All posts by Curtis

B, T

Riding the Bus: Back to Childhood or Forward to Transit?

January 24, 2014 Curtis Leave a comment

Transit bus — This bus is part of the public transit system.
Photo Credit: Seluryar via Compfight cc

Although America’s largest cities tend to have robust transit systems that include rail in addition to buses, the transit systems of smaller cities often use only buses. Therefore, residents of these cities often refer to the transit system as “the bus,” as in, “I’m not taking the bus! No way!”

School bus — Is it partly because we rode buses like this as children that some don’t want to ride them as adults?
Photo Credit: redjar via Compfight cc

Although this negative attitude comes partly from limitations that their city’s transit system may have, I think it’s also connotations of the phrase “the bus.” As I child, I took the bus to school. I got so tired of riding the bus that it was a relief to be able to walk to high school.

Many of my classmates, though, rode the bus until graduation. That made not having to ride the bus seem like a step toward adulthood. Riding “the bus” as a adult to get around town, then, may feel like a developmental step backward. We may unconsciously think that riding the bus is for kids.

Speaking of transit systems, including bus-only systems, as transit avoids this connotation. Transit is a characteristic of a big, grown-up city, and good transit systems are used by people of all ages and walks of life with pride.

Transit consultant Jarrett Walker, author of the Human Transit blog, offers many posts that discuss transit and language.

Framologists should dignify their city’s transit system by calling it transit rather than the bus. But do you think it makes a difference?

I, N

Net Neutrality: What’s at Stake?

January 23, 2014 Curtis 2 Comments

There’s nothing to stop ISPs to slow down or block our access to websites on home Internet connections. Americans have never enjoyed net neutrality protection on mobile Internet connections.
Photo Credit: wheresmysocks via Compfight cc

As I understand last week’s court decision that overturned the FCC’s net neutrality rules, Internet service providers (ISPs) now can slow down or block access to any website they choose.

As pointed out in this On the Media story, ISPs’ interest in this power likely is to be able to charge other companies more money rather than trying to silence blogs such as this one. For example, Comcast might try to charge Netflix or Amazon more money to use its network.

Support Net Neutrality — Net neutrality is about freedom of speech, and we should talk about it that way.
Photo Credit: Brian Lane Winfield Moore via Compfight cc

But there’s nothing to stop them from squelching online speech.

Would Americans accept it if the US government claimed the power to slow down or block any website it chose? This illustrates George Lakoff’s principle of the conservation of government: that less government regulation means that corporations decide. In this case, it’s the big ISPs.

On the Media also points out that net neutrality has never applied to mobile Internet access, just home in-the-wall connections. But it should apply to any Internet access.

I’ve also heard net neutrality called Internet freedom. I think that’s better way to frame the issue because it makes clearer that freedom is at stake: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of commerce, at a minimum. While accurate, neutrality doesn’t carry that moral punch.

Another potential phrase is online equality.

How do you think Framologists should talk about equal bandwidth access?

G, R

What Foes of Government Regulation Don’t Want You to Realize

January 22, 2014 Curtis 5 Comments

As I’ve pointed out before, many government regulations are intended to protect the public from abuse or injury and to ensure ethical behavior by business. These protections help Us the People have confidence that we will be treated fairly and not ripped off.

Gas Pump inspection label — The State of Alabama inspected this gas pump to ensure that it measured gallons correctly. This gives buyers confidence. Photo Credit: Dystopos via Compfight cc

For example, state officials test gas pumps and grocery-store scales to ensure that they are measuring accurately. This frees customers from worry about being charged for more product than we bought. It also frees business owners from worrying about charging for less than was sold and from having to convince potential customers that they are measuring honestly.

This confidence is in the interest of both businesses and their customers and allows markets to function. Therefore, the rules are confidence-creators or confidence-builders.

Therefore, when extreme conservatives denounce government regulation in the abstract, Framologists can reply that good government regulations are confidence-creators that markets need to function. We then can invite them to help us ensure that specific regulations really do help create confidence.

Government regulation -> Confidence creation

What do you think? How much confidence should I have in this reframe?

K, M

Martin Luther King Day: Should there be another holiday?

