What’s this paywall, and who will it affect? It’s a $20/year charge to out-of-towners who read Lancaster obituaries like they’re going out of style.

As reported by Bill Mitchell of the Pointer Institute:

Monday morning, the website for a midsized paper in southeastern Pennsylvania became the first to go public with the paid content system of Journalism Online, the startup engineered by Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and others.

LancasterOnline, which serves the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, began informing people who live outside Lancaster County and read its online obituary listings that visiting the obits page will cost $1.99 a month after they’ve viewed seven pages each month. Annual subscriptions cost $19.99.

Screenshot of the notice all obituary readers now see when they visit LancasterOnline.com

Media analysts seem to think this is one of the most ridiculous ideas they’ve heard when it comes to online revenue models. For instance, Mark Potts writes:

Are they serious? Are there really that many people people visiting the Lancaster site to read obits? Really?

The folks in Lancaster claim to have done the math that proves there’s a substantial out of town audience for obits, though it’s based on a lot of guesswork (and probably proves, once again, that journalists really aren’t that good at math). Notably, Lancaster seems to base its projections on traffic numbers from the not-so-reliable Google Analytics rather than on data from the site’s internal logs, which would be much more precise. That seems odd.

According to Mitchell’s story, LancasterOnline estimates that 100,000 out-of-market visitors to the site read obits each year. And the site reckons that more than 10 percent of them do it—yes, read obits—several times a week. Okaaaay. Taking the math further, Lancaster estimates that nearly 90,000 visitors to the site read the obits at least once a week, and 17,692 visitors read the obits four times a week.

These numbers are preposterous. Remember, this is little LancasterOnline, not NewYorkTimes.com or WashingtonPost.com. I find it hard to believe that Lancaster has that sort of constant, repeat traffic to its obits—or else it’s got an audience with a truly obsessive fascination with grazing news about local deaths.

He’s joined by Steve Buttry, who writes:

If I were seeking to kill off newspapers (I’m not), I would try to persuade them to charge people to read obituaries online. Apparently that’s the plan of Journalism Online, a profiteer seeking to cash in not only on newspapers’ death wish but on the deaths of their readers.

Journalism Online’s sucker in this fantasy-based paywall experiment is the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era (oh, the irony in that name; I will call it the Old Era for purposes of this blog).

David Brauer joins in:

Laugh if you want — and I’ll admit, I’m tittering — but any small-town newspaper publisher will tell you obits are a pretty big deal for readers. In this case, LancasterOnline is making money coming and going (if you’ll pardon the pun): they charge survivors to place death notices, and now they’ll charge out-of-towners to read them.

(When the younger generations start dying, we’ll just inform everyone via social networks.)

This sure sounds like a low-revenue road test to me, but Lancaster Online’s editor thinks they can squeeze $100,000 out of the oldster demographic that keeps up regularly with far-flung deaths.

All I have to say is that the people who came up with this scheme are nothing like the cultural creatives who are engineering Lancaster’s future. This is preservationist, reactionary, and, I suspect, based on data that is (excuse the pun) dead wrong.

Just seventeen years ago, in 1993, a majority of U.S. citizens opposed gays serving in the military, Mark Shields recently pointed out in his recent appearance on the PBS NewsHour. Today, there is a three-to-one margin supporting gays openly serving—75% of Americans. Among women, the support is 80%.

Certainly that kind of sea change in America and in our cultural thought is gigantic and something we don’t often see. It’s positive and profound.

Much of the credit goes to the small but very determined efforts of a lot of individuals and groups on the local and personal level. The courage of many individuals who do not stay in the closet but instead come out and say who they are and that they have just as many rights as any other person does has earned the respect of their neighbors. Also groups like Lancaster Pride and their annual festivals have made an impact by going far beyond saying, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” have instead sent a message of unity and love and acceptance. Their message has been that it’s important that we learn to live and work together and not just tolerate each other but love each other and respect each other.

I hope that some of us straights, including straight Christians like me, have had some small and humble role in this shift. I was, for instance, deeply touched by the scenes of an Evangelical Christian man confessing the sins of the church to gay men and women at a pride festival in the excellent documentary Lord, Deliver Us From Your Followers.

