American Communism: Redistribution Through Litigation
I've decided to go ahead and post the conclusion to a theory that I've been developing for many years now. I understand that no idea is new, but I do profess that I have not heard my particular theory advanced by anyone else, and those few with whom I've shared parts of it have seemed at least a little interested in it.
The premise here is that the U.S. has created a new form of Communism, and that our variety is centered squarely on the use of the litigation process in our courts. Communism, by political principal, is the redistribution of assets from the "haves" to the "have-nots", generally with force (people, even rich ones, are generally loathe to give their stuff away -- when it's not their own idea). This is opposed to the tenets of Marxism, as I understand them, which involve an equal distribution of assets among a happy and productive populace. We have seen this doctrine of equal distribution attempted in our era, most notably by the Russians and their empire, the Chinese and their periphery, and a few banana republics (Cuba, petrolium-rich nations, &c.). In these situations in which the revolutionaries were generally quoting Marxist ideas, they slaughtered (read murdered) the wealthy and just took their stuff. I will try not to go too far into the well-known histories of these nations. I can say that our particular brand of Communism has merit in that blood need not be spilled, and that when the juries offer their awards, the "haves" will generally just give it up.
I will be honest in admitting that I have not read the formal doctrines of Marx, Lenin, Mao, et al. I am no political genius, nor any other sort of genius. That is my qualification of the day.
The content of my blog are (C) 2004. I will always cite my sources when I am using them consciously. I will likely use ideas that many others have had and published, and have sort of made it out to the public domain. If anyone wants to use my thoughts in their work (a form of flattery that is beyond my own comprehension), please cite me as a source. If you find any of my writings mirror something that you or someone else has published, please contact me with the reference and I'll include it, as long as I agree that it should be cited.
I am going to try to keep my list of topics short, so I'll follow up each major topic through the add comment mechanism. I welcome anyone who feels inclined to chime in to do so; my remarks will always be from me, PolishKitty.
The premise here is that the U.S. has created a new form of Communism, and that our variety is centered squarely on the use of the litigation process in our courts. Communism, by political principal, is the redistribution of assets from the "haves" to the "have-nots", generally with force (people, even rich ones, are generally loathe to give their stuff away -- when it's not their own idea). This is opposed to the tenets of Marxism, as I understand them, which involve an equal distribution of assets among a happy and productive populace. We have seen this doctrine of equal distribution attempted in our era, most notably by the Russians and their empire, the Chinese and their periphery, and a few banana republics (Cuba, petrolium-rich nations, &c.). In these situations in which the revolutionaries were generally quoting Marxist ideas, they slaughtered (read murdered) the wealthy and just took their stuff. I will try not to go too far into the well-known histories of these nations. I can say that our particular brand of Communism has merit in that blood need not be spilled, and that when the juries offer their awards, the "haves" will generally just give it up.
I will be honest in admitting that I have not read the formal doctrines of Marx, Lenin, Mao, et al. I am no political genius, nor any other sort of genius. That is my qualification of the day.
The content of my blog are (C) 2004. I will always cite my sources when I am using them consciously. I will likely use ideas that many others have had and published, and have sort of made it out to the public domain. If anyone wants to use my thoughts in their work (a form of flattery that is beyond my own comprehension), please cite me as a source. If you find any of my writings mirror something that you or someone else has published, please contact me with the reference and I'll include it, as long as I agree that it should be cited.
I am going to try to keep my list of topics short, so I'll follow up each major topic through the add comment mechanism. I welcome anyone who feels inclined to chime in to do so; my remarks will always be from me, PolishKitty.
posted by PolishKitty at 11/15/2004 12:59:00 PM
3 Comments:
Having published the conclusion of a treatise which I didn't bother to write, I will now offer some commentary about that conclusion:
It's pretty obvious to me that people around the world are generally looking for free stuff, and have generally lost respect and/or confidence in their ability to provide for themselves. Or maybe people are lazy. I guess I don't really know why so many people zealously look to others with this sense of entitlement to other people's stuff.
The optimistic part of me believes that it's the lawyers. There are just too many lawyers in America. It should be noted that I have at least three friends who are bona fide practicing attourneys. One works for the office of the Public Defender, another works for a private firm that (I think) does a lot of work by getting people into bankruptcy, and the other has worked for practically every financial institution in the country as a tax-law specialist. Having stated that, I think the problem is with the rest of them who are trying to eek out a living. I guess all the good lawyer jobs are taken by the more senior or moral of the bunch, and the rest need to make a living somehow.
