And here is a description of the Mondragon operation;

…the associated Mondragon Cooperatives manufacture automobile parts, electronic components, valves, taps, appliances. They have a full line of retail outlets (small & large) offering consumer products, food, appliances, and a wholesale food business catering to restaurants. Their bank has more than 100 branches, they offer a full range of insurance, and take care of their own social security and health insurance programs. They are not only holding their own within the “globalizing” economy, they are expanding.

This is one of the success stories of people who take the Church’s social doctrine seriously, in particular, the teachings regarding (1) the dignity of the human person and his or her labor, (2) social solidarity, (3) the primacy of labor over capital. In most for profit businesses, labor is hired at the service of capital. For the Mondragon cooperatives, capital is something they rent to benefit the worker-owners.
Management is elected by the workers, not hired by the money men, and the managers are part of the cooperative process in the enterprise. Each enterprise has a social committee that considers issues of health, safety, environment, and the social responsibilities of the enterprise. Capital is borrowed, stock is not sold for financing. All new employees become worker owners.

A new cooperative begins with a group of friends. Experience in starting 120 businesses over a 40 year period has taught the Mondragon cooperators that the pre-existing bonds of friendship are a good basis for building a productive working relationship. The Mondragon association provides business and marketing research and assistance; their bank provides capital. The workers themselves must invest some of their own money, either as an upfront contribution or as deductions from wages paid over a 2 year period (about $5,000). Their bank sticks with the new co-op until they can go it alone; if the business gets into trouble, interest on their loans is waived, payments may be suspended, and parts of the loans may be forgiven. The group may be assisted into another line of business or work. As a result, since 1956, they have had only one total failure of a cooperative.

Ten percent of corporate profits are donated to charity, 40% are retained by the cooperative to be used to benefit the “common good” of the cooperative (research, development, job creation, etc.), and the balance of the profits goes into capital accounts for the worker owners. These funds may be borrowed against at the cooperative’s bank at very low interest rates, and are important parts of the social security arrangements.

This is a mix of capitalism and socialism where a working synergy is created so that
socialism benefits capitalism and vice versa.

Basic Principles of the Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain
This summary consists of both direct quotes (in “") and a summary of the Mondragon text.
I. OPEN ADMISSION
The Cooperatives do not discriminate on the basic of religious, political, ethnic, or sex when it comes to becoming a member of the Cooperative.
II. DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION
All authority is vested in the “general assembly,” which consists of all the worker owners of the enterprise, one person one vote. The general assembly elects the “Governing Council", which would be like the Board of Directors, which appoints (and removes) the organization’s management..
III. SOVEREIGNTY OF LABOR
“In the MCC Co-operatives it is understood that Labor is the main factor for transforming nature, society and human beings themselves. As a result, Labor is granted full sovereignty in the organization of the co-operative enterprise, the wealth created is distributed in terms of the labor provided and there is a firm commitment to the creation of new jobs. As far as the wealth generated by the Co-operative is concerned, this is distributed among the members in proportion to their labor and not on the basis of their holding in Share Capital. The pay policy of MCC’s co-operatives takes its inspiration from principles of Solidarity, which are materialized in sufficient remuneration for labor on the basis of solidarity.”
Worker owners receive competitive and just salaries and dividends based on the profitability of the co-op.
IV. INSTRUMENTAL AND SUBORDINATE NATURE OF CAPITAL
Generally, a corporation sells shares of ownership and management to raise capital, and then hires labor. The Mondragon Cooperatives do not sell shares in order to raise capital. Here, the workers own the enterprise and the management and rent the capital.
V. PARTICIPATORY MANAGEMENT
“This Principle implies the progressive development of self-management and, consequently, of the participation of the members in business management. This requires: (1) The development of adequate mechanisms and channels for participation. (2) Transparent information with respect to the performance of the basic management variables of the Co-operative. (3) The use of methods of consultation and negotiation with the worker-members and their social representatives in those economic, organizational and labor decisions which affect them. (4) The systematic application of social and professional training plans.
(5) The establishment of internal promotion as a basic means of covering positions with greater professional responsibility.”
VI. PAYMENT SOLIDARITY
” The Mondragón Co-operative Experience declares sufficient payment based on solidarity to be a basic principle of its management. Solidarity is manifest both internally and externally, as well as at the Corporate level.”
VII. INTERCOOPERATION
The Cooperatives cooperate with each other, with other cooperatives in the area, and with national and international cooperative organizations.
VIII. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
The Cooperatives acknowledge a duty to contribute to the common good: (1) by reinvesting a high proportion of their profits, including regular investments in community funds for job creation; (2) 10% of the net profit of the Cooperatives is donated to charitable organizations; (3) taking care of their social security, unemployment, and health insurance requirements (through a cooperative owner by the other cooperatives; and (4) being active in their community.
IX. UNIVERSALITY
“The Mondragón Co-operative Experience, as an expression of its universal vocation, proclaims its solidarity with all those who work for economic democracy in the sphere of the Social Economy and supports the objectives of Peace, Justice and Development, characteristic of the International Co-operative Movement. Likewise, through OTALORA, which is our Business and Co-operative Training Centre, we try and disseminate co-operative culture on the basis of our own social-economic experience, developed over the last 40 years.”
X. EDUCATION
“Education and Training have played a decisive role in the creation and development of the Mondragón Co-operative Movement. Its founder and main driving force, the priest José María Arizmendiarrieta, was always quite clear that ‘education, understanding as such the complex of ideas and concepts adopted by a man, is the key to the development and progress of a people’. Insisting on this idea, Father Arizmendiarrieta liked to repeat ‘that education is the natural and indispensable cornerstone for the promotion of a new humane and just social order’ and that ‘knowledge has to be socialised to democratise power’.
“Therefore, on the basis of this approach, the first thing he did when he came to Mondragón was to create the Polytechnic School in 1943 (today Mondragón Eskola Politeknikoa), which during all these years has been the main source of managers and skilled workers for our co-operatives.” 


