Month: February 2016

We are all special

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It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community to raise a child with special needs.  The difference between a village and a community is the emotional work that is done together. Without much surprise, the problem is its own solution, because working with a child with special needs is emotional work. But the strength of that community transcends the ‘task’ of raising a child – it also allows the community to develop resilience, which in turn allows them to react positively to abrupt changes. Whether it is climate change, or the end of carbon fuels, or adapting to an aging population, a community built from individuals doing emotional work together as a group will be more capable at adapting to transitions.

That capability comes from a shared understanding of each other, and the confidence in each other to take risks. It comes with a sense of obligation to ensure that our friends are looked after when they are in a rough spot, because we would need the same. It comes to a state of being that has fewer dependencies, more quality of life, and a better experience with one’s neighbours.

But being a parent of a special needs child is isolating.  You have few peers that you can share with, due to the relative rarity of being ‘special’. When you gather with other people, it is perfectly normal to talk about your work, and it is hard to explain the effort that goes into what would be perfectly normal with a typical child. When you advocate for your child’s unmet needs, you know that the resources required by your child must not be seen by the other parents to be taking away from the ‘other’ children.  Those peers who are or have walked down similar roads are just as tired of fighting against the inherent injustices in the system as you are, and have a limited amount of support to give. It’s hard.

At exactly the same time as people with special needs have the potential for bringing a community together, and thereby increasing the resilience of the system as a whole, the families of the people with special needs are currently bearing a disproportionate burden of the reality of the situation. Constrained government budgets ensure that a significant number of people are not available to work in the paid labour market because they must provide the care their family members require. Institutionalization cannot meet the emotional needs of anyone, and to ‘be efficient’ we have dismantled the walls of our institutions, without dismantling the mindset that leads to the monetizing of quality of life, and the entrenchment of a welfare mentality.

When health care is compared between Canada and the United States, we see that for every additional dollar that is spent from the public purse, four dollars are saved from the private purse. Since we are all both consumers of health care and tax payers, it is to our benefit to ensure the public purse is funded more fully, so that it saves us all money. Just as it makes sense to ensure that adequate mental health care, eye care, and dental care are available to everyone, as a way of maximizing both quality of life and productivity, it is only logical to ensure that everyone be provided with all of the support that they need to live a fulfilled life. This allows the person with special needs to be as productive as possible, and frees up their unpaid family care-givers to return to their vocation.

While children with special needs has been the focus of this essay thus far, it can be equally applied to our aging population.  With the Baby Boom beginning their retirement, there will come a time in the relatively near foreseeable future when the amount of support required to care for infirm family members will vastly outstrip the working family’s capacity to provide. Our high-needs families need more support than they are getting today, and it will be getting worse before it gets better. The lessons we are learning today about integrating care, and closing service gaps, and working with the families, will prove to be invaluable in the near future when exactly the same discussion must take place to address the coming wave of infirm elderly.

So, instead of thinking what supporting a child with special needs may do for the child and their family, maybe we should be asking what that will end up doing for us all?

A broader view of Needs

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Adam Smith says that people use their time to meet their wants and needs, and that is the basis of the wealth of a nation.

Max Neef says something similar, but it is said a little more profoundly.

I have said that people either use their time to meet their wants and needs directly, or they use their time to convert resources into the means to meet their wants and needs.

I’m not sure that is the whole picture:

  • There are needs that are addressed by using time; sleep, education, governance. The resources required are nominal. This can be enhanced through Human Development.
  • There are needs that are addressed by using time and resources – the resources come from, and wastes go to, natural capital; homeostasis, food, mobility. This can be enhanced through Technological Development.
  • There are needs that are addressed by resources alone – these are from natural services; breathing air, gravity, sunlight. The time required to meet these needs are nominal in places that support human life. These can be degraded, and enhanced only with great difficulty.
  • And there are needs that are addressed by neither time nor resources; love, respect of our peers, emotional work as a group, hope. These are addressed as a part of our other activities, but cannot neglected without causing harm.

