Sicko

My grandpa Bill had an iron behemoth in his barn known as a threshing machine. It looked like a slapped together steel dinosaur sculpture when at rest, but when he fired it up, it was an incredibly noisy whirlwind of a device that flapped, spun and exhaled so much dust and racket you thought the barn would collapse on top of you just prior to suffocation.

That machine certainly made an impression on a pre-adolescent boy. But something else having to do with that machine made an even greater impression, that still lingers today. The neighboring farmers of my granpda's generation would get together and harvest each others' fields and then take turns using the thresher to winnow the grain. They all went from one field to another and did the harvesting collectively, though each farmer only ran his own grain through the thresher - it wasn't collectivism as such, just neighbors pooling resources to help each other out.

Grandpa's generation was the last one to do this. The younger farmers all bought their own combines and did their own harvesting, and... each went into debt to do so. Hm. They became dependent on a lender to become independent of their neighbors. Trading interdependence - for independence, but with dependence, too.. Grandpa's was also the last generation who did barn-raisings when a new farm family was starting out near them, or a fire had destroyed a neighbor's barn. They pitched in, gave of themselves, and knew - knew! - that their neighbors would do the same for them.

My Dad wasn't a farmer, rather a cheesemaker turned insurance salesman. But he had a similar idea about insurance that he shared with me as a teenager when I was wondering what I ought to do in life. He told me about why insurance was such a good thing, a humanitarian thing. It went back to the fraternal mutuals and the little town mutuals and why they were formed - to spread the risk. Everybody gave a little to protect against a lot. One kind sold life insurance and one fire insurance. But they were companies *not* owned by stockholders, *not* run by wall street investors. They were owned by the policy-holders, the customers. And that's how they were run - like mutual benefit societies. At least... in my Dad's day they were. And even up until 2000... I had worked for one who still thought that way. Until they were bought by one who didn't.

Now even the mutual companies are trying to act like stock companies, to compete. They compete for capital, market share, customer loyalty... as if they were independent of their policyholder owners. Trading interdependence with their customers for dependence on the capital markets and independence from their policyholders. Abandoning their roots for being... modern. Sounds familiar.

This week I saw Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko - an expose' of the American health care industry... and what it says about us as a culture. I didn't intend to be moved, I didn't intend for tears to escape. Imagine! Me, once a card-carrying member of the Libertarian party, silently weeping at a Michael Moore movie. What's wrong with me? Or maybe.. what's right with me all of a sudden?

Now I admit I haven't listened to Rush in about 2 years, haven't read a publication by the Christian Coalition for probably 3 years, haven't heard a public policy statement by James Dobson for 15 months or so, haven't gotten any Republican party literature for 24 months or more... so I don't know what I *should* be thinking about this movie, have no idea what the party line is these days.

But I do know this:

I'm sick of what modern American capitalism has done to my Dad's idea of insurance as a mutual benefit concept started by a bunch of farmers, the very same people who used to build each others' barns and harvest each others' fields, like my Grandpa did. Is there a company out there anymore who remembers the way it used to be? When people did good to one another with no expectation of (or... lust for) profit? If I'm a conservative... then THAT'S what I want to conserve. People giving up a little from their plenty to make sure that those who were hurting didn't hurt too much. And THAT'S who I want to work for.. somebody who gets that.

After all, isn't that what mutuality means? 2 Corinthians 8:13-15 says:

"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.' "

Oooh, that Paul. He must have been one of those Godless liberals to talk that way..