The issue seems to be intractable. But, that is only because of the specious way it has been and is presented to us.

Now, let’s consider putting the trumped up controversy to rest once and for all by having rational thinking come to the fore.

As it stands now, however, there are crusading christian fundamentalist who believe that life begins at the moment when an egg “somehow” becomes fertilized. I say “somehow” because that event seems to be isolated as a kind of mystical magical moment that miraculously materializes out of nowhere. It is also a religious belief that a zygote is an actual human being and abortion is tantamount to murder.

Some of these religious zealots actually refer to science to further their cause. They seem to be under the impression that their beliefs are unquestionably supported by scientific knowledge. But that is highly questionable, especially with respect to “God’s” involvement, even though there are scientists who have come on board the right-to-life propaganda train. And I would venture to suggest that the reasons they did so was not based on science. It was done for other reasons. Perhaps they did it to please their families or their pastors or to fit in with the particular organization they’re associated with. It is just difficult to see how the view that a zygote is a child is supported by science. It’s not even supported by common sense. (Common sense??? What’s that???)

Following in the tradition of proponents of Creation Science and Intelligent Design the current breed of so-called right-to-life advocates shamelessly display their lack of intellectual rigor and honesty. They think, for instance, that evolution science somehow supports their beliefs while, actually, it has nothing at all to say on the subject of an embryo’s status.

Indeed the right-to-life point of view was not initiated by science nor was it originally espoused as a religious belief.

The whole idea that life begins at the moment a sperm penetrates an egg was introduced by a conservative politician, Sen. John East of North Carolina, for the political purpose of creating a phantom moral high ground from which to pillory the left. The senator claimed that science supported his view that a zygote was a human being. But, for Senator East and his ilk, science, like the bible, is cherry-picked for whatever can be pressed into service so as to appear to support whatever cockeyed dogma they need to glaze over with the aura of legitimacy.

The left, on the other hand, takes the position that a woman who has an abortion is merely exercising control over her body. But, like the right, they are taking a particular moment and regarding it out of context. Actually, one can better make the case that a woman’s lack of control over her body produces unwanted pregnancies and, thus, a particular need for abortions.

So, the lines were drawn in the political sand with both sides advocating bogus positions. And we have been constantly battered with all the nonsensical arguments from the two sides for decades now with seemingly no sensible perspective in the offing with which to resolve the issue.

This is because politicians are not interested in administering to a civil society. They are interested in power. They seek total domination over the other side, it would seem, at any cost.

That is not, however, achievable in a society with free elections and is, therefore, what might be called a fool’s objective. Our politicians, then, are engaged in an exercise of futility in their quest for party dominance and squander any prospect for promoting social decorum in the process.

In a civil society our focus should not be on questionable concepts that tear a society apart. What we should focus on, whenever possible, are concepts that make sense and can be agreed on by everyone.

And here is what everyone can agree on (not necessarily want to agree on) with regard to the abortion issue;

1. When a sperm penetrates an egg we can all agree that a woman is pregnant. Period. Because that is all we really know. Whether or not a given pregnancy will go full term and produce an actual child is something we are not privy to. There is a likelihood that an actual child will be born but it is not a guaranteed certainty. Miscarriages happen all the time, a stillborn is possible and embryos can be flushed out of a woman’s body before she even knows she’s pregnant.

And this is why it is folly for abortion to be considered murder. It could not be established in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an actual life had been taken. All we can know with absolute certainty is that a pregnancy was ended.

2. Every woman of child bearing years makes a choice every month to be pregnant or not to be pregnant. If birth control is used the choice is, of course, not to be pregnant. If there is no conscious choice to be pregnant the choice is not to be pregnant. If one chooses to leave it up to chance then the choice is to be pregnant. The choice to be pregnant or not is the same choice in regard to an egg cell or an embryo or a developing fetus.

3. If you want believe that it is not just a pregnancy but a life we’re talking about here, then, let’s put it this way. Every month a choice is made to either go ahead with a life or not. Egg cells are placed into fallopian tubes every month for one reason - producing life. To deny the sperm necessary for that to happen, no matter the method, is to deny a life, or at least a possible life, from happening. So, every month one either chooses to go ahead with a life or not. And that is the exact same choice a woman has if she finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy. She can either choose to go ahead with a life or not.

4. Abortion, of course, is not the best method for birth control. I think everyone can agree on that. So, the best way to deal with the abortion issue is to prevent unwanted pregnancies from occurring. And that is where our focus should be as a society, as well as, individually.

Now, one can refuse to agree with the civil approach to this matter. But, one cannot refute the fact that we do live in a civil society and, as such, everyone has a responsibility to promote civility however they can.

So, let’s agree to stuff the whole abortion controversy in a vacuum sealed jar forever and put it on a shelf in a museum for obsolete and groundless debates.

Now, there are those who are in favor of birth control, as in contraception, but are against abortion.

Apparently they make a distinction between an egg cell and a zygote. Perhaps they view contraception as being ok because an egg cell merely represents a potential life and we can’t be sure that it would be successfully fertilized and actually go on to produce a child? However, much the same can be said of a zygote or embryo or fetus - can’t be sure it will successfully gestate and actually go on to produce a child.

At what point in the reproductive process can we really say with absolute certainty that there is an actual child in evidence? That would be at birth.

If you say birth control is ok but abortion is wrong it’s a contradiction because abortion is a method of birth control.

If you want to equate contraception with abortion then you would be obligated to attempt to become pregnant whenever possible.

