Posts Tagged ‘History’
Birth of the UK National Debt…
Tags: 04081694, 05301693, 07101690, 1690, 1693, 1694, Admiral Tourville, Bank of England, Battle of Beachy Head, Battle of Lagos Bay, English Navy, George Rook, Glorious Revolution, History, Holland, John Evelyn, National Debt, Rye, Samuel Jeake, United Kingdom, Wapen Van Medemblik, William III, Zeeland
… or the world’s first stimulus bill
From the National Maritime Museum
12 July 1690. Samuel Jeake looked over the ocean. A frightening sight sent his heart racing. The outlines of an English ship was forming over the horizon. Samuel knew that just days before the English Navy, faced with impossible odds, had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the French Admiral Tourville in the Battle of Beachy Head. The English had lost 11 ships, the French none. The fleet’s only hope had been retreat.
Jeake stared tentatively at the English ship, and the speed with which it was approaching indicated it was on the run. This could mean only one thing: the French were coming to sack Rye. Others who had seen the same frightful sight, rang the church bells and alerted the occupants of Rye to pack their belongings and flee the town. Chaos ensued. The town only had one exit, and soon people trampled each other clamoring for their escape.
The English ship limped to the beach. The captain, not wanting his ship to fall in French hands, set the ship alight. Onto this day, if the sea is right, the skeleton of the burned ship surfaces on the beaches of Rye, as a ghost resurfacing to tell of a terrible time, when England was at the mercy of its worst foe.
[CONTINUES BELOW]
Battle of Beachy Head 10 July 1690
Other English ships had made it to the river Thames. The streets of London were filled with panic upon the sight of the battered fleet. It seemed clear that the Navy had been beaten, and nothing could stop a French invasion.
John Evelyn
The whole nation now exceedingly alarmed by the French fleet braving our coast even to the very Thames mouth;
wrote diarist John Evelyn. But the French did not fully pursue, a tactical error that would deprive the French of a major long term victory.
This meant that the English were able to mobilize 90 ships by the end of August and break the French control over the channel. But it also meant that the weakened English fleet could no longer adequately protect its merchant ships on their trade missions while defending its shores.
In the years to come, this would cost the English dearly. English sailors filled their ships with the nations hard earned trade, said goodbye to their families and unprotected by the navy, set sail for exotic destinations, hoping to make their fortune. But they never returned… They were probably captured or destroyed by the French or commercial raiders.
Fear paralyzed the hearts of the seamen the merchants and by 1692 trade missions ground to a halt, sucking the life blood out of the English economy.
The recession deepens
Goods destined for trade now accumulated in the English harbors without ever being sent out, in fear of capture and destruction.
The English people were never one’s to be beaten by the odds, as history proved again and again. Churchill’s words during WWII would have rung as true in 1693 as they did when he gave his speech:
Churchill
[...] we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle [...] .
But of course, there was no mighty British fleet. Instead, despair and hunger turned into an active move of defiance: 0n the 30th of May 1693, the merchants organized themselves to break the impasse in a bold and risky move. 200 merchant ships would band together and undertake a trade mission to Smyrna, Turkey. On board was a years worth of trade that had just been sitting in the harbors: wool, tin, spices and silver, the richest trade mission the world had ever seen. But it also presented a most alluring price to the enemies of the Kingdom.
King William III
King William the 3rd fully understood this was a make or break moment and matched the bold move of the merchants and the sailors with one of his own. He would send almost his entire war fleet comprised of Dutch and English ships to escort the mission, leaving England unprotected. His 102 war ships escorted the trade mission until the port of Brest, where the French historically positioned their fleet. Then it would double back to English shores to provide protection against a potential French invasion.
French spies had uncovered the particulars of the mission, and having decided against an invasion of England in favor of a war against English commerce, they positioned 93 of their war ships further up at Lagos Bay, at the Southern tip of Portugal.
On June the 27th of 1693 the unsuspecting merchant flotilla, under command of George Rook, sailed into the French trap. Waiting for them, was the French fleet, commanded by their old enemy Admiral Tourville, which once had a chance to destroy the might of the English navy but passed up on it. Tourville smiled. He had been shamed for his blunder 3 years ago, and here was a chance to remake his name.
George Rooke
Hardened by the previous years of misery, George Rook kept a cool head. He ordered the fleet to disperse, making it harder for the organized French army to capture the ships. He was going to take his losses, but not without giving his men a chance to get as many ships through as possible.
He ordered two Dutch ships under his command to bide the fleet time by engaging the French war ships directly. The crew of the Zeeland and the Wapen van Medemblik set course for the French and prayed to their God to be merciful on their souls.
It must have been an odd sight, these two lonely ships approaching the might of a 93 strong French war engine. Tourville cursed. He had hoped for the greatest of victories: that the merchant fleet would band together and could slowly be ground down by his war machine. Instead, the ships in front of him dispersed in all directions. He ordered pursuit.
Admiral Tourville
The Zeeland and the Wapen van Medemblik collided with his fleet, entering the heart of the warships. They fought valiantly taking overwhelming fire power from every side, but selling their skin dearly. The hulls of the ships were pierced with hundreds of cannon balls. In the inner depths of the ship, men were hacked to pieces by a combination of cannon balls and ricocheting pieces of wood. The floor was lined with sand to soak up all the blood, but became a muddy mess instead. Still, it provided enough disarray amongst the French fleet to slow it down. Tourville had no choice to order part of his fleet to concentrate on the two ships running havoc. The Dutch fought so brave, that he never managed to conquer them, but finally, exhausted and having taken huge losses, the two captains surrendered. Tourville had the captains (Philip Schrijver and Jan van der Poel) brought to his quarters. He congratulated them on their bravery and asked them if they “were men or devils”
Despite this display of death defying bravery and the good judgment of Rooke, the French still captured or destroyed almost 100 merchant vessels.
The news hit England and sent the merchant classes in despair. A wave of bankruptcies ensued. The economy, already on its knees, fell on its face.
A national effort to raise money
King William the 3rd needed a Navy to protect English trade missions and he needed it fast. In its current state, it could not protect the English shores and the trade missions at the same time. The challenge he faced was that the coffers were empty and the economy was so depressed that raising taxes might lead to revolt and further economic malaise. Something else had to be done to raise money.