January 20, 2014 Curtis Leave a comment

I’m of two minds about Martin Luther King Day. One mind says, “He was a great man, he deserves at least this much, and it’s an annual time to remember him.” The other mind replies, “What if America had a holiday that focused on the ideals for which he lived and died rather than on him?”

I (at least three minds now!) think both views are correct. And many King Day celebrations do acknowledge that King was part of a vast movement that began long before his appearance and that continues today. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of work to do, especially with recent weakening of affirmative action, voter-rights, and other civil-rights laws.

What if the USA had one of the following holidays:

Citizenship Day
Civil Rights Day
Freedom Day
Democracy Day
Equality Day?

Of these, my favorites are Freedom Day and Equality Day. Should they be combined into Freedom and Equality Day? Such a holiday(s) might help ensure national discussion of these ideals and their reality or unreality in America each year.

Should America celebrate one of these holidays? If so, how would you do it?

F, M

Framing Markets, Part 2: Who Decides? What Do We Want?

January 16, 2014 Curtis 2 Comments

How should progressives respond to the extreme conservative mantra, ?

This slogan comes from the inaccurate view that markets justly mete rewards and punishments like the fundamentalist, strict-father version of God.

As noted before, from a progressive perspective, markets are tools to be used by Us the People for our benefit. If we were to let markets make important policy decisions for us, we would be like Don Quixote on his first sally. Seeking adventure, the would-be knight rode out of town and then let his horse decide where to go. The horse returned him to his barn, of course!

But at least his horse got him safely home. If we abandon ourselves to the judgment of “markets” without clear, consistently-enforced expectations for fair play and fair treatment of workers, customers, communities, animals, and the planet, the corporations that tend to dominate markets could be far crueler.

The effect of letting the market decide too often means that the two or three (sometimes only one) companies that dominate an industry decide for us what our options are. Insisting that the government, as the people’s servant, set rules to structure markets for our benefit, increases confidence in business and helps markets function in our interest.

Therefore, when extreme conservatives say to let “the market” decide, progressives should reply,

But what do you think?

B, G

Framing Big Government: Who Governs and to What End?

January 15, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

Extreme conservatives label many government efforts they don’t like as big government. This frames the issue as the size of government–with smaller seeming more desirable, of course.

Big Brother is watching you. — According to the Principle of Conservation of Government, corporations could be the tyrant to be feared.

To me, the phrase brings to mind the all-knowing, all-powerful Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel 1984.

Instead of defending “big government,” progressives should reframe the debate as about who governs and to what end, not size. According to George Lakoff,

There is a Principle of Conservation of Government: If conservatives succeed in cutting government by the people for the public good, our lives will still be governed, but now by corporations. We will have government by corporations for corporate profit…. It will be a cruel government, a government of foreclosures, outsourcing, union busting, outrageous payments for every little thing, and pension eliminations.

So when extreme conservatives say they want smaller government, progressives could reply that their opponents are advocating government by corporations. Instead, we want the people to govern the nation, including corporations. A bumper-sticker version could read, “Smaller government = corporate government.”

Many of the laws government regulations that extreme conservatives want to abolish are intended to protect us from abuse by corporations. Examples include the Clear Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum wage, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and on and on. If they succeed, the corporations would make the rules for their own benefit, not ours.

That’s unacceptable, and We the People should say so.

C, S

Is Scrooge a Hero?

January 14, 2014 Curtis Leave a comment

Although Scrooge spoils Christmas by refusing to help those less fortunate and by paying his worker poverty wages, he has a change a heart.

In American pop culture, we call someone that dislikes Christmas or spoils the holiday Scrooge. But the protagonist of the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge, spoils Christmas with more than his sour mood: he refuses to contribute to charity and pays his employee poverty wages, limiting his ability to care for his sick son and to celebrate Christmas.

The main way Scrooge has harmed society is by refusing to share his wealth.

Today, by trying to undermine or take away social insurance, public education, civil liberties, access to health insurance, access to meaningful participation in elections, public transportation, raises to the minimum wage, and long-term unemployment insurance, the radical conservative movement is behaving far worse than Scrooge. Rather than merely withholding their aid to vulnerable Americans, radical conservatives are trying to take rights and public goods away from us. This is wrong and spoils America, not just Christmas.