Birth control, that is, interfering with the reproductive process at whatever juncture, is a common, universal and necessary practice.

And on a final note, a law against abortion could be challenged on constitutional grounds because it would not apply to all women equally. In theory, of course, it would, but not in reality. Women who could afford to would be able to travel elsewhere to have an abortion in a medical facility under the auspices of a licensed physician. Other women who could not afford such a trip would be at the mercy of the proverbial “back alley butchers” or have to resort to using coat hangers on themselves in order to remedy their desperate situation. That is how it was in the days before Roe v Wade when abortion was against the law. To saddle only a certain class of women with the burden of such a draconian law while in effect giving other women a free pass is certainly unconscionable and should certainly be unconstitutional.

Taking risks is perfectly natural for most of the life forms on earth. They have to take risks in order to go on living. The very things they must do in the interest of survival threaten their survival.

A rabbit, for example, has to continually leave the safety of its den and expose itself to predators in order to indulge in the survival practice of eating. It is not unaware of the danger as it is ever scanning its surroundings for approaching predators as it nibbles its food. The danger the rabbit puts itself in must, of course, take a backseat to the necessity of its taking nourishment.

Survivability then is threatened by acts of survival. One cannot go about the business of surviving without putting one’s survival in jeopardy. That, of course, is no reason not to go about pursuing one’s survival.

But, then again, one has no choice in the matter. In order to live one is compelled to eat and in order to eat one must take risks.

One participates in this risk/reward arrangement by virtue of one’s own nature with respect to the natural world – it is all orchestrated by the nature of things. - and Homo Sapiens are no exception.

This state of affairs, being naturally ordained, works best in a natural setting - where all participants are held within the immediate, real-time natural scope of things. Everyone knows how to go about pursuing self-interest and everyone knows the risks involved and it is all wrapped up in a moment to moment existence.

It’s important to note that, while individuals are put at risk, the groups, colonies, tribes etc. are not. The existence of a colony of rabbits, for example, is not threatened by the necessary risk-taking on the part of its individuals.

The same holds true for a primitive tribe of Homo Sapiens. The moment to moment behavior on the part of such a tribe is what assures its existence in perpetuity. The future of the tribe is palpably realized through all of its momentary activities. Natural disasters notwithstanding a tribal people, confident in the pursuit of their short term self-interest, might say, “What sustains us now will sustain us in the future.”

One cannot say the same for civilizations - what sustains them now will not necessarily sustain them in the future. Indeed, what sustains them now can and does threaten their future.

Such has been the case from the onset of civilizations. The city of Ur, for example, where the very agriculture it depended upon for its existence actually sowed the seeds of its destruction.

In their civilized setting the people of Ur were not able to assess their long term self-interest in their short term survival activities with the assurance enjoyed by a primitive tribe. Being unsophisticated about the ways of farming they imagined that all it entailed was plant seed, grow crop, harvest and consume. Ignorant in matters of soil erosion and depletion their once fertile farmland eventually became a barren wasteland and the City of Ur was no more.

The people of Ur thought they were acting in their self-interest. They thought that what sustained them in the present would go on sustaining them in the future. After all, that was their natural inclination. But, unbeknownst to them, civilizations tend to mess with the nature of things in ways that make it difficult to assess long term consequences while pursuing short term interests. This holds true on a collective as well as an individual basis.

Now, again, what all this comes down to is survival. And survival is, of course, uppermost in our self-interest, always was, always will be.

This was a simpler state of affairs in primitive times when basic self-interest was all about basic survival within the symbiotic arrangement of the natural world. What civilizations do in the name of their survival, in the name of their self-interest oftentimes turns out to undermine symbiosis with the natural world. For a primitive tribe it was rather obvious what their self-interest was and what had to be done to pursue it. There were, of course, dangers and risks involved in their survival activities – from predators, for instance, who posed a mortal threat to individuals.

But it was the survival of the tribe that was paramount. The tribe provided the best chance at survival for each of its individual members. Every individual knew that their survival was dependent on the tribe they belonged to and, so, they were naturally inclined to contribute in whatever ways they could to promote the ongoing welfare of the tribe as a whole. There was a natural symbiosis between the tribe and its members that knit them together as a cohesive unit. What was in the self-interest of the individual was in the interest of the tribe and vice versa.

Civilization blows that arrangement apart. Members of civilized societies are cordoned off into separate hierarchical classifications where self-interest becomes problematical. What serves the self-interest of a civilized society does not always serve the interests of of individuals and vice versa.

This has to do with the differences in how one’s membership in a tribe vs a civilized society is contracted. We were compelled by the force of nature to be part of a tribe. That compulsion came from within us and in that sense it was freely chosen. And it was positively reenforced on a daily basis through the palpable benefits of belonging to one’s tribe. There was a real sense of belonging engendered in the crucible of tribal life. In a civilized society, however, one is compelled by forces outside oneself to abide by laws imposed on one by a ruling class. Laws which benefit some at the expense of others.

Contrary to a tribal situation, then, one does not always feel that one’s self-interest is benefited by the civilized society that one is forced to exist in. So, individuals do not necessarily feel themselves to be an intrinsic part of a civilized society as thery once did as members of tribes.

Now, while a civilized society does serve to remove the need to attend to basic survival regimens on the part of its individual members it does not remove their survival instinct. Nor does it remove the risky business involved with survival.

Survival in civilized settings is centered around money. For the most part individuals get money by preforming specialized tasks that contribute to one enterprise or another that supposedly, in turn, contributes to the society as a whole. In other words one serves one’s self-interest by making money working in a company whose business contributes to the GDP. And that is deemed to be a boon to the survival of the society as a whole. But, just as in the City of Ur, where a farm worker was thought to be contributing to the survival of the society as a whole but was actually doing the opposite, a worker in a modern society doing a job in a particular industry that contributes to the GDP may be doing more harm than good as far as the big picture is concerned. A company that’s dumping toxic chemicals in a river, for instance.

