Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 January 2007 13:32:25
I made an unjustified claim.
I don't think it was an unjustifiable claim, just one that I didn't justify at the time. Ee called my bluff and ever since I've been frantically thinking how to explain the justification. So here goes.
I claimed that those 8-items-or-less (shouldn't it be fewer?) queues in the supermarket were a manifestation of the thatcherite (no she bloody well doesn't deserve a capital - the only capital she deserves is punishment) destruction of society. So why?
Now, in my line of work, if I'm trying to relate two things, it's best and neatest to start with one and gently re-work it until you get to the other. But sometimes that's too hard so you have to start with something else that, it will turn out, is kind of in the middle. Firstly you re-work that thing until you get one of the things you want to relate, and then you re-work that thing until you get the other thing you're trying to relate. Thus both are related to your intermediary and so, consequently, related to each other. It sounds messy and it's not as clean, but sometimes it's the best choice. I think that's what I've got to do here, so I'm not going to start with baskets or society, but with insurance.
Insurance is so complicated and yet so simple. Put simply, statistically it's practically guaranteed that in the next 24 hours 200 houses are going to get broken into and have all their contents stolen. (Do I need to point out that I'm making these numbers up? No, I didn't think so.) Option 1, which we could call the capitalist-fascist option, is that the 200 home-owners each have to pay whatever huge sum is necessary to replace their belongings, and nobody else pays a thing. Option 2, which we could call the socialist-"there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I" option, says that the cost should be spread over everyone in the country. In fact, we could just do that now - it's easy to figure out the average cost of the belongings in a house, so multiply that by 200 and divide by the number of people in the country, then everyone pays that sum into a pot and, over the next 24 hours, the 200 people unlucky enough to have their house broken into use the money in the pot to replace their stuff. So everyone is equally out of pocket and the 200 don't suffer disproportionately. Some might call this fair, but some wouldn't. But at heart we have a choice: we either take the point of view that society exists and we should look out for each other and try and spread the cost of unpleasant incidents, or we take the view that every man is an island, and why should I pay for your problems. Philosophically this is strongly tied to the dichotomy that a person's fate is purely determined by chance (which underlies socialism) or purely down to their own choice (the Conservative view).
In fact, there are lots of reasons for changing this insurance model slightly. Firstly, if I spend the money to upgrade my security, then shouldn't I pay less into this pot than someone who habitually leaves their front door open? And if I live in a country (such as, hypothetically, let's say one called Selaw or Dnaltocs) where people are nice and less likely to break in and steal my stuff, then shouldn't I pay a smaller premium than, say, the residents of that crime-stricken place Dnalgne. I have to say, I think we' ve been accustomed (through at least 18 years of propaganda) to accept these arguments. But how about if the person who leaves their front door open has low-level Alzheimers and simply can't remember to lock their door or even shut it? Should they be punished for having that disease? And aren't the residents of Dnalgne being punished enough already - why should they also have to pay extra? I have to say, these counter arguments are consistently suppressed as part of the long-term thatcherite programme of breaking down society. As Major put it - "Condemn more and understand less". What a lovely, simple world-view. Don't ask whether the person has Alzheimers, just condemn them. Don't ask if there's a reason that bloke in the gutter is homeless (and certainly don't ask if there's any connection with the factory where he used to work shutting last year), just condemn him.
(Incidentally, insurance companies have an interesting approach to discrimination. In most walks of life it's generally accepted that treating somebody more harshly purely on the basis of their gender is illegal. Not in insurance. On average female drivers have fewer accidents so I, as a male, have to pay higher insurance. Just because of my gender. Not because I am more likely to have an accident, just because males are more likely to. A charitable person would call that stereotyping, a less charitable person would call a spade a spade and name it sex discrimination. And is anybody raising a fuss about this, or the innumerable other such instances?)
And this philosophy manifests itself, albeit in a fairly tame form, in those supermarket queues. Think about it for a minute - there's a basic notion of fairness underlying all queuing systems: if person A joins the queue before person B, then person A should get served before person B. Is that notion in dispute? Is it debatable? Can you argue that it's not fair? Well, it would seem that yes, it is in dispute, it is debatable and, in fact, many people seem to think it's unfair. For if person B happens to only need a few items (let's say 7) and person A happens to need more (let's say 10, and to clarify things let's just suppose it's because whereas person B is single, person A is looking after his mother who has Alzheimers), then we all now accept that person B should be able to join a fast queue and get served before person A. Why? What bloody justification is there for that? The only argument seems to be "Well, why should person B wait while person A is served and all 10 items are dealt with?" to which the obvious response is "Why? Simply because person A got there first - what more reason is needed?" The fact that there's such an easy response shows that we're not asking the right question. And the right question is why this system is accepted. And the answer is because we're happy to view A and B as citizens of unequal merit - citizen B being more deserving than A because B inconveniences fewer people (by not slowing the queue down so much). Because we accept the thatcherite breakdown of society we are happy to view A as simply less important than B, and we're happy to let A be walked all over so that B can get home sooner.
And what I hate is the fact that this needs to be stated. The fact that we've all gone and bloody well forgotten what fairness is. The fact that we unthinkingly accept B getting served before A and don't even consider how unfair it is. What I resent is how successful that cow was in wrecking the society that had been built up so caringly after the war. Grrrr.