Because we don’t have time to wait for ghosts to do it for us, progressives should consider comparing the radical conservatives to Scrooge because it’s a story everyone knows. Progressives should point out that the radical conservatives are acting worse than Scrooge and that by the end, Scrooge does begin doing justice by sharing his wealth and giving his employee a raise. Will radical conservatives remain worse than Scrooge the villain, or will they rediscover America’s tradition of public-spiritedness and follow the example of Scrooge the hero?

Five Ways to Reframe Entitlement Reform

January 13, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

When referring to government programs in which Americans have a right to participate, such as Social Security and Medicare, the term “entitlement” used to mean a hard-won right of citizenship. These days, however, opponents of such programs use the word “entitlement” pejoratively in order to call these rights into question. The phrase “entitlement reform” is used to mean cuts to these programs. According to strict-father thinking, “the world doesn’t owe you a living,” so why should anyone receive money that they haven’t earned?

There’s a problem with this reasoning: it isn’t true.

For Social Security, Medicare, pensions, veterans’ benefits, and some other programs, the right to participate in these programs comes from having paid into their systems throughout our working careers or as deferred compensation. In other words, they are earned income. To cut these programs without the consent of their participants is to break the social contract. This would be morally wrong because hard-working Americans have earned these protections and have done nothing to deserve cuts to them. Also, many of us no longer could work to replace that income due to infirmity or disability, and cutting these protections would force many into undeserved poverty.

For programs into which Americans don’t pay as directly, such as SNAP (food stamps), we do contribute to them with our taxes. And even when Americans may not have paid much in income tax due to very low incomes, we do have a right to assistance from our country under the law, the teachings of Christianity and other religions, and under Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are ways that Americans show we care for each other. While we may disagree about how best to express that caring, we should care and honor the rights of every American to participate in these programs when eligible.

Instead of speaking of entitlement reform, supporters of these programs should make clear what the bland phrase “entitlement reform” obscures. Five ways to reframe it are:

Theft of Americans’ deferred compensation
Cuts to older Americans’ income and healthcare in retirement
Keeping your social insurance premiums the same but cutting your future benefits (because Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs) and
Whacking away our right to security in old age, disability, or misfortune
A big pay cut for America

What do you think?

F, M

Framing the Free Market

Aside January 10, 2014 Curtis 1 Comment

In a 1999 essay in The Atlantic titled “The Market as God,” Harvey Cox brilliantly discusses ways in which some Americans treat the idea of the free market as if it were a god. The problem is that, while markets certainly can be very influential, they are not gods and do not necessarily have people’s best interests at heart. In fact, they can seem heartless sometimes. But that doesn’t mean that markets are bad–just that deifying them is unwise.

A better understanding of markets came to me from an unlikely source: a book about parking. Donald Shoup’s excellent book The High Price of Free Parking argues for using market forces as tools to better manage parking.

An example is charging more for on-street parking during peak hours and charging less for parking in garages at the same time. That will encourage more drivers to park in the garage, leaving more on-street spaces available for those willing to pay extra for them. He proposes a goal of making one parking space available on each side of each block at any given time. That would allow motorists to park without having to cruise for spaces, saving time, fuel, pollution, and stress.

The details of Shoup’s proposals aside, instead of thinking of the market as god, progressives should talk about the market as tool. Therefore, the question should never be whether markets are good or bad but what markets are good for and bad at. How should we use markets, and who should benefit from them?

For example, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act attempts to use market forces to improve Americans’ access to quality health insurance. The government creates standards of quality and fairness and marketplaces for buying and selling insurance, and the insurance companies do the rest. It is an attempt to use markets to advance the health and wellbeing of Americans.

When extreme conservatives complain about government interference in the free market, progressives could reply (if they can say so truly) that government is providing the market structure that both companies and customers need so they know what behavior is and is not acceptable. This allows them to do business with confidence that they are being treated fairly and not ripped off or harmed. This confidence makes business possible. I think progressives should frame this as market-confidence building.

How do you think progressives should talk about markets?

Framology