Deadly as it is, the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 in the United States is but a part of a broader, more devastating phenomenon: the be-out-for-yourself-pandemic. The readily available antidote is organizing for mutual benefit, but that medicine has been intentionally kept off the public market. Now, people are marching for it in the streets.
The virus lurked in our culture in partial dormancy at least since defeat of resistance to New Deal legislation. It reemerged in plain sight with the election of Ronald Reagan, the rise of ultra-conservative think tanks and foundations, and Republican dominance in local and state government. Be-out-for-yourselfism reached pandemic proportions with Trump’s victory. It has perniciously infected much of our daily lives, reeking death and destruction in its path. We are suffering from rampant selfishness sepsis. The pathogen spreads by promulgation of a three-pronged anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation ideology. Racism is its nourishment.
A few examples:
Anti-Government (Get the government off my back):
The education system in the United States has, by-design, shortchanged everyone except the privileged. Persistent inequity and racism in housing, employment, and school funding have especially undermined the life chances of people of color and those with insufficient income. Reliance on inequitable local tax revenue and anti-tax rebellions severely constrains school resources.
Be-out-for-yourself solution 1: Encourage have-not folks to compete with other have-not families for limited spots in a charter or vouchers for private school.
Be-out-for-yourself solution 2: Encourage white people who have a little to accept that going to school with children of their choosing is a God-given right. Such thinking feeds on the racism of privileged folks acquiescing, if not supporting, measures to integrate schools. It reaches its apotheosis in the DeVos supported notion of a right to a choice to send kids to any school at public expense, regardless of discriminatory practices.
There is a mutual benefit remedy: A Government that takes care of everyone’s wellbeing through ensuring fair wages and taxation for universally available, high quality healthcare, housing, schools, and nutrition. Other, less wealthy countries do it. We can too. We would have less strife, healthier, better educated, happier people.
Anti-Tax (Hey, I’m lookin’ out for old number one!) Taxes pay for collective goods like roads, bridges, firefighters, and scientific and health agencies that do not make sense to pay for individually. Since the New Deal, taxes also contributed to ensuring parts of a decent life, e.g., rental and food assistance, Medicare and Medicaid for health care, Social Security for retirement, and unemployment insurance.
But even these social expenses are resented and resisted as a freedom killing imposition by the out-for-yourselfers.
Last year, I had a conversation with someone (a well-off banker) I know about Bill DiBlasio. I indicated that New York City’s free preschool program was a significant positive development. He sneered: "I have no kids, so why should my taxes pay for someone else's childcare?"
This all-about-me perspective rests on the premise that since virtually everything is scarce, the only rational course of action is to grab and keep what you can. Mutual benefit is anathema. It is for chumps. The result is unfettered rapacious capitalism that puts all of us at risk.
Got your own car? Don't care about endless subway delays? Wait for broken axles and bridge collapses. Got money for a private school? Here comes inadequate education in deteriorated school buildings with impossible to find new teachers for everyone else you encounter. Too bad hungry people beg everywhere you go.
Fortunately, there’s a pill for that. For almost all of us, it’s not a bitter one. Put taxing wealth– not just income, but capital gains back on the table. Billionaires find it hard to swallow, but the rest of us benefit.
Anti-Regulation (Don’t tell ME what to do):
Uncontrolled release of industrially- and agriculturally generated heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere warm the planet, unalterably disrupting life as we know it. The profit-taking who-cares-I-got-mine crowd cares nothing about either the living or even their own future families. The promoted short view for the general public is that regulation takes current jobs. Worry about the outcomes later. Unfortunately, with increasingly erratic weather patterns, the future is now. Climate disruption-generated mass migrations are coming.
The three prongs of out-for-your selfism came together in a perfect storm with the arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The abdication of government responsibility, the refusal to pay taxes for other folks healthcare, and knee-jerk rejection of regulation is killing the ignorant and innocent alike. It takes special aim at the vulnerable who have been systematically marginalized from participation in decision making.
There is no place to hide. Ignoring others wellbeing affects us all.
There is, however, some good news. Led by the Black Lives Matter movement, people of all colors and strata are marching in the streets for one another. This is an explicit rejection of be-out-out-for-yourselfism and a demand for inclusive mutual benefit.
Maybe, we can hope for reenergized unions.
Turning out to vote for mutual benefit in November is essential.
Arthur H. Camins is a lifelong educator. He writes about education and social justice. He works part-time with curriculum developers at UC Berkeley as an assessment specialist. He retired recently as Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone.
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arthurcamins