to be preventing discomfort. Indeed, in the arid areas of the world, hundreds of millions of poor people survive without having access to water beyond that needed for potable purposes. It can easily be argued that the use of household water beyond a gallon a day is needed only for progressively indulgent purposes. Bathing, washing clothes, housecleaning, watering plants, washing vehicles - all activities Americans engage in without a second thought (except now, in California, with its terrible drought) - are only essential in the very smallest amounts to the preservation of either life or health under the auspices of disciplined action. Ask any ex-POW or homeless person. Nevertheless, the government does not balk at regulating the price suppliers can charge Americans for water used in those less than utterly essential ways. Why? Because having affordable water to do those things is absolutely essential to preserving the civilized character of our society out of which the demand for a huge range of goods and services is born. Civilized people, enjoying a high standard of living, buy more things to flesh out the inner vision they have of themselves. They also tend to buy from the higher end of the market, in search of better quality. The same kind of argument can be applied to the provision of electricity. People have learned that, without the tempering hand of state regulators on the market, prices for water and electricity might, in some areas, rise so high as to cause widespread suffering and socially couter-productive effects. It is not a scenario people are prepared to abide, so control of utility prices is accepted as necessary to the the long-term interests of society.

Somehow, left out of this debate the recognition that on-demand access to some sort of dignified housing is as essential as on-demand water or power. Forget the bells and whistles, what I'm talking about is the very bare essentials - a roof overhead that doesn't leak, a toilet, a shower, a wash basin, a stove, a refrigerator, a kitchen sink, winter heating, electricity, lights, a securable interior, a smoke alarm, windows that are whole in form and function. The housing occupied by the poorest third of renters qualifies as minimal housing, in my opinion, though most of it doesn't meet even these minimal standards. Nevertheless, even in its compromised state, it is comparable in its essentialness to the access to water and electricity consumed by Americans. So it somewhat astounding that, even in this day and age, those who make money from this sector have, by and large, succeeded in preventing states from regulating what they can charge for even the most abject of rental housing. Purchasers of rental housing in these states have almost no consumer power to use against prices running up and, typically, landlords set their prices according to what they see other landlords getting, with no regard to what prospective renters might feel about it because they are well aware that the overwhelming balance of landlords is doing exactly the same thing. It isn't a question of whether an upward spiral, against incomes, is occurring; it is simply a question of learning to hitch one's own rises in price to that background trend, so that one's pricing seems to be consistent with what is being charged in the general market.

On the demand side of the market, there is additional deviation from what free-marketers like to call customers. For free market price controls to work, the ability of the customer to switch to another provider needs to be effortless and as little belabored with process as possible. This is not a characteristic that applies to the average renter. The process of moving to another rental is not just a dicy bet, it's also very expensive and a logistical nightmare. Shopping for a new rental home isn't even slightly like shopping for food or clothing, or even for services. It's a totally different kettle of fish, only slightly less traumatizing than going on a combat mission.

Knowing this, landlords as not as concerned as, say, shopkeepers or contractors that a price hike is going to get their customer to switch to another provider, even when there is statistical proof that a surplus of rentable units exists.

These points have often been made before, but not so convincingly as to induce government to intervene - up to now, that is. The kicker, this time, is the gradual awakening of the political establishment that the public has begun to take a robust interest in this issue and that, if one continues to play dumb, one's time in office might well be cut short.

Finally, it seems, the worm has turned and renters in large cities are beginning to fight back. In particular, I'm thinking of current events in Washington state, where voters, under the leadership of Kshama Sawant and Nick Licata, have compelled the city council to petition state legislators to overturn the constitutionally provided ban against any form of rent control in the state.

Whether these efforts prove to be fruitful, or not, hereafter, the pricing habits of landlords will continue to come under increasing scrutiny for their effect on the general well-being of society. My hope is that the assertion of the business establishment that the rental market can control itself, without some sort of corrective action by government, will be soundly dismantled by arguments put forward in the heat of the current period of popular anger against exorbitant rents.

Why not use the Ebay model to sell/buy rental contracts?

If you are familiar with how Ebay works - some people aren't, I know - you will notice how the structure of that enormous marketplace helps the buyer by allowing him/her the opportunity to counterbid. This vital feature has had the effect of freeing up the demand/supply balance in the market that Ebay serves.

There is absolutely no reason this same dynamic model can't be applied to the sale of rents, more especially if government acts to help make it so. The challenge isn't intellectual; it's the age-old one of people needing to get out of the rut of outdated ways of thinking.

Let's do to renting what Uber has done to intra-urban commuting. Why, we may even be able to get Ebay, itself, on board. People tout Craigslist but, as anyone can see, Craigslist has not improved the situation for renters because it doesn't have a counterbid option.

In my previous writing, I have advocated for a system whereby rents are paid through a government register so that the accrual in rental payments can be applied toward some form of credit system that offers assistance in purchasing a home of one's own, after having helped others purchase equity over the years. It's simply a different spin on the old Social Security System. The option of being able to counterbid, online, if not picked up by some private sector entity, could be handled by the same government entity, without having to adopt the recourse of outright rent control.

Come on, people, let's get motivated. All too soon, you're going to see the dread product of millions of renting Babyboomers losing their jobs, years before they qualify for Social Security benefits. A fat slice of them is going to end up homeless, dependent on government largesse to just stay alive. We need to interdict this, as fast as we can, or live to regret having done nothing.