As tribal people we could not lose sight of the big picture it was plain to see in everything we did but burrowed into our little civilized cubicles, engaged in our momentary industriousness, mesmerized by the tunnel vision of making money we can and do lose sight of it. And so it becomes problematic to identify what is truly in our self-interest and what is not.

Money is the one and only means of survival. Money engages our survival instinct, as individuals and as individual companies. It engages the survival instinct in a way that can isolate self-interest from the big picture. And, so, a perceived self-interest can trump everything else.

The self-interest of individuals and individual companies they are employed by can become entwined so as to be indistinguishable. But not in the way tribal members are entwined with their tribes, where the self-interest of the one benefits the other. Within a business, for example, an individual’s self-interest can override and damage the interests of the business. And the results can be disastrous.

Inexorably engaged by a survival instinct that is riveted to the idea of making more and more money one becomes disengaged from everything else. Like reality, for instance. And so, a perceived self-interest obscures real self-interest making it very difficult to make sound judgments regarding risk/reward factors of the big picture.

It may be natural to downplay risks in favor of rewards but it’s downright suicidal to ignore them altogether. In the natural world becoming too engrossed in a meal advantages predators - a feeding rabbit, for instance, that ignores its surroundings. In a civilized setting ignoring risk in favor of a perceived self-interest can also have dire consequences.

Companies like Enron, Lehman Brothers, British Petroleum, et al, believed that they were acting in their own self-interest while in retrospect one might think they were hell-bent on destroying themselves. They were operating with respect to a perceived self-interest that undermined real self-interest. If they had been operating with respect to the big picture their real self-interests would have been plain to see.

BP, for instance, would have been extra conscientious in seeing that all emergency safeguards were in place and functioning. Perhaps BP now has a better sense of their real self-interest. Just in terms of the financial loss it has incurred from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico it must be evident that it would have cost far less to have had all safety devices in place and functional rather than having to contend with an out of control gusher a mile under the sea.

It might be too much to ask that BP executives be concerned for the natural environment they operate in and feel remorse at the damage they have caused to the Gulf of Mexico. For them the Gulf is there to serve their business interests.

But, again that is ignoring the big picture. Natural environments are part of the big picture and must be conscientiously considered as part of a truly enlightened and therefore real self-interest.

However, had BP merely been duly concerned with covering their own butts by having all the appropriate safeguards operational then that in turn would have served to protect the natural environment as well. Real self-interest encompasses the big picture.

And the executives at Enron, the smartest guys in the room as they liked to refer to themselves, did they really think that they were operating in their own self-interest? Probably. But it was a delusional self-interest. They replaced their real self-interest with a perceived self-interest that was determined merely by high quarterly earnings, which were the result of cooking the books. They knew the earnings were not based in reality but chose to ignore reality in favor of phantom earnings. Their perceived self-interest then took precedence over their real self-interest. And this, of course, led to the catastrophic collapse of the Enron corporation. If the executives were truly self-interested they would not have been in the business of committing fraud. By operating with respect to perceived self-interest they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. If they had pursued their real self-interests they would have conducted business in a forthright manner, which would have also served the interest of their company and its shareholders. Real self-interest, then, serves the interests of others as well.

Dealing realistically with the healthcare issue would mean having to take into account preventable diseases and the individual behavior that causes them. Such a prospect seems to be anathema to politicians. Jerry Brown, in his bid to become Democratic candidate for president, was once asked at a campaign stop about his position on providing healthcare. His response to the question was, to paraphrase, “You smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, you eat junk food, and you don’t exercise. And you expect us to pay for your medical costs?” Jerry Brown was not nominated as his party’s candidate. Candid responses like his are not vote getters.

Raising the specter of individual culpability in exceedingly high medical costs is, it seems, to be avoided at all costs by politicians of either party. None have mentioned it. On top of that politicians are split on the issue - there are those who want everyone to be dependent on government and those who want everyone enriching the coffers of health insurance companies. And so a realistic even-handed assessment of healthcare reform is not possible. So, you have bills and plans being offered that are subject to endless tweaks for lack of a real solid foundation with which to base them upon.

My proposal for health care reform outlined in my last post is politically unrealistic because it deals realistically with healthcare costs and individual responsibility.

Healthcare is not the only issue which governments are prevented from dealing with realistically. Environmental conditions are another one. , for instance. Environmental degradation is not a matter of ideological perspective. It is what it is. And appropriate measures to reduce it are inarguably clear-cut. But they cannot be enacted because of politically expedient perspectives.

That we want to pursue unhealthy lifestyles and still be guaranteed health and abuse the natural world without adverse consequences points to a fatal flaw in all civilizations - the idea that civilizations are paramount on this earth and that the natural world is there to sustain them. But the reality is that civilizations always were and always will be subject to the natural world. Many civilizations have failed because of their ignorance of that reality and, yet, we still continue to ignore it. Such ignorance is, of course, mandated by all our belief systems.

But nature will have its way and it will not be kind to our civilizations.

There are certain objectives that health care reform must be shaped by. These include bringing costs down, providing individuals with incentive for pursuing healthful lifestyles and providing for universal coverage.

In order to bring costs down measures that are sure to bring costs down must be made part of the reform. Regrettably, such obvious logic needs to be pointed out to the minds of politicians, where vote-getting supersedes all thought processes. This career-minded self-interest on the part of politicians prohibits them from dealing with some salient facts about the ever rising costs of health care. For example, one study has shown that two-thirds of healthcare costs are due to preventable diseases that are linked to tobacco, alcohol, drugs and obesity. Such diseases are preventable through individual behavior modification. Thus, one would reason, the impact of individual behavior on health care costs must be addressed for any comprehensive reform package to be at all effective in its cost cutting objectives, i.e., incentives for individual behavior modification must be included. But the mind-set of politicians prohibits them from making such logical connections.

