2003-05-01|1:26 p.m.
I took this intro biology class in college about two years ago. The professor, an awesome Norwegian man named Tor with an impressive beard, explained that the phrase �survival of the fittest� is often used incorrectly in context. People often use it to describe the individual organism and its strength to survive. This is wrong. Fitness, in the biological/Darwinist meaning, is an organism�s ability to pass on its genetic material through reproduction. It�s less about the individual, and more about the doin� it and makin� babies.
In my very first political science class at UCSD I learned about the �principal-agent dilemma.� The principal is you, the voter. The agent is Bush, and other politicians that we employ in our democracy. And basically, a democracy is the right to employ someone for the job of organizing the community in which you live. And because it would be chaotic for everyone to decide on every issue, we choose people to do the decision making for us. We choose them, hopefully, to create a level of conformity for a group of people and to make decisions on issues we don�t typically know enough about.
I like the guy-with-the-broken-car-goes-to-the-mechanic example to explain this relationship. The guy with the car is the voter and the mechanic is the politician. The guy takes his car to the mechanic for any of the following reasons: he doesn�t know how to fix the car, he doesn�t have the time, or just doesn�t want to. The mechanic is specialized in fixing cars and does it for a living. The mechanic will fix the car for money and the owner trusts that the mechanic will do the job. The owner has two options, both rather pointless, to ensure that the mechanic will do the job. He has to watch the job being done (but that will eat up his time) and he has to learn how to fix cars to know what is going on (but then he could just fix the car himself). All kinds of possible problems arise in this principal-agent relationship:
- the mechanic could know nothing about fixing cars.
- the mechanic could know enough about cars to fool people into getting work done they don�t need.
- the mechanic could be receiving money or free tools/parts from AC Delco every year in exchange for their endorsement (which means you might be buying something you don�t want to).
- the mechanic could just dislike you.
Think about how this is like the relationship between voters and politicians and how that relationship has even more problems. Think about the argument for the war that claims that Bush is protecting us by not explaining important details like why Iraq was a threat and where these WMDs are. The agent�s agenda isn�t clear because he has no transparency. Sometimes, when we are lucky, we have think tanks and political groups that do all the monitoring work for us. But, think about that too, these groups just mean employing even more agents to watch the other agents. The problem compounds itself.
One of my biggest qualms is with political language which in the mechanic analogy could be mechanic jargon.
The tricky mechanic might say, �I have to order a special left handed wrench to get at that overhead muffler bearing bolt. It�s gonna take 3-4 weeks and cost 50 bucks extra.�
Uh huh. Hand over money and trust.
And the Republican representative, Goodlatte, from Virgina might travel down to Oklahoma bringing his National Right-to-Work law (H.R. 1109) and say, �The National Right to Work Act, which I also sponsored in the 104th, 105th, and 106th Congresses, would restore the system of voluntary unionism that the founders of American labor unions originally intended. Because of a law passed by Congress in 1935, unions can currently force both union and non-union workers to pay union dues in order to get or keep a job. Then the unions use the collected dues for political and other purposes without the permission of the worker. My bill, H.R. 1109, would repeal that section of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that allows this kind of forced-dues unionism. Under H.R.1109, workers would be given the right to choose for themselves whether or not to join a union or pay union dues, a right Congress never should have taken away in the first place.�
Uh huh. Hand over job and trust.
And that�s what the Oklahoma State Senate did when it approved the measure 31 to 17 for a public referendum to place a right-to-work provision in the state Constitution.
But, there�s a reason that a few people, including the 3,000 that rallied in Oklahoma City on March 13th of last year, got upset about this measure. The measure, especially how it�s titled sounds nice. Everyone wants the right to work. But, what does this mean exactly? This legislative initiative for the "right to work" translates into nothing more than the "right to lower wages" or the "right to work for less," because it destroys the power of the union. And yes, more people are employed through this initiative, but not for the wages that the positions once paid. It�s much like Clinton�s worker�s plan in his term which created 70,000 new jobs, almost all of which were minimum wage. Who cares if you have a job if it cannot cover the bills and the mortgage payment? Well, with the surplus of jobs (if you can call it that) perhaps you can work two or three to cover those obligations now. Forget raising kids; they�ve got TV.
So, I have a problem with the way things are communicated. It�s all in a language that is purposely meant to be deceitful. And it all makes sense that it is. Politicians want re-election, prestige, and/or in some dirty cases to make more money than the actual job offers�all things that mean that they need you to like them. The primary problem of the principal-agent dilemma is that the agent will try to do the very minimum to please the principal. It�s less costly for the agent to just fool you into thinking he�s doing the right thing by you. Right to Work is an example.
�The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.��Orwell.
Oklahoma is the 22nd state to enact that initiative.
Bush is coming to San Diego (well, at least just off its shore) to announce our victory of the war. Too bad I�ll be in class, on solid ground, studying about the politics of regulation while he dusts his hands off of the whole thing. I would have liked to have had the chance to ask him personally who the next country is that will help us forget the obligation to rebuild in Iraq; much like what Iraq was to Afghanistan.
Anyone that is interested in seeing any of the movies that A has made (they�re really awesome) you can contact me through AIM, ICQ, or email. I suggest it. We�ll figure out a way to transfer the file, I am sure.
I also have one song a friend made that is really, really good. I can throw that in there too!
*Special thanks to my professors and TAs for teaching me crap and to Steve, who helped me with the mechanic jargon. this time last year