It just makes me sick when I see a TV commercial two weeks after some Pharma company pulls a product after they did research and found out that their product had some bad side effects. The commercial is from a law firm on the other side of the state, and they're doing me a service by announcing this breaking news, printing the brand name of the pulled product in text which fills the entire screen, and essentially imploring me to contact them if I (or a loved-one; ha!) ever consumed this product. You know, they're just doing a community service by making sure that anyone who ever took this product is aware that there could have been risks. Yeah, that's what they're doing.
Of course, the reality of the situation has nothing to do with community service, and almost nothing to do with the "righting" of any wrongs. Those leeches are shopping for plaintiffs! I know this is nothing new. I know I'm not the first to see this. And I know that this is only part of the problem. I don't fault a person for wanting to make a living. Heck, at least the lawyers are willing to work for the money! (And we all know that in the end, they get the lion's share, per-capita at least)
Lawyers without real jobs are only part of the problem in America. But they constitute an essential part of the foundation of our New American Communism.
Why call it Communism?
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"In theory, communism would create a classless society of abundance and freedom, in which all people enjoy equal social and economic status. In practice, communist regimes have taken the form of coercive, authoritarian governments that cared little for the plight of the working class and sought above all else to preserve their own hold on power." (Encarta).
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I like the word, "Communism", because it evokes the reality of how "Marxism" is implemented as a political system. The redistribution of wealth (note that I didn't use the words, "equal redistribution") in the Communist systems to date have more to do with taking the stuff from people that have lots of it, and distributing it generously to the people that have the Power, and then sending some down the line to the rest of the populace. David Stockman might have called that "trickle-down Communist economics".
Lately I've been slowly reading a fantastic book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon). (I'm reading it front-to-back, so I'm about half through the first part) Gibbon's description of the Roman power-brokers, and their frequent demise from others who were ruthlessly jealous about power, money, influence, &c. shows a society which wasn't very far-off from 20th century Communist implementation. Rome started out as a pretty cool empire in which important commodities like food were generally created and harvested with high success through the spread of agricultural knowledge, then dispatched throughout the empire as needed. If a particular area was having a tough season, they could count on their Roman fathers to deliver via boat or land essential stocks of grain to keep the area alive until the next season. Apparently this apparatus didn't last very long, since the system moved to more of a tithing from the Provinces to Rome, without much redistribution to be expected. Enough about Rome.
Communism applies to our current situation in the U.S., not through executive or legislative action (I'll go into our Socialism some other time), but through the judicial system. That is AWESOME! As a democratic republic, we have supposedly rejected the ideals of Communism by not creating or implementing laws which follow those priciples. We have not had any kind of civil war leading to a revolution which changes the essential elements of our Government, as set forth over 200 years ago. Our checks-and-balances government of power-sharing through three main branches, has done a decent job of keeping the spirit of Americanism alive for a long time. We let in some Socialism, but kept out Communism. Thank you Truman, Ike, McCarthy, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, et al.
But, according to my theory, Communism has finally made it here. As my theory goes, litigation is the driving factor behind our new redistribution of wealth. This litigation-based system has nothing whatsoever to do with the plight of any entire class of people, and apparently has no meaningful oversight (read accountability) from the People. Maybe a better term for my theory would be American Communism: Redistribution Through Our Constitutional Loophole. The hole in the loop being the judicial system, and the enormous amount of tangible power that has been passively granted to it. And you know I'm not talking about criminal court, but civil court.
I'm going to try here to elaborate slightly more on the Communist metaphor I use for my theory. The elaboration must begin with a notice of where the metaphor doesn't work: The Power in each court is actually held by that court's judges. I do not believe that our judges are on-the-take, or getting kick-backs. I do believe that the judges are doing their best (for the most part) to ensure that the laws are being enforced, and that proceedings within their courtrooms adhere to the common rules of conduct for the various jurisdictions. I think the metaphor does apply in the general comparison of arbitrary and forced redistribution of wealth.
