The Surrealism of the “Building That” Debate

Why Must We Thank the Abstract First?  It Can't Say "You're Welcome," but its Employees Can Demand More in Its Name!

 

I waited until after the 2012 Presidential election to write this.  Because he's the victor, I'll focus primarily on Obama's so-called "Building That" speech in Roanoke, VA on 7/13/12:

 

Surrealism:  "having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic" dictionary.com

I can declare with a great amount of certainty that yes, people are not the only builders of things.  We “live” with the results of past action and that includes the physical landscape and the debris left behind by humans and other natural causes.  Natural forces, like sedimentation, shape the landscape in ways that we can use, that we’re unaware of, or in a way that is a barrier to our physical bodies.  Animals also alter the landscape.  For example, termites construct giant structures with their vomit, beavers dam rivers, or herds of elephants knock down forests providing habitats for smaller creatures.  And maybe a robot society inhabits planets in other universes and individual robots out there build things too.  But, we cannot mind-warp our human selves into termites, beavers, or sedimentary streams.  At least I can't.  And I don't feel the need to credit sedimentation or natural disasters either.

Thus, in 2012 USA, governments and businesses are abstract creations of the human mind, people acting somewhat collectively according to their flawed individual perception of laws, "society," and "tradition." "Governments" or "businesses" can’t really build anything either, it's the people who believe they are part of those abstractions.  I know this is quite surreal, but this is a waste of time debate.

Why do we have the government abstraction? Philosophically, it is so individuals can imperfectly conform their lives to a series of imperfect rules thus making difficult individual lives hopefully just a little better in some geographical area.  We (probably) give the government employees our resources (now mostly currency) to do things for us and they give us imperfect results.  The purpose of government is to do things we've paid it and instructed it to do, though this is not an ideal world, so no abstraction's human-made purposes can ever be entirely met.

Why do we pay taxes?  If you pay, that is because laws have been written to "protect" us and do things for us collectively with pooled money, so we give up some of our limited resources so other people perform these duties/services for us.  If taxpayers are giving their limited resources to government employees to do things like building bridges for us to use, why do we have to give credit to government for planning the construction projects we've paid individuals to complete?  Ridiculous.

OBAMA: “......You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there....... If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

 

My main problem with Obama's argument is one of credit.  Why credit the abstract first over individual success, the rough and tumble hard-work needed to succeed with "business" relationships?  That question can probably be answered first by defining success, something subjective yes, but would you rather credit yourself on what you've accomplished or some word on a page?  Or credit someone who believes they're the "government" because they get a paycheck that,  however small your individual taxpayer contribution, comes from your limited resources?  

Also, Obama fails to separate the public versus private abstractions and then accurately explain the relationship of U.S. citizens to THEIR government.  His criticism is that government programs directly build things, whether physical as in roads and bridges, or metaphorical as in "educated" minds.  Accordingly, he feels what's built  is necessary for citizens to "succeed" and something citizens should appreciate.  Therefore, because of this systems' necessity, more taxpayer money is required for roads, bridges, firemen, and teachers' pay to continue success.

Yet, Federal programs are just creations of the human mind, put into physical action only by human beings.  A program can't build a bridge.  And we can't mind-warp into some concept like "government" to receive the credit Obama wants to take on its behalf!  What Obama misses is that the PUBLIC pays for or already paid for those services and human-built structures! So, why must we credit the success of US citizenry to those public EMPLOYEES we're already paying to complete their jobs?  Ridiculous.  We go into debt as communities.  We sacrifice what we have to pay experts to do this.  Because Obama believes he represents all positive aspects of "government," why does he deserve credit for individual efforts?  Nonsense.


Mitt Romney ran a "corporation," Bain Capital, where a group of people legally agreed to engage in the "corporate rescue business."  Failing "businesses" agreed to pay or give up resources (they're failing because individuals were unable to adapt and out-compete etc.).  Mitt Romney's "corporation" performed its services and received its payments.  Some of these collective groups acting legally were able to sell more "built" things, like staplers at "Staples."  Other businesspeople were incapable of competing and they failed.  With most private "enterprises," you can pay for a service or not, you can seek out a competitive legal relationship, say "Office Max" instead of Staples, or stick with what your businespersons are providing you.  With PUBLIC abstractions, like "government," there are no other LEGAL options.  The only way to seek better results LEGALLY is to vote for people to imperfectly represent your ideas, and as one citizen of millions of others.  And people living in the "USA" have layers of representation where people thousands of miles away may make decisions that affect your resources, and you might disagree with the decision, yet you might have no way to vote or not vote to influence the outcome.