This kind of cultural change does not come easily and is not to be taken lightly. The cultural impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1950s to overturn the segregation of public schools was gigantic by simply allowing and in fact forcing children to interact with one another. Just as the military has been a force in a similar way, creating brothers out of blacks and whites who served together, I think we’ll see a similar impact of gays and straights who serve together, and see a breakdown of this idea that manliness and homosexuality are opposing forces.

One Lancaster resident whose efforts on this front I would like to single out and celebrate is Mark Stoner, who was recently recognized in the Central Penn Business Journal‘s twenty-fifth anniversary issue as one of the most influential minorities from the midstate from the past twenty-five years.

Digging for fossil fuel is never safe. It’s never safe for humans, and it’s never safe for the wild areas in which we humans allow the digging. The inconceivably massive oil spill we are witnessing on the Gulf Coast should remind us of that. BP, world champion of corporate green-washing, is responsible.

The corporations who dig up fossil fuel need to be watched closely by competent regulators. Regulation costs money. The corporations that make money by digging up fossil fuel should cover the cost of the outside regulators.

That’s why I voted a strong “yes” in the Central Penn Business Journal’s current Question of the Week, “Should Pennsylvania impose taxes on drilling in Marcellus Shale?”

It’s never clean. It’s never safe. It’s always risky.

Pennsylvania needs regulators to protect the most basic interests of society from sloppiness of the corporations that dig up the fossil fuel here in our state. We should mandate the corporations to foot the bill for those regulators themselves.

I agree with Emanuel. Looking at the economy as it stands (and is forecasted to play out), it’s hard not to.

The problem is that on the whole, senior managers of established businesses do not like big, serious changes. Stability and predictability is almost invariably in their best interest. When they do get behind big, serious changes, it is often because the change will lead to more stability and predictability.

I would like to suggest two things for the consideration of my fellow Lancaster County citizens:

1. Our county’s economy does indeed need some major changes, and
2. Allowing unions to form through a “card check” system may be a good such change.

Yes, Lancaster is doing better than many other areas of the country. Forbes named the county one of the ten best places to weather out the recession, and then Kiplinger’s said our city is one of the nation’s  “six real estate safe havens.”

For a long time, a remarkably low unemployment rate in the county has, to an extent, offset concerns that median household income is just as remarkably low. A lot of people aren’t working for much, but hey, at least they’re working. That has now changed. Even our unemployment numbers are beginning to rot: in October unemployment shot up to 4.7% in the county, meaning we have 12,800 people actively but unsuccessfully looking for work. That’s more than the entire population of Elizabethtown.

We need to change directions. This state of affairs cannot continue. Unions may not the the idea change agents, but at least they are change agents. Unions of middle-class workers have given us enhanced social security, medicare, and a minimum wage. Unions make sure workers can take care of themselves and their families, and that the people who produce gains in productivity receive the rewards of productivity. Importantly, middle- and working-class union members spend their income.

Unions are not that big of a deal

We all too often make a goblin out of unionization. Right now no more than twelve percent of American workers are in unions (those workers include Lancaster County educators, and local employees of Armstrong, Kellogg, car shops, construction companies, manufacturing plants, and service firms).  That twelve percent is down from a historic high of thirty-three percent. Not exactly a cause for alarm today.

What’s more, the number of unionized workers sits at twelve percent today in significant part due to illegal practices by employers. In 1969, there were one thousand infractions of the laws protecting the formation of unions. In 2005, that number was more than thirty thousand.

Ben Eisler makes a big deal of this on his blog at The New Republic. He suggests that one solution is to increase the penalties for these crimes and ramp up enforcement, which is currently lax. But, he says, the cheaper solution is the so-called card check.

The idea is this: Right now workers have to tell their company’s senior managers if they are going to try to form a union. It’s like having to announce, “Hey! We’ve been trying to work with you to get a fair shake here, and you’re not giving it to us or listening to our input on how our company can do better. We’re going to try to start a union! You’d better get moving if you want to stop us!” Under the card-check system being worked on in the U.S. Senate,  employees can sign a legal document (a “card”) to indicate that they want to form a union. If a majority of employees sign it, the union is considered a legal entity that the employer has to work with.