If you frame your thinking about this in a slightly less rigid way, you might say that the Power in the Courts is held by those persuasive litigators who can prove that a person incurrs actual financial damages, and/or is entitled to huge punitive rewards from the perceived wrong-doings of (always very wealthy) corporations or individuals. My favourite examples of this theory at-work are the lawsuites and settlements stemming from the cigarette manufacturers. Then there's the famous case about the fast-food hot-coffee incident (Read an opinion by Jay Osgood, 1994). But the litigator does not have the power to render a verdict or inflict punitive action. The juries for each of these cases are charged with deciding the true/false aspect of the charge (the metaphor breaks here too; juries don't get any of the proceeds), then judges dole out the punishment. I've stated before that I can only blame the lawyer for so much, but not all of this. In the end, juries and judges are implementing the redistribution. So, this is a strange twist of the Communism metaphor: The stakeholders (litigators, defendants) don't actually have the Power to cause the redistribution, only the people in the courtrooms that don't stand to gain or lose anything have this power.
Well, that is how our system is supposed to work! And it does work.
Don't misunderstand my message here. The court system in the U.S. was once a revolutionary one-of-a-kind thing. It brought fairness and justice to help make our society a better place. In truth, it does that every day (e.g. Scott Peterson is found guilty). Part of this whole American experiment was that we created a nation of laws with embedded levels of redundancy. We did that so that we could have a more fruitful Capitalist society. But we have, finally, found a way to twist that very mechanism into a quite unfair medium for Communism. I don't yet have the answer.
What went wrong?So far, I have advanced this theory that the U.S. is virtually unknowingly slipping into a Communistic society. I have implied that this is a bad thing, and I have been pretty harsh on lawyers and the judicial system. I do think the judicial system and its officers are to a great degree culpable for this problem, but that cannot be the entire picture of fault.
Is there a defect in our judicial system?If the courts are at fault, is there a defect which we can we track back to our laws and/or Constitution? I'm not presently motivated to outline the various legal code which makes up the rules of that game, so I'll just highlight a few things. I will begin with some good reasons to have them around:
* Criminals should be convicted, then jailed or killed.
* If someone is to have surgery to have a gall bladder removed, and the medical team not only doesn't remove the gall bladder, but instead performs a sex-change operation or an amputation, then there exists a victim who should receive some compensation.
* When a creditor or lender lets someone borrow $x, and the borrower decides not to pay it back, then the lender is a victim and should have recourse to recover the loss.
* A pharma company introduces a new drug that actually cures herpes. The company did enough internal research to find out that 100% of people with herpes are cured forever after they use the drug for five days. Their research also indicated that people who use the drug for more than three days have a 25% of death which is directly attributable to some unintended mechanism of the drug. The company decides to bury these particular findings and market the drug to sufferers of herpes with a recommended dosage schedule of five days. The FDA somehow didn't catch the part about killing people. Everyone with herpes and $10,000 gets their GP to prescribe the drug, and a quarter of them die in four days (the other three-quarters are happy and no longer worry about how they're going to break this news to that fantastic new girl or boy they're dating). This ridiculous example shows when you'd want to jail or kill a bunch of executives, and also sue the company out of existence.
The courts were designed to arbitrate disputes among citizens in which damages were incurred by someone, and also to dole out justice to bad people. In my opinion, the courts are pretty good at that. They have succeeded in that mission.
While fulfilling their primary function, the courts have also figured out a way to give someone $3,000,000 because she fumbled a cup of really hot coffee and burned herself. My mind is open enough to explore some reasoning for having the coffee peddler pay the medical expenses. I can see that third-degree burns would be pretty nasty, and I can probably agree that the company should have known better than to hand someone a cup of liquid at 190F in a plastic cup with a flimsy cap. But how in the hell does one come up with a $3m reward for this rather unremarkable combination of both party's mistakes?
Answer: The victim found a cunning litigator who was able to really lay it on thick and must have just hit every compassionate nerve in the jury and judge. The appellate process must have been equally compassionate.
The answer to this puzzle introduces us to the underlying problem with our system: In the end, our system is based on how we, as jurors and judges, are affected by emotion and compassion which is over-invoked by the more clever litigators among us. The same quality that makes us victims of this phenomenon is the very quality that makes us good people. That irresitable Catch-22 will make a good follow-up later.
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