King William the 3rd was the son of a Dutch father and an English mother. At birth he was destined to be the King of Holland. As the king of Holland, he had learned two things: the power of the Navy, which had been instrumental in the invasion of England which had overthrown his father in law, the English King James II during the Glorious Revolution. But it also gave him a unique insight in the financial revolution that the Dutch had brought the world: the world’s first stock market, created almost a century before in 1602, where citizens could invest their hard earned money into corporation in exchange for a return on their investment.
Perhaps this Dutch innovation could be a way to mobilize the battered riches of the country?
Working together with Scotsman William Patterson, the creation of The Bank of England was proposed in 1694. Anyone willing and able to put in 25 Pounds, would get a guaranteed 8% return on his investment. The return was so appealing that both the wealthy and the poor invested their savings in the bank. A look at the book of Investors in the Bank of England reveals the names of the King and Queen, who invested 10,000 pounds, but also the names of historical actors who’s names we recognize from this blog post: John Evelyn and Samuel Jeake, who upon hearing the news had gathered all his riches, and traveled on horse back for 15 straight hours from Rye to London. Saddle soar, tired and hungry he arrived in London and without resting went straight to his financial agent to discuss the investment. Browsing through the book, we see something even more fascinating: the name of 9 people who were in domestic service who invested every hard earned dime in the bank. This was truly a country wide effort, where everyone who had money poured it into the bank of England.
In just 12 days it raised 1.2 million pounds, and on August the 4th, it made its first loan to the government.
Bank of England Charter sealing 1694
Ship of the line
The national debt provided a virtuous circle of funding: the government borrowed money from the people, which built a navy, which allowed for trade, which increased the tax revenues that allowed the government to pay its people back with interest.
More than half of the first loan went to building up the navy and this in turn transformed the economy. Each navy ship required over 5 tons of iron nails, 2000 trees, 7000 square yards of canvas and 10 miles of ropes. The navy soon employed 44,000 men, and feeding them reshaped English agriculture. Building the ships made South England into the navy’s building yard, North East Britain into the world’s first industrial iron works (providing the nails) and soon the navy was the engine of English commerce, transforming the countries economy and laying new foundations of the modern world as we know it. In 10 years, the navy was 176 ships strong and soon became the sole rulers of the sea.
But that is a story for another day.
Tags: 04081694, 05301693, 07101690, 1690, 1693, 1694, Admiral Tourville, Bank of England, Battle of Beachy Head, Battle of Lagos Bay, English Navy, George Rook, Glorious Revolution, History, Holland, John Evelyn, National Debt, Rye, Samuel Jeake, United Kingdom, Wapen Van Medemblik, William III, Zeeland
The most peaceful period in history
Tags: 2005, Al-Qaeda, America, Cold War, History, Hunter Gatherer, North Korea, Peace, Pre-history, Steve Pinker, Ted Robert Gurr, Ted Talks, Violence, WWI, WWII
The news brings us almost daily reports about bombs exploding, attacks in remote parts of the world or security breaches close to home.
In a world that seems so threatening, full of hatred and war, we might wonder what the most peaceful times were in human existence, and what we can learn from them to stem the violence.
You’d be surprised to learn that the most peaceful period ever recorded in human history is… right now.
Harvard’s Steve Pinker argues that if people had behaved in the 20th Century as they did in the Bible, several billion people would have died in war, not several hundred million. There are more people alive today, meaning that the raw numbers of deaths are higher, but people are fundamentally far less violent and in percentage terms violence has continually decreased significantly since the enlightenment.
The below graphics shows death caused by rival humans amongst the hunter gatherer tribes in pre-history (as per fossil evidence) and the lowest bar shows deaths as a percentage of human population in the 20th century including WWI and WWII:
Source: Steve Pinker, A brief history of violence lecture
Ted Robert Gurr and a team of scholars at the University of Maryland‘s Center for International Development and Conflict Management analyzed all data available on historical conflicts and game to the conclusion that:
the general magnitude of global warfare has decreased by over 60% [since the mid 1980s], falling by the end of 2004 to its lowest level since the late 1950s
The decline of violence from the 1950s to 2005:
Source: The Human Security Brief
After World War II, a war weary world experienced a growing peace that reached its peak in the late 1950s. Then the Cold War spurred on violence accross the globe. Although only two mighty forces were at odds with each other, the US and the Soviet Union, they ignited wars in various countries. These were called proxy wars. From the Greek civil war to Korea, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, wars were fought by extension, because the two forces could not face each other directly. A nuclear war would have been too devastating.
But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period of peace settled over the world that is unprecedented.
The decline of violence from 2002 – 2006:
Source: The Human Security Brief
As you can see, the trend keeps continuing.
Why do we believe there is so much violence now?
Better access to media
24 hour news has clouded the reality of ever rising peace, instead creating a constant hyperbole. The constant media hype also masks the fact that crime is at is lowest level in history.
Cognitive illusion
In psychology, it is said that the easier it is to remember incidents, the more probable we think its re-occurrence will be. This is why when I traveled the London tubes after the 7 /7 train bombings, I saw virtually no-one on the underground. As the memory faded, and memories of safe transport became more common place, the carriages gradually filled. I saw a documentary here in the US that claimed the British people were indomitable and started to use the Tube right away, but from personal experience I can tell you that this was simply not the case.
For the same reason, when there was a dodged attempt to bring an airplane down this Christmas, President Obama had to step in and promise to raise security. This was as much to counteract the effects of cognitive psychology than to assure people of long lasting improvements in safety standards (in my humble opinion).
Opinion and advocacy markets and political fear mongering
Political actors and fund raisers abuse the news cycle to inspire fear in the hearts of their constituents and recruit them to march under their banner.
It is pretty hard for advocacy group to continue to raise money under the banner: ‘things are getting better all the time’. Instead, marketers know that in order to arouse people from a laissez-faire mentality, a sense of urgency needs to be created: ‘we need to turn this awful tide’.
But none of it resembles a morsel of truth.
Guilt
We live with the heavy historical burden of guilt about parts of our history: war mongering, slavery and abuse or genocide of native people. As integration expands, we feel this tricky past more acutely, as it is used in part to rightly explain current socio-economic disparities and thus has become a political tool.