Another way of bringing health costs down would be to have a single-payer system which would, of course, dramatically decrease administrative expenses for healthcare providers who now have to process a myriad of different systems.

The single payer system should not be administered by the government to protect it from political mindlessness. So, what I propose is a nongovernmental single-payer entity for setting up and processing medical savings accounts for individuals and families and for making payments to health-care providers. It would be a bank whose charter would be to operate a not-for-profit institution on behalf of individuals and health providers. Let’s call it a health facilitation bank. It would handle medical savings accounts exclusively.

Now, it’s important to note that this bank would not actually be making pay-outs to health care providers but would provide documents, like checks, with which account holders would be able to use solely to pay for their medical expenses.

The incentive for individuals to pursue a healthful lifestyle would be that whatever money in their medical savings accounts not spent on medical costs would be theirs to keep. The bank would of course be earning interest on its investments just as a normal bank would but the profits would go back into the health insurance pool and also into the savings accounts as interest earned on individual deposits. That interest would be rather substantial since the bank would be operating as a not-for-profit institution.

Now, the population of the US is approximately 300 million. So, with full participation by every adult and those with children providing an account for each child that would amount to an enormous amount of deposits. An average deposit of say $50 a week would amount to deposits of 15 billion every week, or 780 billion every year. This plus interest on investments equals a considerable pool of money.

Now, individuals would be responsible for paying their own medical bills but they would also be backed up by the bank. For instance, let say I have an account of $10,000 and I have a medical procedure costing $20,000. So, $10,000 out of my account is paid to the health provider and the other $10,000 is paid by the bank. But my account is now overdrawn by $10,000. Now let’s say the bank pays half of what I owe and the rest is paid off by me overtime with a low cost, low interest loan. The loan is paid off by making deposits to my savings account and they would be considered as normal deposits accumulating and earning interest. If over the next ten years or so I have no major medical expenses and my account without the debt would have been $30,000 would actually amount to, say, $25,000.

If an individual opens such a medical savings account at the age of 20, pursues a healthful lifestyle and for the next 30 or so years has minimal medical costs, by age 50 that person would have accumulated a rather large amount of money in their account to take care of any increased medical expenses one might incur in one’s later years. If one acquires a family along the way one would probably put more money in their medical savings account and instill good health habits in their children. Parents would have to pay for their children’s medical expenses but they would also know that the bank would be there to back them up if needed. Of course, the thing to remember here is that with this system medical costs would be much more reasonable than they are today. One’s medical costs would be affordable within one’s budget.

Everyone would be encouraged, or perhaps mandated to open and keep making regular payments into their medical savings account providing the bank with more and more money to invest and to spread around as needed for account holders. A culture of pursuing healthful lifestyles would also be part of the picture. Doctors could retain their fee-for-service arrangements but the bank would also offer bonuses as incentives for doctors to keep costs down while providing quality care.

Medical procedures would be decided upon solely by doctor and patient and would be eligible for financial assistance if needed. Elective surgeries would not. They would not be eligible for any payments issued by the bank to cover a resulting deficit account. Medical treatment needed as a result of smoking, drinking, drug addiction and preventable obesity would also be ineligible for back up funds.

It’s important to note that individual depositors would not be charged for anyone else’s expenses. Whatever subsidies the “bank” would need to cover would be furnished from the general pool. Like any bank, one’s deposits are not kept in a drawer with one’s name on it, everyone’s money is used for bank business while individual accounts still show the full amount deposited along with any interest earned. The “bank” would also be making conservative investments, thus, earning interest on the considerable amount of money that could be used for such. The bulk of that money would increment the general pool along with paying the relatively modest salaries of staff of the non-profit institution.

When pay outs to health care providers were low more money would be available for investment by the bank and one’s money would be earning higher interest. From this it is possible for every individual to develop a sense of being directly connected to the society as a whole. One’s own health and well being would have a positive influence on the health and well being of the whole social organism. The whole society emanates directly from each and every individual.

Tort reform would also have to be part of this package to lessen the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors. Doctors could network with one another for diagnostic and treatment purposes and receive authorization from their patients to proceed as agreed upon. In other words, patients would be brought more into the process of deciding how best to proceed. The patient must put his trust in his doctor’s judgment and be an assenting partner in all procedures and, also, in procedures not utilized.

Egregious malpractice by a doctor would result in the loss of their license to practice medicine.

Another benefit of this system would be to the economy whereas businesses would no longer be paying for employees’ health insurance plans. This would free up a lot of money to invigorate the economy and produce more jobs.

The universe itself is created out of a mass of tiny particles, as is every object in it. A building is comprised of small components, bricks, for example. Anatomical structures are formed from microscopic cells. A social organism should also be structured in this way and anatomical systems can be a useful model in this regard. As Robert Wright puts it in his book, NON ZERO, “Analogies between societies and organisms go back to the beginning of cultural evolutionism. A state bureaucracy is a bit like a brain, and Aztec runners, sending commands to military outposts or distant farmers, are a bit like nerve impulses. That these analogies are easy doesn’t mean they’re worthless.” And now, with our greater understanding of how anatomical structures work and how we are biologically oriented, it might be prudent to view entire societies as actual living organisms subject to the natural scheme of things and view them as behaving in similar fashion to other living organisms.