Imagine it like this: If we’re in a company of one thousand employees, there may easily be six hundred or more of us who think that our bosses are mismanaging things. Their leadership skills are wanting, they don’t listen to input from those of us on the ground, and they don’t share profits in a fair way. We all want to address it with the directors, but we don’t have any ability to insist on even two of us meeting with them at the same time. They can say, “Sure, we want to hear from you, but we want to meet with you six-on-one. And if we don’t like what you have to say, we reserve the right to let you go.”

There is a lot of baggage that goes along with unionization today, but at their hear the only thing that unions inherently do is allow for employees to have a collective voice in discussions with upper management.  Employees today fin it nearly impossible to form new unions. (Employees at Wal-Mart know first-hand the most agreesive anti-unions efforts found inside any company.) There are a number of decent ideas of how to remedy this situation, but allowing employees to band together into an official group by signing a petition is the least expensive and most efficient.

Best of all, it is middle- and working-class people who, increasinlgy, have the least to lose when the economy is already bad. That means we are willing to take risks and push our companies to take risks. I think we ought to consider giving those change agents just a little bit of assistance, for the sake of our economy.

From the press release: “Arts and culture non-profit organizations play a significant economic development role in Lancaster County, contributing $28 million to the community and creating 800 full time jobs. The Community Foundation is committed to bolstering the economic impact of arts organizations and arts-related businesses by encouraging their sustainability and growth.”

2008 COMPETITIVE GRANT AWARD RECIPIENTS

• Water Street Rescue Mission – $27,000
  To create a Client Management Database, which will enhance homeless data collection for Lancaster County. Funding provided by the Margaret R. Eppihimer Fund.
  I have no doubt that we are going to see nonprofits evolving greater capacity as “think tanks.” In a knowledge economy, the collection and intelligent interpretation of information will become both possible and necessary to improve services and to achieve community goals. People solving problems need information and good ideas.
• Lancaster Investment in a Vibrant Economy (L.I.V.E.) – $27,104
  To help organizations implement environmentally preferable practices through The Green Facilities Partnership between LIVE Green, the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Green Seal Inc. Funding provided by the Lancaster Environmental Fund.
  We’re all interested to see to what degree businesses de-prioritize greening their operations, given the current economic climate. Many are already putting short-term survival over solving longer-term problems.
• Lancaster Symphony Orchestra – $22,000
  For the Music Discovery Experience in the City of Lancaster. The program includes 3 performances at McCaskey High School, 20 instrument petting zoos, and the Symphony’s instrument loan program in the fall. Funding provided by the Sam & Verda Taylor Fund for the Performing Arts.
  I will be watching this program with interest. When funds are limited for education and the arts, I wonder what is a better approach—a “shotgun” attempt to expose lots of kids in a shallow way, or a highly-focused attempt to give talented kids a huge boost (e.g., sponsoring intense private lessons).
• Fulton Opera House Foundation – $11,600
  Will support and expand the theatre’s Audio Described, American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreted, and Spanish Interpreted performance programs. Funding provided by the Sam & Verda Taylor Fund for the Performing Arts.
  One question is, will this actually help people, or just make Fulton patrons feel better about themselves?
• SouthEast Lancaster Health Services – $33,890
  SELHS’ Healthy Start Program is designed to improve children’s health from age 0-5 through a comprehensive approach including prenatal care, parent/child education and pediatric care. Funding provided by the Better Lancaster Fund.
  From everything I hear, SELHS sounds like one of the best charitable operations going in the county.