The incongruence between the rise of moral standards and human behavior
As our moral standards rise, we judge occurrences of injustice more harshly, as we should. As a result, our current justice system seems to be failing our moral standards daily, as it does, but we forget that in previous times, people expected nothing more of the ‘Kings justice’ than a 10 minute trial followed by a burning on the stake.
With rising moral standards we also emotionally mature. When Jesus Christs commands us to be more ‘like these children’ we find his statement confusing. Children can be cruel, tie firecrackers to cats’ tales or bully others, destroy reputations with gossip and can be petty. Early man however was more like an ‘innocent’ child in his moral awareness, and committed rather similar acts, from throwing cats of bell towers, lowering them in fire for public amusement or indulging in terrible gossip about people that were different from them. Christ more likely referred to the innocence of children in relation to their ability to keep a sense of wonder than that he meant to imply we should admire their moral values.
A sense of anti-Westernism amongst Westerners
The aformentioned incongruence between the rise of moral standards and human behavior in Western societies can cause us to become blasé about our culture. We forget that there is no more affluent or peaceful alternative society on Earth. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continuously strive for improvement.
The human need to excel
Humans are as lazy as they are ambitious. There are two great passions in the human soul: idleness (derived from our instinctual need to preserve energy for the next big hunting and gathering session) and the need to always want more, an eternal ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ attitude that has driven so much of human progress. We are continuously striving for an utopia. Some psychologists associate this with a deep embedded wish for a return to the womb: a place of absolute security and nurture.
As a result, we have a constant attitude that what we have is not enough. This attitude is exacerbated by modern marketing, that gives a constant sense that we don’t have everything we need. This attitude spurs growth and innovation, but can at times lead us to unfairly judge our current circumstances.
Why has peace gone viral?
Preemptive wars and the logic of anarchy
Thomas Schelling gives us a simple example: a burglar enters a house. The occupier catches him in the act. Being good Americans, both have guns. The average human being doesn’t want to kill, but both reason that they have to kill the other before the other kills them, the simple logic of self preservation.
Nations think much along the same lines, because their rulers and citizens are driven by the same instinctual reasoning. The best defense is offense, they argue, and preemptive wars result.
When Theodore Roosevelt argued that the path to peace is to ‘carry a big stick and talk softly’, he might have seemed to be self serving according to some observers, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. The policy of deterrence is an evolution of the idea of preemptive war, where a nation keeps an army large enough to avenge all infringements on its territory or citizens. The next evolution was measured response, which means avenging wrong-doings in a measured way (an eye for an eye as opposed to a life for an eye). This reduced the possibility of an endless cycle of retaliatory violence. This evolution was necessary because of the statistical likelihood of smaller armies winning over larger armies, a counter-intuitive concept, but one that is very real and therefore required calculating in. Perfect examples are the Vietnam war, the Guezen in Flanders and the American revolution.
Malcolm Gladwell illustrates this reality in his question: why do underdogs win so often:
Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.
The reason behind this is, he argues, because the Goliaths of this world often play by a set of rules unknown to them. If an underdog can understand their rule book and find the loopholes, the underdog can use their logic against them. They often avoid direct confrontation, refuse to offer themselves as a target, instead act as a virus, attacking where least expected, draining the resources of the opponent while remaining illusive themselves. Weighing on the weakness of your opponent, can lead to spectacular results. Strength in numbers is vastly overrated, instead the trick appears to be to not overstretch, not to blindly use scarce resources and not to present an obvious target, causing the enemy to have to thin out their armies not knowing where the next attack will come from. This eventually leads to exhaustion and collapse of the enemy army.
During his Nobel prize acceptance speech, President Obama tried to make a case that the absence of war doesn’t always lead to peace and tried to articulate and justify a difficult balance between the capacity for war in its relationship with the potential for peace:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uU_mCNcKM[/youtube]
Seeing his speech in terms of what we’ve learned about Goliaths historic impotence at times, we can appreciate the difficult decisions he had to make: wage a war of soldiers vs a war of secret intelligence (the latter so far being the only thing that has kept us safe from the most devastating terrorist acts while the former only relocated terrorist bases to 6 other countries)? You can read a further opinion in the blog post ‘How the enemy needs war to stay alive’.
Wealth and moral awareness
In wealthy societies, peace is vital for economic growth. On an instinctual level all of us understand this: we are well fed and live relative comfortable lives, and the perceived way to insure this continues is by going on with our business, not fighting another war. This makes peace and justice a valuable commodity and through the psychological powers of projection, we start negatively evaluating every instance of violence and injustice. As a result, we become more sensitive about the use of any type of tribal warfare or racism, which could upset the balance of society and our comfortable lives. Equally, institutions such as the death penalty come under attack, as we empathise with innocent victims in the legal system, the unfair socio-demographic and racial imbalance in the prison system and its corresponding threat to social balance.
This was argued by the political scientist James Payne.
On the other hand, racism can be spurred by the desire to keep economic balance as well, as some seem to identify socio-economic imbalances with historical factors such as slavery, inequality and wars, and instead suspect there is a character flaw in certain races. Equally, fear can lead to intolerance, as the behavior of certain actors can be seen to undermine society and social cohesion.
Non zero sum gain
Robert Wright postulated in the framework of game theory and economic theory a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.
As a result, war makes no sense, because it decreases the gains to be had by trade, therefore trade is valued as a bigger win than war. This explains the current peaceful period as aided by economic and technological development.
As Wright put it:
Among the many reasons that we should not bomb the Japanese is that they built my mini-van.
Take it from the horse’s mouth:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcZFIy2mfyE[/youtube]
A sense of community
Humans are endowed with a sense of community. That sense in early human stages did not exceed beyond one’s own immediate family, but grew over time to include the tribe, the village, the nation, one’s own sexes, other species (see the movement for animal rights) and so on. The embrace of empathy amongst humans is ever increasing, much as it does during the stages of individual human development, and empathy reduces the level to which we can dehumanize ‘he who is different from us’, instead we sympathize with their fortunes and pains to an extend that is unprecedented in human history.
This is likely to have happened due to increasing interaction with other humans and the realization of commonly shared conditions and values. Trade, cosmopolitanism, fiction, journalism and a whole heap of other forces have made us more acutely aware of our shared common humanity.
Benjamin Franklin never thought of the slaves as equal until he went to a school for minorities and realized that they could be absorb information as well as white kids. This caused a profound change in his opinion of black people. A similar experience caused a shift in the attitudes of John Quincy Adams and slowly rippled through society.