We now live in an electronic world of information processing. We see everything as information processing and it seems that all of existence has to do with the processing of information in one form or another. And this is how a body politic, a social system, should be perceived as a processor of information. “After all,” writes Tom Peters in a section of his book, Liberation Management, “it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that the human body, the corporation and the economy are ‘nothing but’ information processing machines.” And it is no stretch at all to add to that list, social systems. The human body is an information processing system dealing with the maintenance and coordination of many different functions and organs, as is a social system, and the former can be instructive to the latter in fashioning an optimum operating system for social bodies.

Social bodies are complex entities, difficult and in some cases seemingly impossible to manage efficiently. On the other hand, our anatomies are even more complex and they are organized and managed in exemplary fashion. Of course, our anatomies are not perfect, things can go wrong with them, but for the most part they work quite well.

Overall, a healthy functioning body depends on the healthy function of each and every one of its organs. The body’s organs in turn depend on the healthy function of their individual cells. So, when each and every cell is in good working order the entire organism they incorporate is assured a healthy life.

So too with respect to social bodies; when each and every locality is in good working order the entire social organism they incorporate is assured a healthy life.

The body is instructed to provide for the health and welfare of each and every cell and the cells in turn provide for the healthy existence of the body. And this is also how a social body should work - constructed in regard to providing for the health and welfare of each and every locality while localities in turn provide for the healthy existence of the whole social body. And as each and every cell provides for all of its individual constituents each and every locality should provide the wherewithal for each and every individual to prosper.

An overall synergetic symbiosis created out of individual self-interest. That is a basic feature of life. We can’t expect a social body to exactly mimic it but given a totally transformative makeover it could closely come to resemble it. The desired, and I would think, universal goal here is to strike an ongoing salubrious balance between the self-interest and collective-interest that characterize the social body.

As it is now the self-interest of a powerful few dominates the social landscape everywhere. Whether the power elites are out for themselves or proclaimed do-gooders they thwart the possibility of creating a synergetic symbiosis between the self and the collective. They interfere with the natural confluence of the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic. This is, of course, unavoidable given the structure of social bodies now in place.

In as much as self-interest and collective-interest in the make-up of a social body are naturally mandated we can find it embedded in our social bodies. It works like this; collective interest is created out of a self-interest that is universal - the interest to survive, which amounts to an attraction to that which benefits ones survival. Everyone has an interest in their own survival. In order to survive in a modern society one needs to acquire money, one way or another. This results in the creation of employers and employees, which form collectives in the form of businesses wherein one’s self-interest in making money can be realized. The self-interest in making money results in one’s contributing to the success of a business collective and to the larger social collective through the payment of taxes. The problem is the dynamic is not allowed to operate freely from the bottom up so that the microcosm exerts more influence on the macrocosm rather than the other way around. There is a disconnect between the two that allows for the “Carnegie effect” where those in positions of power feel no allegiance to those who are not. (In reference to the great divide between the rich and the poor the tycoon Andrew Carnegie once quipped, “I am in heaven, they are in hell and that’s the will of God.”)

The microcosm has to be able to hold the macrocosm accountable at all times in every way. This was a major objective of the American Revolution, which got blindsided by the ascendancy of “special interests” looking to satisfy there own self-interest first and foremost without regard for the society as a whole.

The problem, however, is not with self-interest per se. The healthful conditioning properties of the natural world that channeled self-interested instincts and appetites are lost upon us in the confines of a civilized state

Take our appetite for sweet tasting foods, for example. We are all attracted to sweet tasting foods to one degree or another. How we were able to satisfy that appetite in the wild and how it is exploited in a civilized setting can be instructive here.

Honeycomb was an attractive delicacy for a primitive tribe. And in the wild it was there for the taking. But there was a price to pay. In order to get some honey for his tribe a tribesman climbs a tree and hacks away at a beehive with a stick delivering chunks of honeycomb to the ground below where fellow tribe’s people gather them up and bring them back to the rest of the tribe. The cost is multiple bee stings to the attacker of the hive, which dissuades frequent assaults and limits the portions that can be taken at any one time. Thus, in the wild appetites are effectively controlled by the nature of things.

In our civilized states sweets are readily available and easily acquired making overindulgence all too convenient. Appetite is a powerful motivator in the natural world that in a civilized world can become an out of control unhealthful indulgence. We say it is a matter of self-control but controlling an attraction that is linked to one’s survival instinct is a tall order. In the wild our appetites and instincts were plugged into the nature of things and were naturally restricted.

It is a very strong appetite that faces a swarm of angry stinging bees. It is very difficult to come to understand that something that makes so much sense to us, that seems so right, like eating sweet foods, can be so wrong. But our inclination toward eating sweet foods is not wrong at all. The problem is not inside us with what we want to eat but outside us with the products offered. We are not wrong but they, the products, can be wrong. The fault is not in our appetites but in those products that exploit and pervert those appetites.

Our innate inclination for sweet tasting food and the civilized-created-temptations that cater to it is a good, basic example of the convoluted situation our natures generally find themselves in with regard to the refinements of civilization. Instinctively guided cultural refinements can turn our natural appetites into unruly torments. In this convolution we tend to find fault with our natures. We get the idea that we don’t know what’s good for us.

Money exacerbates the situation. Money explodes communities into a compendium of individuals competing in a zero sum game where self-interest can manifest itself as greed. Money becomes the focus of all our appetites. With money we can have whatever we want. Without it we have nothing. We devise ways of getting as much money as possible. With money everything that was once seamlessly integrated in creating a tribal community becomes a particular commodity. Shelter, food, clothing, sex, aggression, intelligence, beauty, cooperation, competition, craftsmanship, knowledge, information, etc., all have a price. They were all, at one time, interlocking parts of a whole working tribe. With money they become disassociated objects that one seeks to sell to the highest bidder. That’s the law of survival where money calls the shots.