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

• Demuth Foundation & Museum – $20,000
  To implement new graphic and web identities to align the museum’s public image with its mission and programs, and generate local and national interest, membership, and sustainability.
  It’s unfortunate that while this museum is important, it’s not great. It should be great. I wonder if projected-image enhancement is the best use of $20,000.
• Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse – $20,000
  To bring expert guidance to their current transformation from a program-focused to a community and relationship focused organization.
  I like the sound of that.
• Lancaster Day Care Center – $14,790
  To hire a consultant to prepare a comprehensive Strategic Plan. Critical issues to be addressed include a plan for succession, facility improvements and fundraising analysis.
  I’d much rather see funds going to training women who already provide informal child care, so they can run legitimate, safe child care operations.
• Southern End Community Association – $20,000
  To hire a professional consultant to develop a new strategic plan. This will give the agency a redirected focus and strengthen its ability to better serve the community.
  This is only one of six grants that were given to help organizations with strategic plans. The Obama campaign didn’t have a strategic plan, and did not emphasize formal strategy. I think we’re going to see “strategic planning” go out of vogue, and I say good riddance.
• Lancaster County Conservancy – $20,000
  To conduct a feasibility study for new headquarters integrated with an innovative Environmental Center on an urban forest nature preserve.
  Sounds cool to me.

BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH THE ARTS AWARD RECIPIENTS

• Franklin & Marshall College – $249,992
  To create “Poetry Paths” across Lancaster City to introduce poetry by eminent and local writers into the daily lives of Lancaster’s residents and guests. Stands and pavers will be used to permanently display the poems.
  Hmm. I want to learn more. I’m a poet, and I’m far from sold based on this description.
• City of Lancaster – $200,000
  To develop a public art department. The department head will manage city public art projects, coordinate with other community public art efforts, develop public art policies and infrastructure, and function as an information clearinghouse for public art information in the community.
  Two hundred thousand dollars for an arts bureaucracy? Again, I’m far from sold, especially based on that whole thing about how good art is created bottom-up rather than top-down, and how art is everyone’s business, not something that can be sequestered off.
• Fulton Opera House – $120,000
  To expand the arts education staff at the Fulton, and enable their historic theatre to better serve and engage the Lancaster community. An Education Department will allow the Fulton to maintain and solidify this programming, while increasing capacity and effectiveness.
  I think we should match students with the real excitement in the arts world. I hesitate to endorse the idea that that excitement is to be found in an institution that runs mass-audience Broadways standards.
• Pennsylvania College of Art and Design – $150,000
  Funding will develop three programs: 1) Mosaic Engagement, a series of three exhibitions that will connect audiences from the county with vibrant art by successful artists; 2) Mosaic Middle School and High School Programming, providing 150 School District of Lancaster and Pequea Valley middle and high school students with unique educational opportunities; 3) Mosaic After Program, providing further art education and resources for these same students.
  Remember what I just wrote about matching students with the real excitement? This sounds much closer to the target to me.

All in all, I think the Community Foundation is doing awesome work. I can’t wait to see more innovative organizations springing up to go the extra mile and take greater risks toward making “extraordinary community,” which is the Foundation’s goal. What are your thoughts on these grants? If you had money to give, what would you want it to go toward? Do you have an idea you’d love to have funded one day?

Together, they spell trouble for Republicans here in Lancaster County, PA, which has for decades been a dependable stronghold for the GOP. The graphics represent, in order, the outcome of the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections.

• Dark red indicates the Republican received better than 60% of the vote.
• Light red indicates the Republican won, but his challenger received more than 40% of the vote.
• Dark blue indicates the Democrat received better than 60% of the vote.
• Light blue indicates the Democrat won, but his challenger received more than 40% of the vote.

While McCain/Palin still won Lancaster County last week by a comfortable 55/43 split (Ralph Nader got half a percent; Ron Paul got two-tenths of a percent as a write-in), the numbers indicate a changing electorate within our county. I was actually astonished to compare for myself the decisive break from voting patterns in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (Forgive the poor graphics quality; I did these myself.)

Here are a few ways of breaking down the numbers.

City vs. County

Lancaster City landslided for Obama, 76% to McCain’s 23%. The city represented 21,975 votes, or 10% of county voters. Compare this to much slimmer margins in 2004, where Kerry beat Bush 62 to 38, and 2008, where Gore beat Bush 57 to 39.