The decline of authority
In Biblical times authority was far more embedded in society. Speaking out against the King had the legal punishment of death attached to it. Speaking out against your parents did too. With such powers invested in authorities, people were more apt to follow. This was a natural state, as lack of science gave enormous powers to state and religion, the only tools to exercise some control over the random events of life. These two forces, religion and state, competed for power. With the rise of corporations, interest groups, institutions, individual economic independence and the rise of control over our environment through the advancement of science and the resulting technological revolutions, power is much more diluted, and authorities worldwide and in particular in the developed world find it harder to mobilize public opinion.
We aren’t there yet
None of this means that we should rest on our laurels, but it does indicate that we are moving in a gainful direction. Numbers and statistics are a poor quantifier of evil, as evil is in the deed, not the quantity. But numbers do reflect the effectiveness of the remedies we experiment with.
Nor does this article dare to claim that we are on a path to eradicating war. There have been periods in history of relative calm before, only to melt down in a spectacular explosion of violence.
Instead, as the pendulum inevitably swings, we should be critical of our society, but not throw away the child with the bath water and instead also learn to appreciate the lessons of what went right in our society.
Steve Pinker in his own words
I’ve added some theories to Steve Pinker’s expose, so in the spirit of fairness, here is Steve in his own words:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk[/youtube]
Tags: 2005, Al-Qaeda, America, Cold War, History, Hunter Gatherer, North Korea, Peace, Pre-history, Steve Pinker, Ted Robert Gurr, Ted Talks, Violence, WWI, WWII
Katyn
Tags: 1940, History, Katyn, Poland, Soviet Union, War, WWII
Silly intro – how we pick films
I have a habit of looking up highly rated films on MetaCritic, and then just watching them from highest to lowest rating. It is a great system, because you do get to watch great films from all over the world on an eclectic set of topics. This habit does unnerve Anna (my wife) who likes to know what she will be watching, so she tends to ask me for 5 film titles, does her research and then picks one out. Anna likes to be in the right mood to watch the film that compliments that mood.
Yesterday, the film du jours was Katyn. Having an unruly mind that pre-judges everything it comes in contact with, the title conjured up images of the life of a woman detailing her passage of rites.
I could not have been more wrong…
Katyn – the WWII massacre
In 1939 Poland succumbed to the twin invasions of Germany and Soviet Union, carving up the country between the two behemoths. The film Katyn starts with a scene on a bridge. One side tries to cross it attempting to get away from the German military machine, while the other side crosses it in a hope to escape the Soviet invasion. Panic and confusion arises when both groups realize they are trapped in a steadily closing vise.
Cut to Polish military officers who surrender to the Soviet Union. One of the officers remarks they surrendered to the wrong side, as the Russians never signed the Geneva convention. They are taken to a POW camp.
The film then follows the lives of their relatives, who learn that these 12,000 men were killed in a terrible massacre near the forest of Katyn. In the German occupied lands, this massacre unnerves the occupiers, fearing that this might lead to a violent uprising of the Polish people. They issue documentaries rightly accusing the Russians of callous murder and argue that the Polish people are safer under German occupation. They also express their condolences to the family members, then pressure them viciously in recording and signing anti-soviet statements, manufacturing hatred for the Russian occupiers on the other side and strengthening their grip on their part of the country.
1945 – Germany surrenders, and the Soviet forces flood over Poland. Recognizing the dangerous situation that has been created by the German public briefing on the massacre of Katyn, they issue propaganda attempting to blame the Germans for a mass murder although it happened in a Russian zone. The propaganda films, of which we see clips in the movie Katyn, are utterly unconvincing. They act only to stir up further hatred for the regime, which the Russians counter by suppressing the population mercilessly and extracting all hope for a successful revolution among the Polish, who still bitterly remember how no-one came to their rescue in ’39. The Polish people feel more and more fatalistic and inclined to cooperate with the occupiers.
The film then explores the lives of the relatives and friends of the murdered soldiers. Those most vocal are rounded up and disappear. Those who remain behind, try to protect themselves against Soviet prosecution, try to blend in, but are slowly hollowed out. The Russians re-ignite their propaganda, create new films and radio documentaries calling the Katyn massacre a German evil, and it inflames those families left behind again. We see their lives unraveling before our lives in self-destructive acts: a sister of one of the murdered soldiers attempts to erect a tombstone for her brother detailing the true events and is rounded up and asked to sign a statement that she saw proof it was a German massacre. Her passions betray her, she cannot submit to this governmental lie, and defies her captors. This act proves to be ultimately self-destructive, and she is locked up in a cell, deep underground, never to be heard of again.
A pragmatic Polish soldier enlists in the Soviet army, recognizing that if you can’t beat them, you must join them. In his capacity as a Soviet major, he attempts to help where he can, in his own way protecting the Polish people by shielding them from Russian aggression and taking on the role of mediator. It is a difficult yet heroic role that leaves him despised by both sides. He desperately attempts to spare others of the fate that the women we mentioned in the last paragraph had to suffer, trying to give relatives a middle road, in which they can move on instead of unleasing the Soviet wrath. But instead he ends up alienated from the Polish people, who see him as a traitor, and in his despair, and the growing conflict in his soul created by serving the perpetrator of this crime, he ends up committing suicide.
The film details many more of these stories, including a General’s wife who seems to be able to accept the futility of rebellion while privately hanging on to her hatred and contempt.
It ends with the protagonist, a wife of a Polish lieutenant, receiving the diary of her husband, detailing his last moments.
Here, the film that had a previously confusing storyline, really becomes great. It shows us the sheer ruthlessness and viciousness of war in its uncensored horror.
We follow the lieutenant on his trip to Katyn, where the 12,000 soldiers disembark, wagon by wagon. For 10 long minutes, we are witness to all the soldiers that we have come to love and respect in the film being slaughtered, one by one. The scene is all the more harrowing because of the mechanical nature of the executions. The soldiers are lulled into a belief that they are going to a cell, stripped of all their valuables, bound, taken into a room where a one sentence trial is read out and then shot through the head. Then their bodies are shipped via a slide to a truck that takes them to a mass grave. The scene shows the Russians getting more and more ‘efficient’ in their slaughter, slowly changing the process in order to deal with the mammoth numbers required in the execution. The trial is skipped, eventually the doomed are simply driven to the grave and shot inside of it.
