Thoughts on Censorship (JM)

In traditional discussions of censorship the concern has always been that organizations such as the FCC or Congress would issue orders or legislation that banned particular types of words or speech from being aired (particularly on public airwaves). There has always been a robust, and to my mind agreeable, response to such actions. The marked preference for allowing discourse and "the marketplace of ideas" to sort itself out, is one driven by a basic faith in the American public to be responsible with their freedom and to use mechanisms such as basic parental responsibility and personal censorship tools (like the v-chip) to block out those topics and terms inappropriate for segments of the population. All of this is mostly old hat and not worth rehashing in generalist terms. The bottom line is, I would argue, that the more ideas exposed to sunlight there are, the better off we are.

However, there's a far more insidious undercurrent in our society to which far fewer civil libertarians seem willing to pay heed. That is the censorship of the market. Even on the most banal of levels market interference in free speech is quite clear. Howard Stern was not forced from radio merely because of the FCC, but also because of flak from corporate sponsors. However, only in the case of the former reason are organizations up in arms, and I fail to see the distinction. It is no less detrimental to our society to have types of speech de facto censored from the airwaves because a multimillion dollar corporation doesn't care for the message being broadcast than it is to be put out of business because of the FCC. In fact, one could easily argue that it is far more insidious as these are non-democratic organizations beholden to nothing but their own profit motives (and to a lesser extent the cultural whims of corporate CEOs). On the other hand, the FCC is representative of a democratic body and ostensibly beholden to the American people. It is quite telling, in fact, that the places where the FCCs actions are divergent from the interests of the American public are often those very places where corporate interests lie.

This is a significant burden on what we consider to be a free and open society, one made more so because people just don't seem to view this as censorship. Those that have no problem with such corporate interference attempt to win this battle before it begins, by engaging in a semantic paradigm shift. They note that people aren't entitled to a platform for their message, just the right to express said message. This is rhetoric that on face sounds reasonable, but in practice makes any conception of robust speech rights as weak as watered down skim milk. Truly, what kind of contentious, diverse market of ideas can exist at the point at which those ideas broadcast are subject to the will of those who can find the best financing for them. In an almost too obvious way those viewpoints that would support individuals most in need, those with out resources, are far less likely to be aired and far more likely to be extremely mitigated before reaching the American public.

Ultimately this battle about what constitutes censorship belies a greater battle that exists. That it is a conceptual battle rather than a political/policy battle doesn't make it any less important. In fact, since our conceptions are the basic building blocks of the unspoken rules of the game there is no area of contention more important. It comes down to this, the government is not the only coercive and oppressive body that we must be concerned with in society. The market is also an oppressive regime, one whose oppression we almost invariable accept. That we allow speech rights to be dictated by the allocation of resources is not ultimately the most democratic process as most market-oriented rational actor theorists might argue. This viewpoint is totally dependent on the absurd notions that capital is freely and fairly distributed; that the viewpoints of individuals aren't already influenced by the disproportionate informational advantage that corporate America has; and that capitalism works best when pure and untainted.

The Information Age is one of the truer appellations that this era has received. The progress of society has always been about the progress of knowledge, understanding and ideology. As our world has gotten increasingly complex we need to take an increasingly complex view of things like censorship and free speech. It is never as simple as either the market will solve or the government can cure all. Instead we live in a society with infinite sources of power and influence (of which the market and government are dominant forces), we need to use all of these sources to counterbalance each other. This means we need a far more sophisticated point of view about what discourse is and how it is best to be promoted. All of this should be possible without giving in to either tyrannical government or the corruption of the "free market". We certainly need to rethink terms like freedom and authority. Most of all we need to begin adding references to our discussions about appropriate governance. Freedom cannot be considered as an isolated simple variable, bizarre "state of nature" theory is soooo 1700s. The real truth is that there is no natural or correct way to be and we need to find the best balance for the happiest society that, on one hand reflects the will of the people while on the other protects all individuals' abilities to live their own particular brand of life.

From Office to Era (JM)

Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly and Matthew Yglesias of the Atlantic both posted today about regulating the health insurance industry. They both bring up some fairly salient points about what free competition in the health insurance industry actually means. Matt, in particular makes the interesting arguments that efficiency and competitiveness in the insurance industry is enhanced by better assessing risk, not by providing more access to care. This argument holds some water, though I think competitiveness could also be fostered by helping to prevent risk and by offering better packages of insurance from the get go.

