System Health

Society is a complex adaptive system made up of smaller but no less complex adaptive systems which are then in turn made up of even smaller systems. This property (roughly illustrated here) is known as self-similarity. Essentially, the system is approximately similar to any part of itself.

The people you hate are so much like you, the difference hardly matters to the system as a whole.

I realize, this statement is somewhat depressing, but take heart. It also means that although the positions of those who oppose you in society may seem alien and absurd to you, their base motivations are entirely understandable, even if they express in radically different forms. Carefully studying and defining the motivations and reasons behind your social and political opponents' views can lead to insight into how to tackle the problem they present.

Let us speak of universal health care. When discussing it, liberals generally focus on social justice and the right everyone has to medical treatment. On the other hand, conservatives generally speak of cost. Watching a casual debate that covers universal health care is often times like watching sailing galleons fire multiple broadsides at point blank range while forgetting to load cannonballs in 90% of their cannons, a constant barrage of smoke and fire with almost nothing hitting its mark.

Conservatives will occasionally argue the issue that liberals focus on, claiming that individuals need to be responsible for their own actions and do not have a right to medical coverage in the free market. There are any number of scenarios where hard-working Americans can end up uninsured and needing medical treatment, but these are generally dismissed as edge cases. Extending this thought suggests that for conservatives it is more important to punish the irresponsible (and their children) than to protect the honest who have fallen through the cracks.

Why is this incorrect? A complex adaptive system is defined by its complexity, ability to adapt, self-similarity, self-organization, and emergent traits. Actions within the system that reduce these traits can be said to be harmful to the system's viability. Most simply: removing actors purposefully harms the system as a whole, no matter how much one may think the actor in question "deserves" it. A more nuanced but also more powerful observation is that by limiting the freedom of the actors within the system based upon the feedback loops initiated by other actors can lead to a reduction in adaptability and self-organization. It can be argued from a historical perspective that a permanent underclass causes stagnation or at least retardation of progress in a society. For thousands of years technological advances were discarded, ignored or not sought for the simple reason that it was far easier to solve labor problems with addition slaves rather than improve efficiency. If a large portion of low-income people are simply ignored when researching medical advances, a far lower emphasis will be placed on efficient, cost-effective, and widely distributable technologies and processes. Additionally, with no positive pressure to improve the overall health of the society, the pitfalls of lack of regular health care will continue to plague a large segment of the population. This actually creates a pressure in the market to develop late-intervention treatments and medicines only to address the symptoms of problems that could have been solved much earlier, further reducing the amount of effort and resources devoted to medical research that could extend life, address disease and overcome grievous injury. The system thus slows in its progression while addressing the symptoms of systemic problems without solving them, reducing complexity, adaptability, and self-organizational freedom. What is healthy for the system is healthy for the large majority of its actors. It is therefore not socially just to push for punishment of the uninsured rather than advancement of the responsible.

I touched on cost and money above when pointing out that resources used to treat symptoms of systemic problems would be better spent solving the problems and then moving on to new advancement, but the major complaint against universal health care is not generally how money is spent, but where it comes from. For reasons discussed above, some do not want to pay additional taxes to fund the health care costs of those less fortunate. The tax rates of European countries are held to be an oppressive and sinister axe over the head of the American people. Never-the-less, Americans spend far more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country while simultaneously being ranked low in life expectancy and infant mortality. The fiscally responsible should seriously question the demonstrated efficiency of this current system. Paying more for less is the opposite of sound financial policy.

Study of foreign models for universal healthcare demonstrate a much higher efficiency for the majority of patients. It is worried that the health care quality of the wealthy will fall under universal health care, especially those on the edge of the upper and middle class divide. However, the government does not propose a monopoly on health care, private providers and policies will continue to be available. There will be pressure on these providers to improve service and offer additional benefits as many of the wealthy will find the universal coverage suits their needs and abandon the private plans. There are currently laws in place that promote affordable and available health insurance. With the requirements impossed by these laws lifted from private insurers and placed upon the single-payer system, private firms are more able to focus on services desired by their wealthy customers. Rather than threatening the quality of care the rich can expect to receive, the situation benefits the wealthy consumer.