Being greedy for money is a result of one’s natural self-interest becoming individualized, isolated and distended by the matrix of civilization. How wrong is it to be greedy for money in an environment where one’s survival is solely dependent on making money?

Instinctually driven to provide shelters that protect us as much as possible from the exigencies of the natural world we have invented civilizations where our instincts, appetites and drives can be driven to distraction. A proper catalyst to bring about the synergistic confluence of individual self-interest is not provided for in our civilizations as it once was in the survival game of the natural world.

Religion attempts to act as that catalyst by declaring war on our instincts. We are taught that our instincts, appetites and drives are bad. Greed is bad. Self-interest is bad. Sexual desire is bad. Our appetite for food is bad. While vows of poverty, self-sacrifice, celibacy, and fasting are good. The world belongs to demons who want to destroy our souls by tempting our evil instincts. Only by denying ourselves the pleasures of the flesh can we survive for eternity. Just as we had to abide by rules and rituals for physical survival in the jungle we have to abide by the rules and rituals of religion for the eternal survival of our souls.

Religion’s great appeal is that it engages us in a game of survival. In the jungle it is good to physically survive and all our instincts are employed for that purpose. In civilization basic physical survival is not an overriding concern and our instincts become separate venues for self-gratification. Religion creates another world which it declares to be the real world where spiritual survival is good and we must deny the physical world along with our instincts as much as possible in order to achieve that survival. Of course, religious institutions don’t always practice what they preach as they cozy up to the rich and powerful, for instance, for their own physical benefit.

In civilized societies there is a need for a catalyst to mold our instincts into a positive creative force. But declaring those instincts evil is perhaps no longer the way to accomplish that. If it ever was. But traditional religions were born in ignorance. They didn’t know any better. Basically, our instincts are good but they need to have a vigorous conditioning process through which they are channeled into enriching endeavors. We don’t need to change ourselves we need to change how our civilizations are configured. We need to change the way in which our instincts are channeled through the social matrix. We need to change things with respect to present knowledge rather than continue on as we are with respect to the ignorance of the past.

To begin with we all need to develop a very strong sense that each and every one of us is the source of social order. That law, order and morality are concepts that have arisen and arise from within our very selves. That the social order we are subject to is of our own making and not something that needs to be imposed on us authoritatively from above.

In subsequent posts I will detail how this can be accomplished.

As it is now, the prevalent social dynamic is one in which members of particular associations tend to regard their group’s survival as paramount over recognizing and maintaining their proper role within the overall scheme of things. Examples of such behavior are rampant and indulged in by whatever kind of association one can think of be it a government agency, a business, a political party, a street gang, a religious organization, etc. We have, for instance, quasi-religious groups, either godly or secular, tearing at each other’s throats to secure some illusive high moral ground as their exclusive territory; right-to-life v pro-choice, for instance. Also, there are the political parties who contend that their ideology provides the only worthwhile perception to the absolute exclusion of all others and, thus, we forego the possibility of forging the super-vision necessary for more effective governance. We have bureaucracies like Health and Human Services, better known as Welfare, which exacerbate the very conditions they were formed to alleviate so as to ensure their own survival at the expense of those they were supposed to serve. We have street gangs like the Crips and Bloods, which are, perhaps, the most brutal manifestations of this pathologically insular mind set but they are merely conforming to the behavior of the society at large, i.e., their associations are the only ones that matter. And we have the media providing the asylum where all this pathology becomes institutionalized.

Competing factions, such as Right-to-life vs Pro-choice, the Crips vs the Bloods and such, can serve to check one another so that neither side will become all powerful but what cannot be checked is the continuing deterioration of the social fabric these contentious groups cause.

It seems like all of our institutions lack a sense of propriety in managing themselves in relation to other institutions and to the overall social organism to which they all belong. Without this holistic sense of things it is, of course, impossible to create and maintain a wholesome social/political system wherein all organs can achieve their proper goals while at the same time contributing to the health and well being of the whole society as they go about their business. With a sense of social propriety, a symbiotic confluence of all participating entities can be created that promotes particular and overall conditions of synergistic vitality. This is what all groups and individuals need to be interested in promoting in spite of their differences. This would make it possible for everyone to contribute to the integrity of the whole social organism while at the same time serving their own self-interests as well.

Is this an unrealistic ideal? All ideals are by definition unrealistic. They are unreachable goals worth striving to approximate. The ideal is to keep trying to get as close to the ideal as possible.

The merging of self-interest and common interest, however, is not some abstract alien idea that needs to be artificially imposed upon people; it is in our natures to be so oriented. The individual members of primitive tribes work for the welfare of the tribe because it is vitally connected to their own self-interest. In our more advanced societies we have individuals working for the common interest of various associations, or “tribes”, which are extensions of their self-interest, be it a business, a political party, a religious sect, etc. And, though, one may also believe that one is working for the betterment of the whole society through one’s associations, this does not always prove to be the case. A business can provide products and jobs but be harmful to the environment. Political parties in seeking their own advantage can interfere with establishing and promoting optimum social conditions. Religious leaders who insist that their beliefs should be the law of the land create conflicts in society that threaten the ongoing cohesion of the overall community to which they belong and which is based upon religious freedom. We can lose sight of the larger picture as we become overly obsessed with our own peephole view of the world. The question for society is how to manage and contain all its various groups in a coherent form.

Soviet communism attempted this through coercion from the top. The State had absolute power to create the perfect society and it botched the job. Attempting to micromanage a society from the top down is a flagrant violation of the nature of things. A macrocosm cannot create the microcosm. The microcosm creates the macrocosm. This is the natural condition of things and applicable to social organisms as well as any other structure. Trying to form a society the other way, from the top down, makes for unwieldy top-heavy structures that are impossible to balance and eventually must fall apart for that very reason. The social structure of the United States is also much too top heavy and seems to be losing the battle in its continual struggle to maintain a pragmatic balance. There is a lot of checking and finger pointing going on but nothing much to promote balance.