Thus, governance is required to create hope, and labour for others is required to ensure we generate the respect of our peers. This is why institutionalization is able to meet the immediate physical needs of the inmates, but why kids in orphanages die from being un-loved.

It also explains the importance of those natural services. They can have no measurable economic value (since one cannot buy and sell gravity, for example), but that doesn’t mean they have a value of 0.  They must be protected from ‘development’, since degrading them in any way must cause more harm than good.

Engineers can address how efficiently people use their time and resources to meet their needs. We need to found a profession that addresses how effectively people meet their needs.

What is the Economy?

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I would argue that our economy is the metabolism of our society.  Thus it is the labour, material, and energy flows into, through, and out of our communities.  Economics would be the study of this.  Money would be a indicator, but not a major part of the understanding of this metabolism – it is the grease in the cogs, not the machine itself.  Too little grease is hard on the machine, but adding more than ‘enough’ does no good at all.

A 200 kg couch potato may have the same metabolism as a 50kg Olympic gymnast, but does either have the output we as a society are wanting to have?  Maybe we want the output from a 100kg lumberjack instead.  The Invisible Hand assumes that all metabolism is good, and eating more is better than eating less.  But if the invisible hand can not distinguish between the outcomes of the alternatives, conventional economics will fail to deliver what we need when we need it.

Can economists say ‘if you want this outcome, this is the best policy’, and be right most of the time?  I don’t know.  I think we’re going to see a peak in the world ecological footprint per capita in the next few years – can economists predict what that would mean?  What do we need to do to maximize the benefits that come from such a change, and minimize the suffering?  Hard to answer any of that.

I’m an engineer, and I haven’t taken much economics in school.  I feel, as I read much of what is written about economics, that there must be something in First Year Economics that is explained to all of the students, and it is taken for granted by everyone else, but I’ve missed.  And in a conversation on Research Gate (link below), I think I found it – it’s the concept of the Rational Agent.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent

The Rational Agent is assumed to drive our economy, by making decisions that will lead to the best possible outcome, based on the information available at the time, at all times.

Reality isn’t so simple – we respond physically, rationally, emotionally, and spiritually, at all times, in all situations.  We do not act in our long term best interest as a rule (else everyone would live to 100 years of age), and the actions of a mob of individually rational people does not have to be rational.

There is a Zen story about a farmer who gains a horse, loses a horse, gains 2 more horses, his son is injured, etc.  And each time, the neighbours say ‘Oh, that’s good luck’, or ‘Oh, that’s bad luck’ as appropriate.  Each time, the farmer says ‘Oh, is it?’, and each time the bad luck would turn out to be lucky, and vice versa.  A version is found here: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/zen.html.  The rational decision can only be observed after the fact – there is no way to know ahead of time what the best decision will be.  We can only base our decisions on experience, and Hope.  Hope isn’t rational and our experience is limited.  Which is why we are suckers to marketing, and fashion, and we make irrational decisions during stressful situations. And also why there is Fundamentalism (be it economic, religious, Western, or whatever) to ensure that our experience from yesterday still is valid tomorrow.

Believing that we’re all Rational Actors leads us to believe in an Invisible Hand, because if we’re all doing what we should do, then whatever we have done must defacto be what was ‘intended’ to happen.  It would be the best of all possible outcomes.  Which is plainly balderdash.  That logic assumes that the impact of all actions of all people are effectively the same, that there is a higher morality associated with having wealth and power, things that are blatantly untrue.  “I won, therefore I was the best player, regardless of if I cheated” is a philosophy that discourages others from playing.  In effect, that form of self-reinforcing selfishness breaks down community cohesion, decreasing social resilience.

Maybe we need to think about the ‘whole person’ instead, and their role and responsibilities in a ‘sustainable community”.

Is there need for redefining ‘Economics’ under the present context? – ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_need_for_redefining_Economics_under_the_present_context/1 [accessed Feb 19, 2016].