Once you subtract the city’s votes, Lancaster County favored McCain, less overwhelmingly, 59 to 40. Non-city residents cast 202,816 votes, making up the other 90% of voters. A margin of 19 points is gigantic, but a shocking change from 2004, when Bush carried 69 to Kerry’s 31, and 2000, when Bush also received 69% of the vote and Gore eked out 29.

Urban vs. Suburban/Exurban/Rural

That breakdown, however, ignores the important fact that there are urban dwellers living in other municipalities beside Lancaster City. Perhaps it is more fair to compare all the county’s “urban” voters against the rest. I ran the numbers comparing city and borough precincts against township precincts (including the urbanized Lancaster Township with the boroughs).

In urbania county-wide, Obama beat McCain 56–43, with 73,366 voters weighing in (33% of voters). In 2000 and 2004, Bush carried the county’s urban areas 56-43 and 57-40, respectively.

Away from urban districts, McCain beat Obama 61-37, with 151,425 voters. Again, this looks decisive until compared with Bush’s victories in 2004 and 200: 70-30 and 70-28.

Stack the Deck

What if we stack the deck? Just for fun, I picked out out all the municipalities in Lancaster County that went for Obama, and pitted them against the rest of the county. Here’s how it looks:

Select Municipalities: Obama 68, McCain 31.  Eighteen percent of the Lancaster County electorate, or 40,319 voters, currently live in areas where a majority of their neighbors currently lean Democratic. In 2004, those same municipalities on the whole went for Kerry by 61-38, and for Gore by just 57-39.

The Rest of Municipalities: McCain 61, Obama 38. Even in the most Republican areas of the county, Democratic voters should have no trouble finding many neighbors who share their political viewpoint. In these municipalities, Bush carried 2004 by 69-30, and 2000 by 69-28.

Perhaps most interesting is the list of municipalities who voted for Obama:

• Columbia Borough
• Christiana Borough (by a single vote)
• Mountville
• Marietta
• Millersville
• Lancaster City
• Lancaster Township

Columbia borough voted Democratic in 2000 but not in 2004. Lancaster City, Lancaster Township, and part of Millersville borough voted Democratic in both 2000 and 2004. Christiana and Mountville’s votes came out of the blue; Marietta has for some time been on the Democrats’ wishlist as a municipality to pick up.

If you’d like to look at the raw data for yourself, the County has a list of polling locations, which you can use to decipher the election results for the past eight years.

I will be voting “yes.” I encourage you to vote yes—but most of all, I encourage you to think and decide for yourself.

Here are the reasons I will be voting YES for a Lancaster County Home Rule Charter.

1. For my neighbor’s child: It controls debt.

At left, take a look at Lancaster County’s debt over the past 12 years. It’s skyrocketing. Our county debt has exploded more than 500% in the last seven years. My good friends who live down the street from me are expecting a baby around Christmas. If we keep racking up debt like this, by the time he’s a young man the taxes we pay won’t cover anything except paying interest on our county debt.

That means Lancaster County will be a worse place than it is today. Yes, we have grown at a responsible, measured pace as a community. But we have also paid for a lot of projects by incurring debt. The Home Rule Charter will allow us citizens to stop the runaway debt.

The state government imposes a cap on the amount of debt that counties can incur at “four hundred percent of its borrowing base” (Local Government Unit Debt Act). Right now we are at 62% of that debt limit. The Home Rule Charter allows the citizens to have a ballot referendum to stop the addition of any debt above 80% of that limit.

2. For My Community: It controls spending
Taxes should be kept as low as possible. The county government has raised taxes by more than 7% over each of the past three years. The home rule charter requires a super-majority of the board of commissioners (4 out of 5) in order to pass a tax increase of 4% or more. (Inflation adjustments are typically under 3%.) If they opt to raise taxes by 7% or more, we citizens can stop it via a ballot referendum.

Again, debt is controlled as well as taxes. The commissioners will not be able to fund projects through debt rather than taxes, because we citizens can exercise our ability to stop both. That means our government will be forced into long-term sustainability (a good thing).

3. Because Harrisburg Is Whack
Dennis Stuckey became a county commissioner in January of this year. When he did so, he vacated his role as county controller—essentially the county’s fiscal watchdog. The position still has not been filled, because we are waiting for Governor Rendell to appoint a replacement.