As you watch this protracted scene, you cannot help but crawl up in your chair in sheer horror. I wondered how these soldiers could execute so many as if they were animals?
It dawned on me that the very armies that we create to protect ourselves are the very danger that we put upon ourselves. These men were selected, trained, desensitized and educated to become sheer killing machines. An environment and reasoning was created for them to no longer see the enemy as human, but even less then animals.
But how can humans be so cruel and inhumane towards each other? That topic we explore in our next blog topic: Are humans good or evil?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhBB3FgslI[/youtube]
Living the strenuous life
Tags: 65, Agrippina, America, American Presidents, Ancient Rome, Apology, Culture, Emperor Nero, Heroism, History, Lifestyle Experiment, Literature, Lucius Seneca, Philosophy, Psychology, Socarates, Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Why do we look up to great men, why do we read the great books? Ultimately, as the Greek Philosopher Epictetus said, we do this to answer the question: ‘how to live our lives’?
How to live our lives?
Rome 65 AD – 4 miles outside of Rome, in an elaborate, lush estate, Lucius Seneca, 69 years old, notes that he is about as old as his hero, Socrates, when he was forced to drink a cup of poison to ‘atone’ for his ideals. And here, today, Seneca also faces the prospects of his own death because he refuses to abandon his ideals.
Lucius Seneca
Seneca is probably the most famous man at this point, after Nero, the Emperor. Seneca has lived a life of power, glory and immense achievement and had worked himself up to become the second most powerful man in the Roman Empire.
Yet today, he waits, stoically, at his home, for his death to arrive in the form of Nero’s soldiers.
A quick history to put things into context
In these days, Rome stretches from the shores of Britain to today’s Iraq, from the North Sea to the Saharan deserts. Rome has brought prosperity and peace across most of the know world, united under one language, one currency and one law.
Seneca was born in 4AD, in Cordoba, Spain, in a wealthy, influential family. Seneca was sent off to study in history and became a student of Stoicism. He was thought in the market places of Greece, by professors who gave their lessons from a porch, as was the habit of the day.
Seneca came back to Rome, and became a famous writer. He wrote a series of tragedies and was part of the revolutionizing of the Roman literary tradition. Tragedies were rewritten and updated for Roman sensibilities. Shakespeare borrowed a lot from their innovations, although he did not know it. You can see the influence of the Roman writers of Seneca’s time in Shakespeare’s melodramatic endings, murders on stage and even the inclusion of ghosts as main characters. Because of his importance to the revitalization of Roman literature, Seneca won great fame.
This at a time when the political landscape of Rome had experienced great changes: Julius Caesar had recreated the Rome as a dictatorship, and his heir to the throne, Augustus Caesar had decided that the only way to insure Rome’s prosperity and strength was to create a dynasty. Augustus saw to it that all his imperial powers were passed to his son, Tiberius.
It pretty soon became clear that once you give power to a dictator, it is hard to lose it again. The Roman people, at least those in power, were smitten with all the rights and power they had gained without having to be responsible for any of them.
However, Tiberius turned out to be a cruel despot, suspicious and greedy. His heirs to the throne, Caligula and Claudius were truly wicked despots.
Claudius ruled Rome as an evil bureaucrat: jealous, suspicious, lending his ear to informants with their own agenda, the Roman people suffered under the emotional up and downs of their emperor.
It was in this court that Seneca became part of public life, at 45 years of age. He found himself quickly outwitted by the intrigues at court and was forced into exile on Corsica.
Seneca was returned to Rome by Agrippina, wife of Claudius and master intrigant. She had been born with a lust for power and tried to gain her power through influence over Claudius. She managed to have Claudius divorce his wife and marry her. They had a son, Nero, which she wanted to be the new emperor, although that place was reserved for Claudius’ first son, Britannicus.
Seneca felt that Britannicus would be a bad emperor for Rome and aligned himself with Agrippina, in an effort to get Nero placed as the next emperor of Rome.
Here a truly downwards slope starts: It was decided that Britannicus was to be poisoned. But Britannicus, aware of the intrigue at the court was a suspicious man (it isn’t paranoia if they are really out to get you) and had all his food tasted by others. Agrippina devised a clever gambit. She brought Britannicus an apple and cut it in half. She proceeded with eating one half, and Britannicus, satisfied, ate the other. He didn’t kno that Agrippina had laced the half of the knife facing Britannicus with poison. Britannicus died, officially of stomach indigestion.
Claudius was also in Agrippina’s sights, and was served poisoned mushrooms. Claudius struggled for his life, but didn’t appear to be dying. Agrippina quickly gathered her wits, dipped a feather in poison and stuck it in his throat, telling bystanders she was trying to open his airways to help Claudius breath better.
Seneca was aware of all these plots. But after a life of intrigue at the court, he had decided that the goal justified the means: one has to accept the lesser evils to achieve the greater good. Why Seneca believed that aligning himself with power-hungry murderers might somehow benefit the Roman Empire is unclear, but we do know that Seneca had a hunger for power himself, having once tasted its glory and then felt the bitterness of losing it in exile.
Still, Seneca told himself that he had aligned himself with the powers of good, and that somehow this intrigue was necessary to put himself and his allies in a position where they could rule Rome and steer it in the right direction.
Nero was young and inexperienced. He lacked statesmanship, and recognizing this, Seneca wrote the speech to be delivered in the Senate that was to confirm him as the next emperor. Today, this seems to us as no big deal, all great leaders have their speeches written for them, but in that day, all emperors wrote their own speeches. And even today, great leaders still direct the spirit and content of their speeches.
All the betrayal at court, all the murders seemed to pay off . Under the rule of Nero, with Agrippina and Seneca tucking at the cords behind the scenes, a golden age settled over Rome: the informers who had lead a series of anonymous accusations were put behind bars, lowering the emotional temperature and division within Roman public life, courts were again held in public, the economy was put in order, a strong foreign policy improved Rome’s standing in the world and an the empire was administered in a more effective, more transparent manner. For 5 years, Rome thrived and all the dirty deeds had somehow whitewashed the political life of Rome.