Either way, these arguments bypass the 20,000 pound elephant in the room whenever we discuss something like health insurance: fairness. The idea behind insurance is the aggregate risk, but at the point companies can curtail as much risk as possible the product becomes illegitimate. This is largely because insurance is better viewed as a public good, rather than a private commodity. In some very real sense any federal government is form of insurance, a way of collectively allocate risks and resources over a large population of people. It would simply be better if insurance were universalized and everyone bought in at equal cost.

This is where the problem becomes more interesting. Is it, in some sense, just to ask every individual to pay for people who are more likely to fall ill or get injured. I think it makes the most sense to actually discuss this in the margins, talking about people who presumably behave in such a way that they are more likely to get ill or injured.

Let's say we grant that behavioral factors effect one's health more than any other variable (a premise I am only willing to grant for the furtherance of this discussion). We should still consider that behavior is not solely a matter of personal choice, but is often socially ingrained in an individual or still a function of genetics. We know very little of development of taste and habits, but it is perfectly plausible that many of them are not so much a matter of free choice, as they are qualities, that while internal, have been developed by some external, difficult to control source.

I feel strongly that this is a matter that has largely been ignored in the political arena because it makes us feel uncomfortable (also the Right has succeeded in lampoon this position to death. The simple truth is that people are often not responsible for their position in life, in terms as health, as well as financially and social. The truth is that opportunity is a limited function and if it's a value we truly believe in it is critical for us to go beyond simply "leveling the playing field" to accounting for difference in players by "handicapping the playing field".

This, as it applies to something as fundamental as health insurance, is critical. People don't deserve to have less access to health care because they were unfortunately born with a proclivity to eat poorly, engage in risky activity or substance abuse than do to be put at greater risk because they were born with a congenital heart defect. The truth is these are essential the same, only the heart defect is more legible. We ought to search for inequalities rather than only helping those whose inequalities are so apparent that we cannot help but see them.

Of course, this opens us up to some terribly difficult questions. If this is true within the health care industry, surely it also true as it applies to criminal justice. If we buy that much of what we perceive as personal choice is guided by the random vagaries of life, then it seems pretty unfair to punish someone for a crime they very well may not have committed if they had been born a very different person. Obviously, this becomes a crazy debate about free will and one in which politicians are certainly not likely to engage. However, it seems clear to me that this is the key pushback against the tidal wave of libertarian/free marketism that we see. The problem lies in how to frame this debate to our rhetorical advantage. The truth is, even in terminology, this a conflict that those who believe in a supportive state have already lost. Heck, as Dennis has so very often pointed out, welfare reform came to us straight from 1990's version of Barack Obama, William Jefferson Clinton.

Much reluctance to engage in this debate can be traced back to the Cold War. The hint of socialist implications in a person was obviously enough to turn them in to a pariah. But with the demise of the Cold War and an entirely different amorphous enemy to combat, the time is ripe to begin having this fight. The Democrats are talking about the policies, but not their justification. People are discussing this as the tipping point for the liberal movement, perhaps ushering in a 30 year period of dominating the scene as we have seen the conservatives do. Maybe. To me it seems unlikely, because we are still playing and talking their game. Gun control? Unthinkable! Single-payer healthcare? Absurd! Kyoto? Unmentioned.

Neither of these are really "change" candidates. One of them says "hope" and "unity" with reference to nothing. The other says "mandates" and "peace", but her actions are often very different than her words. What is lacking in this battle is the right kind of rhetoric, paradigm changing rhetoric. We need to redefine the game, not play it better. Ronald Reagan helped bring down entitlement programs by discussing a "welfare queen" who was living a life of luxury scamming the system. While this seems like a reprehensible lie (and it is), what he was really doing is changing the rules of the game. He was saying, "It's their fault they are unfortunate, not yours. Your situation in life is solely dependent on your choices." That would be nice if it were true, but it is very much not.

If Democrats want to win this time around they have to convince the American public that their lives are completely dependent on so many different random events in society. They need to stand up for programs that recognize this reality, like affirmative action and welfare. They need not just create these policies, they need to convince the American public that they are important and that they are right. Maybe I discounted Edwards a little too early, because his "two Americas" rhetoric really touched on some of these critical ideas. But it is not too late, either of these candidates can stand before John McCain and lambaste him for wanting to cut taxes while millions of Americans have no healthcare, poor education, no access to technology and jobs that barely allow people to survive. If either candidate wants to usher in a new era they cannot just win this election, they have to win this battle. Do you see it happening? I don't.