What is the exact "help" a bridge in Washington state provides to someone starting a business relationship in NY to sell staplers?  And if we can't precisely locate that credit without writing a dissertation in economics, why does it make more sense to credit the PUBLIC "abstraction" and not our time-consuming and back-breaking efforts first?

Obama “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

 

ME: "Thank us and maybe pay us more or see how you like it without us!"  An important reason we're a separate nation in 2012 from 18th-century Great Britain is that from then until today, people living in the "USA" debate the role of "government," their representation, the amount of resources they provide to "government employees," whether as kings then or public employees now.  We do this as individuals because there are limited resources and we guard ourselves and what we think we possess against others' unwarranted seizure.  Rather than having a Crown telling us what's important, today, we elect or select government employees through a complicated system, and pay them to do things imperfectly, but in a way that I'm assuming most US citizens seem to like better than the way the18th-century British parliamentary monarchy did things.

Today, Obama is an elected President and employee of a "democratic-Republic" and he is quite wrong about who deserves credit for the firefighting service, the difference between the public and private abstractions, and this whole debate in general.  Why do we pay firefighters if we're going to have to fight fires as individuals as he says?  Of course that would "be a hard way to fight a fire," although if you can put a small fire out with a fire extinguisher you'd save scarce local resources. Others argue that if taxpayers don't like the actions of a fire department or think their teachers aren't doing a good enough job, then why don't the questioning taxpayers see how they like it when their house is on fire and no one responds.  Or maybe, how would they like to let their children remain stupid if they don't support higher teacher pay?  Can I have my money back if complaining got my house burned down?  Can I have my child's mind back and the money I've sunk into it?

I also believe that any public employee who does not perform their job deserves termination.  They are OUR PUBLIC employees and we as taxpayers (their bosses) have NO CHOICE to take our services elsewhere because of the Constitution and other laws.  We can't try to contract with the government of China to put a fire out in a municipal district in the USA and to do so, we would have to pay taxes, fulfill the obligations--and certainly get more benefits of Chinese citizenship--to get full Chinese government services.  So, in country with a completely opposite "tradition," why should we be forced to pay for US services  no matter the result, and suffer threats from our employees that we'll have to fight fires on our own? Ridiculous.  Obama has no business suggesting to his employers that services are going to have to be individually managed if he doesn't get what he wants.  He shouldn't be able to fire my house!  Such employees do deserved to be fired themselves!

Credit for "building that" goes to the "taxpayer" before the government abstraction.

Source: 

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia

The “Corporate Personhood” Abstraction: Citizens United and Collective Free Speech

Citizens United was a Supreme Court case in 2010 that made limits on certain corporate expenditures during elections unconstitutional.  A video titled "Hillary: the Movie" was produced by a non-profit group of people before the 2008 Democratic primary for President.  The production received most of its funding through private donations, but it also received money from for-profit corporations (see Citizens United).  The producers ran into legal problems when they sought to distribute their film through "Video on Demand" during the federally monitored election time.

The movie sought to attack Hillary Clinton and influence the 2008 electorate not to vote for her because the producers believed she had a terrible career and she would offer an ominous future for America if she became President.  The producers' suit against the Federal Elections Commission (F.E.C.), the part of the government that monitors public communication, claimed that the government's rules concerning non-candidate speech were unconstitutional because they prevented its free exercise.  Furthermore, they argued that the F.E.C. should not judge the CONTENT of something like a political video because that "chills" the ability of citizens to speak freely.  A 5-4 Supreme Court largely agreed with the producers in that they could spend "certain portions" of their funds to express their free speech rights.

Criticism of this decision revolves around attacking the abstraction "corporate personhood."  I argue that "corporate personhood" has little basis in reality and fundamentally misses the legal precedents concerning free speech, freedom to contract, and freedom of association that flow from this decision and its precedents.  All three of those "rights" are abstractions yes, but ones that come from constitutional amendments and have been explained through literally thousands of pages of court decisions.  Precedence gives free-speech and association case law some concreteness in that real people can understand and then use them to make real-world decisions.  Critics argue that Political Action Committees (P.A.C.'s) will influence the public in some "negative" way.  Perhaps that might be so, depending on which PAC's you view as harmful to "democracy" and thus deserving of severe government oversight.  However, I argue that this judges the CONTENT of the associated group's speech, meaning a government organization is defining what is and is not acceptable group political speech beyond all precedence because it is defining speech as political or not-political.