But young Nero began to rebel more and more against the influence of his mother. Nero had his own ideas, and felt he had a greater destiny than being an emperor, he felt he was also an artist. He felt constrained by the duties of office. He was frustrated by the power sharing with his mother, that went as far as having to share his portrait with that of his mother on the Roman coins. He decided that he had to break free. And the only template for such a move he knew from his youth, and perhaps the only real option left to him, was to kill his mother. Freud would have a field day with this one.
Nero, after another bitter quarrel with his mother, invited her over to a makeup dinner and at the end of it, offered her a yacht as a present. The yacht was especially designed to collapse when it exited the bay. And so it did, but Agrippina managed to swim away, even escaping the murderous attempts of the sailors who tried to beat her on the head before she could escape. Nero, gripped in fear about this turn of events, sent loyal soldiers to her home to finish the job. When the soldiers arrived, Agrippina put her hands on her stomach and said: “Here, strike my womb, for it is my son that is killing me.” The soldiers ‘obliged’.
With his mother out of the way, Seneca was summoned to write a speech for Nero, to explain the death of Agrippina to the Roman people.
And so Seneca was the speech writer, advisor and spin master to the court of Nero. Seneca took on this task with dread. After all, by doing his job, he became more and more a liability to Nero, being the keeper of all Nero’s guilty secrets.
Seneca, at the age of 66, asked for permission to retire and was granted this but asked to always stay near…
What is good, what is evil?
Sometimes we find with men who have achieved great power and fame, that their mind closes off to the alternative lives they could have lead, instead, coming to justify the course they have taken as the righteous one, one of difficult decisions, agonizing trade-offs that somehow created the virtuous world we live in today. That path was more or less closed off to Seneca, who had placed himself in great peril due to the choices he had made in his life.
We also often see that rich, influential people become to question their legacy in the zenith of their lives, and become champions for social change, immersing themselves in moral lecturing, charitable causes and what more. They abandon the naked strive for power and instead start to use their influence to create a ‘better’ world for all, to somehow come at peace with their legacy.
Perhaps these forces drove Seneca on his dangerous path.
Seneca, a disillusioned old man, having achieved wealth, power and fame, became to pounder his life and wrote his thoughts down in a series of dialogues. He invoked the memories of the young man he once was, full of ideals.
Seneca judged his life as an error in believing in situational justice: that the world is only a place of trade-offs and that sometimes wrong deeds should be carried out for the greater good. Instead, Seneca started to believe in ‘absolute justice’. That some things are wrong in all circumstances.
How Seneca developed his philosophy
He started with God. Does God exist, he asks himself? Yes, is his resounding answer, and he offers the world, the immaculate beauty of the order of nature, the consistency of the universe as proof. To Seneca, how else could this vast world follow its orderly existence, if not guided by the invisible hand of God?
His next question was: is God ‘good’. Again, the answer is a resounding yes. How could he not be, having created all this beauty and wonder?
And if God is good, than why does evil exist in sickness, loss and injustice? Confronted with this age old question, compounded when one believes that the Gods aren’t fickle, but fundamentally good, Seneca expresses his belief that God has created the universe as a test to mankind. Adversity is God’s lessons, to teach us like a good father about right or wrong. We cannot fully be human nor achieve our potential if we aren’t truly tested to the core.
Borrowed from Socrates’ apology
This idea was borrowed from Socrates’ apology. When Socrates spoke to his accusers who demanded his death sentence. he stated in his address that he did not hate his accusers, that he accepted their actions as being part of a universe that puts him to the test, as a necessary stage in his life.
Socrates went on to explain that all he had ever control over was his own mind. Hate would destroy this power. Socrates argued that if he were to make the mistake of trying to invoke ‘a greater truth’ where his accusers were absolutely wrong and he was absolutely right, he would fall in a mental ‘trap’, because it would ultimately divorce himself from the reality of his own being. All he could be was himself, and the only way to stay in touch with himself was not to judge, but to carry on being who he was, in the face of adversity, in the face of his own death. The true test was not about the nature of the world, about seeing right or wrong, but about remaining firmly who he was, even in the face of the absolute price. This was the test of (the) God(s), Seneca argued.
The philosophical implications
Seneca moved to a philosophy where he is ultimately responsible for his thoughts and actions. He does not blame Nero for his situation, because Seneca states that everything he does, everything he is, everything he thinks belongs only to him, and the situation he finds himself in is presented by God. His reactions are not and never could be governed by the actions of another, no matter how wicked, because he is the only master of his soul, the only person that can give it direction. It would be wrong to blame circumstances for how Seneca has lived his life, because nobody can force him what to think.
Seneca believes that as long as he does not return evil with evil, then he will not be conquered.
He also believed that no person truly suffers evil: evil, adversity, is simply a test, to help us become ourselves, our highest ideal. Without it we would be impotent to achieve our potential. The only evil that we can inflict on ourselves is that of abandoning ourselves. All the rest are milestones on our road.
On to the end
Nero, worried about Seneca’s state of mind and the potential consequences of his writings, sent his soldiers to order Seneca’s suicide. It was a rather protracted affair that I will not describe here, suffice to say that Seneca eventually, after numerous suicide attempts, drank hemlock, and finally died.
Seneca's last moments
A life of absolute responsibility
A mantra you hear often today is ‘If I don’t do it, somebody else will’ or ‘I am just doing my job.’ According to Seneca, saying this does not only surrender all control over the little difference you can make in this world, it also means surrendering control and responsibility for your own actions. Seneca would argue that losing your job because you acted according to your own convictions is not hardship: it is simply answering with the potential of your full being to ‘God’s test’ (in the terms of Seneca). Not taking full responsibility of your actions, and instead rationalizing ambiguous actions by arguing that it wouldn’t make a difference, because ‘if I don’t do it, somebody else is sure to do it’ is relinquishing the only control you really have: that over your own actions. This, argues Seneca, is the only evil that can truly befall a man.
Why we surrender responsibility as a society
Of course, we live in more practical, more secular times. Idealism has often been replaced by collective goal setting and metrics within corporations and societies. It is ironic that in a time people believe more than ever in the power and existence of the individual, more individuals believe their own small existence has little capacity for making difference. Our highest value is not to change the world, but to be happy, to take care of the small nucleus that is our family – we have, as individuals, somehow given up control over our societies and the forces that drive it, whether it is corporate, religious, political or any other earthly force. Sure we vote, sure we try to do the best job we can, but somehow we are no longer responsible for the overall result, all those little compromises we made, all the judgments we make without adequately informing ourselves first, all the votes we cast without having educating about the issues, none of these contribute to the overall result. Somehow, individuals today live in a world where they believe they can have their cake and eat it too, somehow aligned with the forces of good while others are mysteriously to blame for the current state of the world.