Why are we waiting for the governor to appoint a replacement controller? Because without home rule we are at the mercy of the state for such things. Make no mistake about it: In very key ways, we do not currently control our own county government. Harrisburg does. And Harrisburg is whack. The state government is in need of major overhaul. We should trust ourselves over bureaucrats in Harrisburg.

4. Other Reasons

• The Lancaster County Home Rule Charter requires the leaders of the dozens of municipalities within our county to get together once a year and talk to each other, enhancing cooperation between my city and your township, your township and the nearby borough, etc.
• One county commissioner per 100,000 people is totally reasonable. Right now we have 3 commissioners for half a million people. The Home Rule Charter gives us 5.
• Part-time commissioners are better than full-time. They can focus on long-term strategy and listen to real people. Or, if they are OK with $55,000 a year, they can do it full-time.
• Commissioners shouldn’t be professional politicians. The Home Rule Charter caps terms of office at 8 years. This makes sure we have citizen-leaders.
• Under the Home Rule Charter, the controller has to be a CPA or have a degree in finance or accounting. The coroner has to be a licensed physician. This makes sense, but isn’t currently required.
• The commissioners have to focus on the long term when drafting budgets, and the budget process has to be open for citizen review and input. Right now the process of developing a budget can take place in secret, and the budget can be available for citizen review only a very short period of time before being adopted. That’s bad for our county.
• We currently elect Jury Commissioners, whose jobs have been replaced by computers. This charter eliminates the spending waste of paying for these positions. (We cannot remove these positions without a home rule charter.)
• The three roles of prothonotary, clerk of courts, and register of wills is combined into a single elected position: the clerk of courts. That’s smaller, more efficient government.
• The Government Study Commission, a nonpartisan group elected in November 2006, has done an outstanding job of first listening to a ton of input and then writing a fair charter. They have served our county well.

5. Most Importantly: We can change things!
Enacting a home rule charter is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, because of a waiting period required by law and because of the immense work involved. We will not simply be able to wait for another, better charter to come around on our ballots.

Yes, this Home Rule Charter is imperfect, but it is good. It is a deeply American act of self-governance. We can tweak it over time. If something doesn’t work well, we can change it. Without this charter, however, we cannot change a single thing in our county government structure. Not one thing. With this charter, though, we’re in control.

It’s still not to late to read the charter (pdf) for yourself. There is no “no” vote on this issue. You are either voting for the Lancaster County Home Rule Charter (28 pages) or for the existing state-mandated, one-size-fits-all Pennsylvania County Code (400+ pages). Please join me in voting “yes” tomorrow.

This was your brain on American health insurance. Photo by Flickr user Youarefunny, under a Creative Commons license.

My friend Barb reminded me this morning that the big picture of reality never matches the big picture of our expectations. But, she said, when we focus on a smaller level, we can find bits of hope.

The big picture of the global economy and how U.S. officials are responding to it is frustrating and disappointing. A close look at the bailout bill, however, shines a ray of hope on my attitude. It turns out that
H.R.1424, which came to be known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, began its life last March as the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. The only reason the original bill didn’t die is that earlier this month it became a convenient vehicle for the economic bailout legislation.

It would have brightened my day to know that the Bailout Bill included a “sweetener” add-on that established mental health parity in health insurance law. The real situation is sweeter: The economic bailout was actually a set of laws and earmarks tacked onto a bill establishing mental health parity.

The full bill is nicely summarized by Govtrack.us. The mental health parity portion of the bill says that when a health insurance policy covers both medical/surgical and mental/substance-abuse issues, it must cover them equally. U.S. law now (finally!) recognizes that major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mental health diseases, as well as substance abuse disorders are every bit as real as cancer, broken bones, and heart disease. The bill establishes that mental health must be regarded with parity to other medical issues, such that:

(1) the financial requirements, such as deductibles and copayments, applicable to such mental health or substance use disorder benefits are no more restrictive than the predominant financial requirements applied to substantially all medical and surgical benefits covered by the plan;

(2) there are no separate cost sharing requirements that are applicable only with respect to mental health or substance use disorder benefits;

(3) the treatment limitations applicable to such mental health or substance use disorder benefits are no more restrictive than the predominant treatment limitations applied to substantially all medical and surgical benefits covered by the plan; and

(4) there are no separate treatment limitations that are applicable only with respect to mental health or substance use disorder benefits.