In short, I believe that there are two real solutions.  There should either be a continuance of current law so that free speech rights and the right to freely associate are protected as expressed in Citizens United OR there must be a constitutional amendment solution that is worded in a more careful way than those "fixes" offered, namely one that more carefully delineates between the current necessarily stringent candidate requirements and those limiting non-candidate participation in the democratic process.  Simply amending the constitution to end "Corporate Personhood" DOES NOT bring clarity, preserve rights, or sever the money requirement from mass group expression (see this one of many: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/proposed_constitutional_amendments/).  The amendment option has a difficult path toward completion because the constitutional system was meant to be changed slowly.  Perhaps this existing system is more realistic because it accounts for complicated matters like the confluence of money, speech, and federal regulatory power.  Perhaps, the system and the capabilities of the human mind to understand "democracy," "speech rights," and "reform" better fit current complication than so-called "progressive reforming" amendments.   Their "reforms" deny the role of money and markets in politics and instead create an artificial system that hurts rather than helps the cause of freedom. Picking and choosing the protected rights of NON-CANDIDATES would make campaigns more expensive by forcing the public to finance all political speech in order to preserve speech equality. In fact, I agree with most Occupy Wall-street sign waivers that there is no such thing as "corporate person-hood."  Really, Citizens United creates nothing of the sort. 

I do not want to pay any more than I already do for what I think is "bad" public political speech.  Thus, "reforms" that includes universal public financing would be less effective.  We should not fund all expressions of public speech as required by "equal protection."  The current system whereby candidates engage in the election process according to certain rules is best.  However, limiting non-candidates and their speech rights is not okay and not Constitutional.  I want people to have the speech ability to say anything so long as it is protected by existing law and so long as people finance their expression themselves.  Markets will better decide if messages are successful or if networks refuse to display content, they prove unsuccessful. 

Conversely, I do not want to pay as a taxpayer for the public expression of private groups, just to have an equal and publicly financed system.  For example, if we de-monetize elections and create a truly equal financed election system, taxpayers would be forced to pay for speech that it doesn’t support in order to equalize the resource capabilities of non-candidates.  So, as much as I might like or dislike A.A.R.P., I don’t want to pay for its press reports where it as a collective body endorses a candidate.  Currently, were I member of A.A.R.P., I would either have to support the endorsement views of the bodies' leadership, endure the group’s collective decision while fighting within the group to change it, or withdraw my membership dues from it to express my disapproval.  The group exercises its collective speech rights for its members and by leaving, I’d be exercising my individual speech rights to disapprove and leave. 


Also, Citizens United was attacked for bringing more money into the election process, for turning back the clock on election reform, for ignoring supreme court precedence that critics believe limited unnecessary corporate influence, for using previous dissenting opinions to support court action, and for increasing the role of money in political campaigns (see Justice Stevens' dissent, etc.).   But, P.A.C.’s are required to be careful, specific with their record-keeping, and subject to an incredible level of review (Kennedy, Citizens United).  That makes engaging in corporate political speech quite prohibitive.  Federally-imposed expenses in fact LIMIT the number of PACs, concentrating P.A.C. wealth in the giants that can afford F.E.C. expenses and the political backlash.  Now, the post-Citizens system opens up corporate expenditures to smaller corporations that are less likely to afford the FEC’s expensive oversight (Darmstadter).  Instead, this decision firmly rests on court precedents that dissenting justices have ideological disagreements with and thus they fail to understand.

I'll list the principles traced through precedence from the founding of the country.  I wrote this note not to defend corporations, justify their money expenditures, or further the CONTENT of their speech.  Rather, I want to draw attention to catchall abstractions, like those that exist in proposed constitutional amendments that seek to "end Corporate Personhood," because such abstractions lack a strong basis in reality and fail to accurately describe in a logical way the complicated "rights" that we have now.  Here are some principles upheld by this case.

Continuing Supreme Court Principles UPHELD in Citizens United 2009, summarized from the 5 Justice majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy:

Corporations and "the Freedoms of Association and Equal Justice."