Of course, I express things rather black and white, but upping the contrast on the issues can sometimes reveal the inconsistencies that somehow slip between the cracks.
The only way to be fully human
But Seneca’s prescription for a good life is simply this: to never absolve ourselves of responsibility. It is not wrong to compromise because compromise is an essential tool in creating consensus and direction. Seneca offers two addendums to compromise: once you compromise, you cannot say the situation made you do so. No, you saw the situation, and made a conscious decision to act or not to act, and you own that decision. And you cannot divorce yourself from the result, even if you are only partially responsible for it or had no power over it at this point. You nevertheless remain in relation with your environment, and always responsible for how it is. He beckons us not to see our limited power as a reason to absolve ourselves of responsibility for the overall result, but to see our limited power as a clear call to action, a call to work harder to make a difference.
And Seneca also offers the ideas that there are some absolute wrongs and absolute rights. That if you conspire with murderers to help them to the throne, can you expect less then murder from the throne? To not tell ourselves fairy tales that if a creature is one day today it might be different tomorrow. Instead we should take the long view, and help the right powers to take hold in society over a longer period of time, instead of going for the quick fix and helping the wrong powers achieve position with the wrong actions – as if somehow, once in position, they would magically change…
Seneca in our own time
Of course, when one centers his debate on the nature of God and why God created the universe the way it is you are bound to get in a sticky argument, exactly because anyone can pretty well make up his answer whether God exists or not and what exactly God’s intentions might have been.
But stripped from the more numinous arguments, Seneca’s observations hold one important truth for our time:
If we don’t take responsibility for the world, we cannot blame the world for what it is today. No matter how small, we are all cogs inside a giant machine, and we perpetuate it, no matter how small, through our own actions. We can play the game, but then we should own the problem. Or we can instead choose to stand up for our ideals, and then we have to work tirelessly to become an answer to the problem. But the idea that we are somehow not connected, somehow have no bearing on the end result, that is simply not a true idea.
Theodore Roosevelt and the practical application of Seneca in our time
Roosevelt on campaign
Theo Roosevelt inspired America with a powerful call to action, telling each individual that action, not inaction is what will make America strong. Not to shirk responsibility, but to take more of it, and to lead ‘clean, vigorous, healthy lives’, both spiritually and physically.
In the age of consumerism, we often see our role as simply being a cog in a giant machine, but Roosevelt says we are more than that:
No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone.
[…]
A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. – Theodore Roosevelt
In our next entry we’ll speak about Theodore’s practical solutions for our time, and how he envisioned individuals could take ownership of today’s problems, through living the strenuous life:
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. – Theodore Roosevelt
Tags: 65, Agrippina, America, American Presidents, Ancient Rome, Apology, Culture, Emperor Nero, Heroism, History, Lifestyle Experiment, Literature, Lucius Seneca, Philosophy, Psychology, Socarates, Theodore Roosevelt
The heroism of Hamilton
Tags: 1787, Alexander Hamilton, America, Founding Fathers, Heroism, History, James Madison, Politics, The US Constitution
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton isn’t remembered all too well in American history, but he was a politician who had a remarkable gift that is oh, so lacking among many politicians, both then and today.
1. The Historical backdrop
In 1787 Hamilton vigorously advocated for what many considered a very monarchical government for the United States. Though regarded as one of his most eloquent speeches, it had little effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected President and elected Senators who would serve for life contingent upon “good behavior”, and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison (secretary of the Convention) and his friends.
James Madison
It was Madison who opposed Hamilton’s view most sagely. He argued that if you give too much power to the provinces, they’d swamp the central government (as had happened before). On the flip side, give to the national government the power to use force on a state, and you could be inviting civil war. So Madison proposed that the most stable balance of power was one where the national government had no mandates to coerce the states or in any way rival them. Both would exist for the protection of the American people.
Madison’s view was triumphant, little states were given equal representation in the upper house, the Senate, and the men of Philadelphia acknowledged in full the local interests of all the regions by giving them the widest representations in the lower house, the House of Representatives. And whatever powers were not stipulated in the Constitution were left to the States.
This sounds like a shattering defeat for Hamilton. When the Convention was over, he lamented that “no man’s ideas are more remote from the plan than my are known to be.”
2. Hamilton, the noble politician
But here we see a glimpse of what made Alexander Hamilton a great politician. He added, without a grudge: “Is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on one side and the chance of good to be expected on the other?”
Hamilton did not complain because he had lost, instead went to work writing more than forty brilliantly essays urging the states to ratify the Constitution.
Hamilton, despite the negative light historians have at times represented him in, embodies the best qualities a politician can have in his absence of malice, or in the words of Mencken: “A steady willingness to believe that his opponent is as honorable a man as himself and may be right.”
The signing of the Constitution of the United States
Tags: 1787, Alexander Hamilton, America, Founding Fathers, Heroism, History, James Madison, Politics, The US Constitution
Ben Franklin’s faithful plan
Tags: 1726, America, Benjamin Franklin, Founding Fathers, History, Lifestyle Experiment
Benjamin Franklin
Ben Franklin developed a ‘behavior modification’ system for his conduct at the young age of 20, when he was returning from London on an 80-day ocean voyage. It is partially based on Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”
His plan included 13 virtues, which in his own words, “I determined to give a week’s strict attention to each of the virtues successively… Proceeding thus to the last, I could go through a course complete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year.”
- TEMPERANCE: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
- SILENCE: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
- ORDER: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
- RESOLUTION: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
- FRUGALITY: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
- INDUSTRY: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
- SINCERITY: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
- JUSTICE: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
- MODERATION: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
- CLEANLINESS: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
- TRANQUILLITY: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
- CHASTITY: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
- HUMILITY: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
After awhile he went through the series only once per year and then only once in several years until finally omitting them entirely. But he always carried the little book with him as a reminder.
