Supply Side Economics & The Social Contract

The Real Docs, the section of my biographical sketch summarizing my experience of the nature of the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy presents important principles that can be applied to the understanding of most human institutions, how they go wrong and how they go right.

The Doctors and the Nazis, my essay on the medical professionals' enabling role in the Holocaust presents a compelling narrative of the psychological consequences of war and  poverty to a highly developed nation state and more.  I am not sufficiently educated in history  to know of any other comparable as to the speed and depth of depravity reached as in Germany of the thirties and forties. We know all nation states eventually disintegrate.  It took Rome 300 years. Conditions that I sincerely believe should be considered include; despair and profound mortification of the people and hubris among the intellectual and technical base. Support and lack of scrutiny are achieved by way of ingenious mass communication techniques which promote ideas and solutions that offer hope to a suffering people.

There is nothing more sentimentally satisfying than the works of Ayn Rand depicting conscienceless selfish but honest brokers, mutually respectful, negotiating to the advantage of all. What is not illuminated in this romantic depiction is the impact of power and need differentials. I have described much of this impact on individual interactions in the previous sections.  A paradox I perceive is that the radical extremes of rabid individualism are misplacing a the cause of their thirst for an enhancement of humaneness in the business of ordinary business. It I think certainly is a force in its support by those against their actual self interest. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the degree of need for the service or product distorts discrimination. It also mobilizes denial in the "buyer." I remind the reader of the description of the collaboration of African Americans in the Jim Crow South.

I prefer to believe it is adolescent naivite' that has formed what has become a snake oil economy called supply side economics.  Whether that is the case or not this nation, likely the world, is sitting on the brink of unimagined decline as a result of a system dependent on limitless growth and those in need as an unending source of capital.  Margaret Thatcher has been quoted as saying "Socialism works well until it runs out of the people's money."  I would say the same holds true for the misnamed "free market." A truly free market only exists for seven foot basketball players and team owners.

A more contemporaneous (and acidic) description of my interpretation of the grim state this nation has been thrown by idiots in the thrall of Ayn Rand and Rush Limbaugh appears online in Talking Stick.

In a democracy the larger community must create as surrogates laws and regulations, yes the ethic too. In a civilized society these surrogate entities honor and empower the individual in need to a level more equal with those who hold the product. It goes without saying that the framers and enactors of a society's laws cannot be permitted to stray again into a religious based social Darwinism, faux patriotism or other "greater good": ideologies that permit the sacrifice the basic human rights of individuals. 

However imperfect as they might be, the failure to design and implement rules that fairly represent the interests of all brings a Hobbesian anarchy where life is "brutal and short." Personally I have no practical solutions but I know the direct interactions between people write the reference manual, not elegant theories developed  from PET scans and mice in laboratories.

With so many miraculous tools of technology available to all of us in all the temptation to hubris is great.  We must remember that the soul lives in the imperfect vessels of  throbbing blood and bone.

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© 2000

Revised October 2008

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