Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

Drepung shrugged. “We are not sure he is still alive. Our informants have not been able to find him in the way they found me. So he is missing. Someone said, if he is alive, they will bring him up stupid.”

Charlie shook his head. It was ugly stuff. Not that it didn’t fit right in with centuries of bitter Chinese-Tibetan intrigue, ranging from propaganda attacks to full-on war—and now, for the previous half century, a kind of slow-motion genocide, as the Tibetans were both killed outright, and overwhelmed in their own land by millions of Han colonials. The amazing thing was that the Tibetan response had been as nonviolent as it had been. Maybe a full-on terrorist campaign or an insurrection would indeed have gotten them farther. But the means really were the ends for these guys. That was actually kind of an amazing thought, Charlie found. He supposed it was because of the Dalai Lama, or because of their Buddhist culture, if that wasn’t saying the same thing; they had enough of a shared belief system that they could agree that going the route of violence would have meant losing even if they had won. They would get there on their own terms, if they could. And so Drepung had been snatched out of captivity with a kind of Israeli or Mission Impossible deftness, and now here he was, out in the world. Taking the stage in front of 13,000 people with the Dalai Lama himself. How many there had known what they were seeing?

“But Drepung, don’t the Chinese know who you are?”

“Yes. It is pretty clear they do.”

“But you’re not in danger?”

“I don’t think so. They’ve known for a while now. I am a kind of topic in the ongoing negotiations with the Chinese leadership. It’s a new leadership, and they are looking for a solution on this issue. The Dalai Lama is talking to them, and I have been involved too. And now Phil Chase has been made aware of my identity, and certain assurances have been given. I have a kind of diplomatic immunity.”

“I see. And so—what now? Now that the Dalai Lama has been here, and Phil has endorsed his cause too?”

“We go on from that. Parts of the Chinese government are angry now, at us and at Phil Chase. Parts would like the problem to be over. So it is an unstable moment. Negotiations continue.”

“Wow, Drepung.”

Frank said, “Is it okay if we keep calling you that?”

“No, you must call me Your High Holiness.” Drepung grinned at them, slapped a paddle to spray them. Charlie saw that he was happy to be alive, happy to be free. There were problems, there were dangers, but here he was, out on the Potomac. They spread back out and paddled in to shore.

CUT TO THE CHASE

Today’s post:

I’ve been remembering the fear I had. It’s made me think about how a lot of the people in this world have to live with a lot of fear every day. Not acute fear maybe, but chronic, and big. Of course we all live with fear, you can’t avoid it. But still, to be afraid for your kids. To be afraid of getting sick because you don’t have health care. That fear itself makes you sick. That’s fifty million people in our country. That’s a fear we could remove. It seems to me now that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be removing all the fears that we can. There will always be basic fears we can’t remove—fear of death, fear of loss—but we can do better on removing the fear of destitution, and on our fear for our kids and the world they’ll inherit.

One way we could do that would be to guarantee health insurance. Make it a simple system, like Canada’s or Holland’s or Denmark’s, and make sure everyone has it. That’s well within our ability to fund. All the healthiest countries do it that way. Let’s admit the free market botched this and we need to put our house in order. Health shouldn’t be something that can bankrupt you. It’s not a market commodity. Admitting that and moving on would remove one of the greatest fears of all.

Another thing we could do would be to institute full employment. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people could offer jobs to everyone who wants one. It would be like the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, only more wide-ranging. Because there’s an awful lot of work that needs doing, and we’ve got the resources to get things started. We could do it.

One of the more interesting aspects of full employment as an idea is how quickly it reveals the fear that lies at the heart of our current system. You’ll notice that anytime unemployment drops below 5 percent the stock market begins to flag, because capital has begun to worry that lower unemployment will mean “wage pressure,” meaning management faces a shortage in supply of labor and has to demand it, has to bid for it, pay more in competition, and wages therefore go up—and profits down.

Think for a minute about what that means about the system we’ve agreed to live in. Five percent of our working population is about ten million people. Ten million people out of jobs, and a lot of them therefore homeless and without health insurance. Destitute and hungry. But this is structural, it’s part of the plan. We can’t hire them without big businesses getting scared at the prospect that they might have to compete for labor by offering higher wages and more benefits. So unemployment never dips below 5 percent without having a chilling effect on the market, which depresses new investments and new hiring, and as a result the unemployment rate goes back up. No one has to say anything—it works as if by itself—but the fear keeps being created and profits stay high. People stay hungry and compliant.

So essentially, by these attitudes and responses, big business and stock owners act as a cartel to keep the economy cranking along at a high rate but with unemployment included as an element, so that the bottom wage earners are immiserated and desperate, and the rest of the wage earners will take any job they can get, at any wages, even below a living wage, because that’s so much better than nothing. And so all wage earners and most salary earners are kept under the thumb of capital, and have no leverage to better their deal in the system.

But if government of the people, by the people, and for the people were offering all citizens employment at a real living wage, then private business would have to match that or they wouldn’t be able to get any labor. Supply and demand, baby—and so the bids for labor would get competitive, as they say. That all by itself would raise the income and living standards for about 70 percent of our population faster than any other single move I could think of. The biggest blessing would be for the lowest 30 percent or so—what’s that, a hundred million people? Or could we just say, working America? Or just America?

Of course it’s a global labor market, and so we would need other countries to enact similar programs, but we could work on that. We could take the lead and exert America’s usual heavyweight influence. We could put the arm on countries not in compliance, by keeping out investment capital and so on. Globalization has gotten far enough along that the tools are there to leverage the whole system in various ways. You could leverage it toward justice just as easily as toward extraction and exploitation. In fact it would be easier, because people would like it and support it. I think it’s worth a try. I’m going to go to my advisors and then Congress to discuss it and see what we can do.

Previous post:

People have been asking me what it’s like to get shot. It’s pretty much as you’d expect. It’s bad. It’s not so much the pain, which is too big to feel, you go into shock immediately, at least I did—I’ve hurt more than that stubbing my toe. It’s the fear. I knew I’d been shot and figured I was dying. I thought when I lost consciousness that would be it. I knew it was in my neck. So that was scary. I figured it was over. And then I felt myself losing consciousness. I thought, Bye, Diane, I wish I had met you sooner! Bye, world, I wish I were staying longer! I think that must be what it’s going to be like when it really does happen. When you’re alive you want to live.