Civics

It used to be that the American education system had “Civics” as a required part of the curriculum. It is absent today. If it were still a required part of education systems, some of the senseless rhetoric would lack adherents.

There is a shout going up in the land, “remove regulations”. Both personal and business regulations are portrayed as an unacceptable burden and restraint on freedom. In fact regulation is being characterized as “un-American”.

What is regulation? Regulation is an enforceable guideline in the public interest. Let us take a simple case. Do you drive? Do you spend a lot of time worrying rather the other drivers on the roads know the rules? That they do not know what a yield or stop sign requires? What about the red, yellow, and green traffic lights or who has the right-a-way at intersection? You have a certain level of confidence in the other drivers on the road because of the regulation to have a driver’s license. Acquiring a driver’s license means successful demonstration of an understanding of the rules and the operation of a vehicle. Would you want the regulation requiring a driver’s license removed?

Businesses are not going to spend on things in the general interest without being required to do so through regulation. The auto industry had a great battle over the requirement to have lights visible from a side profile. This was despite the many fatal accidents at night with vehicles being invisible from the side. You can imagine the uproar when the gas mileage requirement was raised.

Let us take food. There are requirements for the preparation and handling of produce, meats and seafood. Yet today hundreds of people die from food poisoning. Can you imagine how many it would be without regulation? Do you want restaurants not to be regulated and inspected? Would you want food producers not to be regulated and inspected? Our Congress removed some of the food safety regulation a couple of months ago. Both the Japanese and South Korea boycotted American beef for most of the last decade because they asserted the requirements for safety was inadequate.

What about the absence of regulations requiring product recalls like the recent salmonella incident concerning cantaloupe? What about the recall on baby car seats?

Do you really want anyone and everyone carrying guns or stock piling them?

When you fly on airplane you like to think it is safe because of regulations. But the major airlines skirt the oversight and safety requirement by getting the maintenance done in foreign countries in places like South America. American government inspectors cannot just show up to determine regulation conformance. There are documentaries questioning the safety.

What about the water you drink? There are regulations for water quality. What about plumbing? Toilets used to be very dangerous things with people being blown up. Regulations require the proper venting of potential methane gas. New home and building construction has regulations. Would you want a McDonald’s or Disco next door? Would you want your new home to have a sinking foundation? Would you want the water not to flow to fixtures on the upper floor?

The real issue about regulation is business profits. Regulations require and ensure business and industry acts responsibly in the public interest. It is a cost of doing business just like materials and labor.

Civics taught people to realize they live in a community. That implies limits to privileges that my harm the general welfare. The alternative is a detrimental environment to the public and the anarchy suggested by politicians today.

Glass Darkly

The most difficult condition of awareness can often be when you are immersed in a situation. You may not be consciously aware of external references to compare to your condition.

Democracy has a life cycle.

Adoption of Democracy is inaugurated with lofty ideals of the promise of greater inclusion. It starts with a homogeneous group. In America it was the landed aristocracy and Gentry. Democracy typically goes through a period of expanding inclusion before it plateaus and becomes the exclusive province of the select. The speed with which it plateaus and heads towards greater exclusion, is in direct portion, to the quickness in which a faction gains control of the system.

Democracy, as a political system, over time becomes the captive of a single special interest. It happens all the time when you look externally to other Democracies or participative governments. Japan had a single party, the LPD, in power for decades after World War II. Mexico has just bought back the PRI that ran the country for decades. Perhaps you would like to point to America as being “exceptional”, and maybe the British and the French. The party control dominated by an identifiable powerful faction seems to vacillate.

That vacillation and populism is an illusion. In America today the richest 1% controls all the means of government and ancillary things such as the media. Fathom any piece of legislation or major judicial decision. Determine who is the real beneficiary. It is always the investment class. Any election is an increased power grab. We are merely the obtuse and willing enablers. The pawns cementing one party in perpetual power.

When the life cycle of Democracy reaches this point of inequity, it is not in a nation's interest or the general populous. It creates an impossible economic and social divide. The condition is apparent, but we are blinded by our prejudices. It is called "the second world".