1. Corporations are LEGAL relationships between people, bound together for collective action (commerce for example).
2. Corporations do not have "personhood," the related members of a corporation do. 
3. Legal non-candidate collective speech expression is protected by the Constitution and case law.
4. The first Amendment continues to protect freedom of association.
5. Collective interests or associations of people can express opinions through majority agreement of that speech's CONTENT.
6. There is continued "equal protection" for all legal types of collective associations (14th amendment)

Regulated Elections Process Maintained:

1. The Federal government is still responsible for the national "integrity" of the elections process.
2. Candidates are individual persons who voluntarily engage in an elections system that sets boundaries for what they can and cannot do or say during a federally monitored period of time.
3. Collective associations of people CAN still have their direct contributions to system-bound candidates limited.
4. Candidates MUST accept non-candidate contributions within parameters set by the Federal Elections Commission (F.E.C.) because as individuals, they are bound to the electoral regulatory system.
5. Expenses incurred during an election are paid for using currency. (Sounds simple, I know)
6. Candidates MUST fund their expression and pay for expenses within the parameters of F.E.C. rules because of their voluntary agreement to join the campaign system. 
7. Non-profits can engage in collective speech in a different way than for-profits.

Candidates and Non-candidates:

1. Corporations CANNOT be candidates for elections, only individual persons can.
2. Corporations CANNOT voluntarily join the campaign system because they are not people and only people can stand as candidates for elections.
3. Corporations MAY express opinions for the majority of their associative parts.
4. Candidate campaigns exist in the name of individual candidates, thus subjecting them to different rules than non-candidate collections of people.
5. Both candidates and non-candidates MUST keep records in accordance with federal law.  Doing so otherwise is criminal behavior.  

Minority Objections to Collective Speech:

1. Majority decision-making and a set of governing rules are used to make determinations for the U.S. government, so to for corporations.
2. Therefore, collective associations following rules that do not conflict with the law can be assumed to be operating legally.
3. Disagreeing parts (a minority) of the Federal government can express their disagreement individually, but do not speak or make determinations for the majority of the Federal government. 
4. Disagreeing members of corporations have individual freedoms of speech, but their opinion is not the opinion of the majority or the corporation.

Corporate Criminality: 

"YOU CAN'T HOLD A CORPORATION TO ACCOUNT, BUT THE GOVERNMENT CAN JAIL ITS INDIVIDUAL CRIMINAL MEMBERS." ME

1. Criminal and civil justice always involves individual punishments--you cannot put a corporation in jail--even if the punishment is distributed equally to a collection of people as in a corporation.
2. You can dissolve a corporation by dissolving the legal relationships that bind people in a collective.  However, some legal and financial obligations may remain after the association is officially terminated.
3. Individuals bear collective costs, corporations are just legal relationships.
4. "Corporations" can be civilly punished in court (fines, license removals, etc.) which punishes all parts, majority or minority opinions of real people as part of the collective voluntary association.
5. Groups of people can be held accountable for individual acts if guilty.
6. Corporations are groups of people who can be collectively held accountable and liable for individual acts by its members.
7. Corporations exist only by their constituent (person) parts by a lawyer's representation in court and individual group members are considered innocent until proven guilty.
8. Individual members of a corporation are allowed all due process rights. 

Abstract or Fallacious Premises from CRITICS of the decision:

1. Mass political speech can exist in 2012 America without cost (meaning money).
2. Because of Citizens, those with more money (implied corporations) have more speech rights than those with less. (Speech is allowed equally if it meets the standards set by the Supreme Court concerning unacceptable forms of speech like child pornography, fighting words, etc.)
3. Corporations will have an illegal influence on elections if collective speech isn't "reformed" so  corporations are disadvantaged.
4. Most corporations find it beneficial to engage in political speech (see Kennedy's majority decision).
5. "Corporations" are people.

Sources:

Cornell University Law School. "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Docket No. 08-205)" http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-205

 Darmstadter, Howard.  "Making Sense of Citizens United" National Affairs.  Spring 2012, Issue II.Washington D.C., 2012. 

Smith, Bradley.  "Corporations are People, Too."  National Public Radio.  http//www.npr.org/templates/story.php?storyId=112711410.

 Supreme Court of the United States.  "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission." http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

 Reclaiming Democracy.  "Proposed Constitutional Amendments." http://reclaimdemocracy.org/proposed_constitutional_amendments/