Requires the plan to provide out-of network coverage for mental health or substance use disorder benefits if the plan provides coverage for medical or surgical benefits provided by out-of network providers.

I have experienced firsthand how complicated and frustrating it is to deal with a double standard in my health insurance policies. If my lungs are congested, I can see my family doctor. If I break my wrist, I can go to the emergency room. But if my brain isn’t working right, I have to wade through complicated restrictions and procedures in order to receive affordable care. And even then, therapy is poorly covered and the number of sessions each year are over-limited.

When the world is that difficult and rotten, I, like many people, look at the big picture of our civilization and despair. But when I look closer, I see reason for hope. Mental health is slowly being acknowledged as an inseparable component of “human health” generally. And as of Friday, Connecticut at least is realizing it can’t treat gays as second-class citizens. I see regular instances of how male chauvinism is becoming more disgusting and less tolerated every year.

Is humanity truly progressing? I’m not nearly qualified to weigh in on that. What I do know is that when I look at the big picture, I don’t see black darkness. I see enough points of light to navigate the crazy world and to maintain hope that there may be brighter things still to come. Thanks to this mental health parity law, I think my mind will be healthy and alert enough to acknowledge that hope over the full course of my life. I hope it’s a long and full one.

I want maid service; you want maid service. I want a nice car; you want a nice car. I’d like a custom suit; who wouldn’t?

We can’t all have everything we want. There is not enough to go around. That’s scarcity, and it’s a fact of life.

Everyone knows we get into trouble when we ignore the facts of life or think we can sneak around them. Unfortunately, that’s where we are right now with our economy: we have gotten into trouble.

We tried for too long to overcome scarcity with credit. For years, both you and I could have nice cars, even though we couldn’t afford them. We were easily able to get a loan. Or heck, we could even charge it on a credit card. With a 28% APR, even if one of us falls way behind on payments or goes bankrupt, the bank issuing the card still makes out OK.

The so-called rescue plan now in action props up this faulty economic paradigm, this inaccurate way of understanding the world.

As early astronomers observed the movements of the planets, it became more and more difficult to sustain the paradigm that the Earth was the center of the cosmos. Pesky little facts. They always ruin things; it’s always easiest to conceal and ignore them. (That’s how we wound up with ridiculous maps of planets doing loop-the-loops, like Jupiter in the image to the right.)

For instance, there is this fact that not everyone can have everything. What we face right now is not a crisis, it’s a consequence. Still, it’s so easy to sweep that fact under the rug and pretend that our present way of looking at the economic world is tenable. In our current paradigm, there is no such thing as bad debt. There is still only subprime debt.

This paradigm is nonsense. It disregards the fact that resources are in fact scarce, and not everyone can have everything they want. Our current paradigm believes that everyone can have what they want, and in fact has every right to expect credit so that they can buy what they want.

Not only does this violate the scarcity part of Economics 101, it also violates the part about prices.

If everyone can purchase $100,000 cars, auto manufacturers can keep making $100,000 cars. The paradigm we live under (which is still hanging on for dear life) holds that, thanks to the wonders of credit, we can all afford $100,000 cars (and SUVs and pickups, of course). There is no reason to make or focus on more affordable cars. If price is not a barrier, what incentive is there to focus on high value at low price?

You can see that our current way of doing things messes up in two ways: First, by ignoring scarcity, and second, by making prices less relevant than they really are.

Gasoline right now is a shining example of how this works. When it comes to oil, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that it is scarce. Even when that scarcity is exaggerated by OPEC (when they limit production and shipping), all they are really doing is spreading scarcity out over a longer period of time. Yet, even with a scarce resource (and, really, all resources are scarce), prices can go down. That’s because demand can fluctuate even as supply is predictable.