Proportion and symmetry are part and parcel of the concept of balance and these three elements might serve us better as societal goals than do the concepts of justice, equality and liberty. Of course, balance, proportion and symmetry do not have the seductive power as the concepts of justice, equality and liberty do, but without the former principles in view the latter ones are mere mirages that torment us with continual disillusionment. But, again, balance, proportion and symmetry can only be achieved by allowing the microcosm to form the macrocosm as in the balance, proportion and symmetry achieved through anatomical organization.

Comparing the dynamics of the human anatomy to a social organism can serve to shed some light on the subject. In imagining the body politic of the United States as a human body the federal government would be its brain. As such, it is presently seen as an enormous monstrosity, grotesquely out of proportion to the social body that struggles to support it. It is a brain riddled with tumorous bureaucracies, all swollen out in cancerous profusion that consider themselves to be the whole purpose of the society they feed upon. They consider their existence to be vitally important. More so than the vitality of the whole organism. Nothing should happen unless it is first processed through their corridors. This would be comparable to an individual, who, through some weird genetic program, designed a brain to micromanage every detail of bodily function while interfering with much of the body’s necessary autonomous activity in the process.

The role of the brain in one’s body is to coordinate, synchronize and modify certain bodily conditions by being constantly alert and immediately and accurately responsive to them via the body’s nervous system. The messages to, from and within the brain must be handled swiftly and efficiently in order to maintain a healthy condition throughout the body. If, however, as it is with the federal government, communications are forced to slither around cancerous labyrinths oozing out ineffectual, contradictory, counterproductive signals then the condition is one of ill health. The brain is at odds with itself and is unable to function as a coordinated coordinating unit.

Now, this is not a prelude to a conservative harangue about the need for less government. No. Arguments for more or less government tend to obscure and distract from the rationale of establishing and maintaining a government proportionate to the body it is part of - which must now and always be the desired objective.

For this objective to be realized the government, of course, must change. Not just in the perennial transition of power, which is a meaningless exercise for entrenched bureaucracies and corporate power. Not just in terms of cosmetic change but in terms of a complete dismantling and re-creation of all the organs of the body politic on an on going basis. That is, continually, periodically taking our institutions apart and putting them back together again, forming and reforming them constantly in ways best suited to deal with the ever changing social configurations that have been consistently outmaneuvering our misshapen, overweight body politic for decades.

For this to happen, changes need to be made in government similar to those that have been and are being made in business. Namely, the transformation of linear, hierarchical bureaucratic dinosaurs into spatial arrangements of small, discrete, fleet of foot components able to respond and transform themselves as volatile social, economic and environmental conditions require.

As we have seen, it is the natural order of things to develop out from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The microcosm forms the macrocosm. Indeed, everything is created in like manner. The complex intricacy of the human body is formed and maintained through the autonomous networking of individual cells. And, in turn, a system of small integrated components is what we should be looking at for the re-creation of the social organism.

Basically what we have realized is that we are not in the driver’s seat. We cannot make things conform to how we might imagine they should be. I refer you to the Soviet Union, for example. Also, we used to make boasts about conquering nature. We were, for instance, going to rid the world of disease once and for all! And now here we are horribly confounded by AIDS, untreatable TB and other diseases resistant to current methods of treatment.

We may find ways of genetically altering the agents of these diseases in order to defeat them but that will probably open the door to the rise of other viruses that will be able to compromise our genetic code in insidious ways - perhaps causing horrific mutations to take hold in the blink of an eye.

Who knows for sure, but that is the way the arms race between us and the viral world seems to go.

Our belief systems are also out of place. We have a totally wrongheaded Hobbesian view of them. We are operating under the impression that to be human means to exist in opposition to nature. We believe that religion was sent to us from some other world, some divine world that instructs us to take on the mantle of divinity in contradiction to our natural inclinations.

But religions were actually formed in opposition to the effects that civilized constructs have had on the nature of human beings. Our natural inclinations were once effectively modified and advantageously conditioned by the natural world which prompted us to form cohesive social groups that benefitted our survival. Freed from the constraints of the natural world by the imposition of civilizations our instincts, drives and appetites needed to be harnessed by some reasonable facsimile of the natural realm that attempted to match its conditioning power.

To the extent that religions are mock-ups of the natural state they are all the same.

Religion attaches self-interest to an after life which is good while self-interest in this life is bad.

But that’s looking at self-interest erroneously as some kind of isolated factor that needs to be dealt with in an exclusive manner.

In reality, however, we see that self-interest forms a natural dynamic with collective interests and we need to rearrange things, rearrange everything with reference to that dynamic.

This, along with the fact that everything is made-up from small discrete units, is the basis for the vision of things unfolding here in The Big Picture.

Collective-interest would be realized by giving free reign to self-interest - an enlightened self-interest that is not regarded as inherently evil and is immanently connected with collective-interests.

One’s self-interest is realized through collective-interests and collective-interest is realized through self-interest. All is realized from the microcosm on an individual basis inexorably connecting each and every individual to the society-at-large which is a direct expression of everyone’s self-interest.

Self-interest is dependent on collectives. The condition of the collective must be kept viable by the self-interested parties involved in forming the collective for their own self-interest.

Our self-interest needs to be released from grand institutions that claim to be operating on behalf of our self-interest while actually using us to pursue their own.

Individual self-interest left, in effect, alone and naked would soon join with the enlightened self-interest of others to form collectives that would genuinely benefit self-interest.

That is the recipe for a far less convoluted and much more user-friendly social system that will be explored further in subsequent posts.