Tags: 1726, America, Benjamin Franklin, Founding Fathers, History, Lifestyle Experiment
A Historical Perspective on Health Care
Tags: 2009, America, Health Care, History, Politics
Health Care Reform
The American health care system is entering reform as most systems in the world are facing intense pressure. As a result, it cannot turn to any model as a shining beacon, but will have to get its hands dirty trying to find a solution fit for a 21st Century world, where life spans are longer, birth rate in developing worlds decline and expenditure must be curbed. And that’s just naming the most obvious problems.
So what are the lessons America must learn?
The idea for health care insurance (see latest news on Health Care Reform) at its conception was a simple one: illness in a population is not the norm, most people are healthy most of the time. But sometimes disaster strikes, we don’t know when and don’t know who it will strike. Economies of scale can deal with this: if everybody pays a fee to an account, that pays out when disaster happens, everyone is covered.
Economies of scale also suggest that the bigger the group you include, the better you can predict risk and therefore the lower a fee you charge everyone. Simply put, take a group of 10 people and it is hard to predict how many of them will face some serious illness in their lifetime. 100 people, predictions work a tiny little better. The more you increase that number, the more predictable the model becomes.
That further brings a challenge to a Free Market model: economic models predict that where perfect competition exists, the consumer will pay bottom prices for the best and most innovative services. But health care doesn’t work in a perfect competition model: it would be too fragmented and wouldn’t be able to benefit from the economies of scale that allow it to actually be effective. As a result, health care insurance must be provided by oligopolies or monopolies (in some European countries there exists a free market solution where many insurers must compete to sell their services to a single buyer: the government. This can easily be called an inverted monopoly: the government has monopoly on demand. A perfect example of this is the Swiss health insurance model. Do read this, it’s a very interesting compromise.)
Most developed countries opted for the welfare state. This model isn’t popular because of socialistic reasons, but because of economies of scale. It is simply cheaper for one insurer to provide health care insurance than 10 insurers, due to the economies of scale.
There is however one massive problem with this model in the developed world. It works great when the majority of your population is young and vital.
Take Japan as an example. Its ‘welfare state’ was so successful that by the 1970s life expectancy in Japan had become the longest in the world. So the population was rapidly aging, and to exacerbate the problem, birth rate was falling. In effect, the ratio between old and young got to be the steepest in the world: 21% of its population was over 65, and it is projected that if the current trends prevail, 50% of the population will be pensioners by 2044. These trends have brought the Japanese welfare state to its knees. The problem is so formidable, the population so old on average, that even private insurers cannot present any solutions to Japan’s challenge. Life insurance companies have been fighting for their lives after the stock market crash of 1990, and 3 of its largest insurers failed.
So Japan acts as an omen: in the West, our population is following a similar trend, one where the population noticeably ages. Where the welfare system could be saved by the arrival of a large number of newborns, birth rate in the developed world is less than impressive and immigration isn’t bucking the trend.
As a result, countries in the developed world are looking for a privatized solution to be added to the national insurance model. When there is less money to go around, the money has to work harder. Perhaps private investment companies can help.
Take Chile as an example: brokers invest the pension contributions of Chilean workers in their own stock market. This has wielded impressive results: the annual rate of return on the Personal Retirement Accounts is more than 10%, thanks to an extremely healthy stock market that has risen by a factor of 18 since 1987.
Of course, this model, as all other models has its problems: not everyone in the system has a full-time job and the self-employed don’t have to contribute which leaves a substantial part of the population without coverage. The administrative and fiscal cost of the system are also deemed too high.
It remains however ironic that this type of radical reform did not originate in the heartland of free market economics: America, but instead was executed in Chile.
Reform in America is unavoidable. America’s hospitals vary in great degrees from state-of-the-art to challenged at best, but none can be called cheap (see the World Health Organization Report). For those who need treatment before retirement, the need a private insurance policy. It is estimated that 47 million Americans don’t have one, partly due to the structure of the system: such policies tend to be available only to those in regular, formal employment – any other scheme has a prohibitive price ticket attached to it.
[Cartoon courtesy of Seppo Leinonen. Be sure to check out his other great cartoons!]
The ultimate result is a welfare system that is not comprehensive, marginally redistributive (compared to European systems) but costs a whole heap more. Public health expenditures hover around 7% GDP while private health care is equivalent to 8.5% (in addition!)
In America, over the next 40 years, life expectancy is to rise even more, and the number of the population over the age of 65 will rise from 12% to 21%. However, according to the the 2006 Retirement Confidence Survey , only 60% of American workers say they save for retirement and just 40% has actually calculated how much they should be saving. The average worker plans to retire at the age of 65, but actually retires at 62. All these miscalculations require the tax payer to cough up one way or the other. Currently 36 million retirees receives a total of $21,000 each in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. According to one projection, left alone the cost of Medicare alone will account for 24% of all federal income tax by 2019.
Reform is necessary, and the government hopes to cooperate closely with private insurers. But leaving health care to private insurers is not entirely without risk either, considering the fragmented mosaic of responsibilities that often offers an opt-out for insurers.
Hurricane Katrina forced the myth of the well-oiled American welfare state to collapse for even the most ardent of believers. Those who choose to remain ignorant had no choice but to recognize that the current insurance models no longer cover the risks.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 1.75 million property and casualty claims were made to the sum of an estimated $41 billion. In America, private insurance companies offer protection against wind damage, and the federal government offers protection against flooding. As a result, the assessors sent out by the insurance companies were not sent to fairly assess the damage, but instead to visit properties and find reasons why damage could be due to flooding and not wind. The objective was to limit the amount of claims that would have to be paid out. At the time, insurance companies were portrayed as evil, but this is merely human nature, men are not angels driven by altruism, but driven to thrive and survive. The insurance companies acted in a predictable fashion, and ultimately it was the system that failed, because it allowed for ambiguity, vagueness and shied away from a comprehensive solution, instead leaving in place a fragmented, ‘puzzled’ system.
The same dangers lurk in the modern health care system, as a recent, perhaps slightly alarmist documentary of PBS suggests on health care in America. A fragmented system of insurers, whose company goals are to increase the bottom line year by year (and have done so more than 400% between 2000 and 2007), a system complex enough that it can often avert responsibility at crucial moments but works just well enough on the surface for people to still want to rely on it, while in the background gobbling up so much of America’s GDP and costing employers so much that it actually threatens America’s future in the world…
The challenge for the Obama administration is formidable…
Tags: 2009, America, Health Care, History, Politics