In a nutshell, if we were still dealing with $4.50/gallon gas, this recession would be worse than it is. But everyone is scaling back, and that means fewer miles are being travelled. Fewer miles being traveled means lower demand for gas. Lower demand for gas means a lower price on gas.  Earlier this year, I thought Tom Friedman presented a great idea: Why shouldn’t the government set a “price floor” on gas, guaranteeing that it will always cost $4/gallon or more? If the “real price” ever dipped below $4, the difference would go toward developing alternative energy.

Problem is, that suggestion rests on the assumption that people’s ability to afford $4 gas won’t substantially change. It is now obvious that that is a bad assumption. Prices are meaningful, and should generally be left as free as possible.

There is such a thing as bad debt. Bad debt is debt taken on to pay for something that is overpriced specifically because the law of scarcity has been ignored. (Think houses. We can’t all own houses, scarcity says. So many people kept saying different.)

No sensible person “believes” in free markets in the sense of a zealous adoration of them. What people like me mean when we say we “believe” in free markets is that we think that free markets constitute the most efficient way of distributing scarce resources.

When you work, you either make resources more useful and valuable, or you help distribute those resources. (You may do both.) That helps everyone out, and you get paid for it. Then, you turn around and pay for something else, thus giving another person an incentive to produce it for you.

Do free markets have cracks? Heck yeah. That’s why we don’t “believe believe” in them. We just think that, as economics goes, they’re the best way we have. Governments are extremely slow moving; the decisions of a centralized socialist government are ridiculously inefficient in distributing scarce resources when compared to the efficiency of countless smaller, private transactions in a free market.

So, right now, when we say the federal government’s bailout plan is “socialist,” this is why we mean it as a bad thing. It is not because we love free markets in and of themselves. Free markets not warm and huggable things. Instead, we mean it as a criticism because we love our neighbors and our world, and we know that free markets are the most efficient way of meeting the bulk of humanity’s needs.

Well, you say, “I don’t own any stocks — let those greedy monsters on Wall Street suffer.” You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street’s new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan — and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

Five-Dollar Pig by Flickr user EricGjerde

Let’s take a look:

• Pension fund? Ha! Yeah, right. We have about $450 in a 401(k) at this point.
• Refinance our house? Nope. We’ve been smart, and have consciously chosen to rent for the past four years. It continues to be a good decision.
• Local airport? Our local airport stopped offering public flights more than a year ago. Also, I haven’t flown since the summer of 1999—it’s too cumbersome and expensive, and rail and carpooling has worked beautifully for me.
• New sewer system? I wish. This town’s infrastructure is crumbling. Besides, why can’t a municipality save up for a major expense, like we private citizens do for our own purchases?
• Auto loan? Nope. I’m still driving my trusty 1994 Geo Prizm. Until I can pay cash for a newer used car, I’m not intending to buy one.
• Neighbor lost her job? Again, my neighbors are doing OK. Not great, but they have never been doing great. We do alright for ourselves, but the whole disparity of wealth thing has been biting us in the butt for a long time.

I don’t have much of a vendetta against Wall Street. I do, however, think our entire economic system has gotten off-kilter and is ultimately unsustainable. I have never benefited from our current economic situation, compared to how others have benefited. Where I am today, I have basically nothing to lose. In fact, with our student debt far outweighing our assets, I have less than nothing to lose.

So from where I stand, with none of Mr. Friedman’s arguments applying to me, I have to ask, Why prop up an unsound and unsafe structure? Why shouldn’t we allow it to implode and rebuild itself? I have full confidence that our economy will rebuild itself. I believe that the free market works, as long as basic protections for stockholders, consumers, and workers are in place, and as long as antitrust is actively weeded out.

Is it not possible that what is happening is the market saying that the financial sector has grown too bloated and that we have collectively taken on too much debt? If that is the case, we don’t need a bailout, we need the financial sector to shrink along with our collective debt. That will be painful. I’m sure I will be affected by that economic pain, but it is not as if everything is currently fine and dandy for me economically. But isn’t it possible that such pain is an unfortunate fact of life that is necessary for a more sustainable economic future?