Sociological Thought of the Day

Pierre Bourdieu on Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field:

Concentration of the capital of physical force requires the establishment of an efficient fiscal system, which in turn proceeds in tandem with the unification of economic space (creation of a national market). The levies raised by the dynastic state apply equally to all subjects--and not, as with feudal levies, only to dependents who may in turn tax their own men. Appearing in the last decade of the 12th century, state tax developed in tandem the growth of war expenses. The imperative of territorial defense, first invoked instance by instance, slowly become the permanent justification of the "obligatory" and "regular" character of the levies perceived "without limitation of time other than that regularly assigned by the king" and directly or indirectly applicable "to all social groups."

Thus was progressively established a specific economic logic, founded on levies without counterpart and redistribution functioning as the basis for the conversion of economic capital into symbolic capital, concentrated at first in the person of the Prince. The institution of the tax (over and against the resistance of the taxpayers) stands in relation of circular causality with the development of the armed forces necessary for the expansion and defense of the territory under control, and thus for the levying of tributes and taxes as well as for imposing via constraint the payment of that tax. The institution of the tax was the result of a veritable internal war waged by the agents of the state against the resistance of the subjects, who discover themselves as such mainly if not exclusively by discovering themselves as taxable, as tax payers. Royal ordinances imposed four degrees of repression in cases of a delay in collection: seizures, arrests for debt including imprisonment, a writ of restraint binding on all parties, and the quartering of soldiers. It follows that the question of the legitimacy of the tax cannot be raised (Norbert Elias correctly remarks that, at its inception, taxation presents itself as a kind of racket). It is only progressively that we come to conceive taxes as a necessary tribute to the needs of a recipient that transcends the king, i.e. this "fictive body" that is the state.

No Delay

A friendly suggestion today:

Obama Health Law Needs Delay, State Insurance Head Says

President Barack Obama may need to delay his health-care overhaul or risk “chaos” when subsidized insurance plans go on sale in October, the head of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners said.

It’s unclear how well the federal government or any of the participating states will perform on Oct. 1, when millions of Americans are supposed to begin shopping at online markets created by the law, Jim Donelon, the NAIC’s president, said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. While the administration has shown no sign of seeking a delay, it may be in the president’s best interest, he said.

“It’s his calling-card, signature issue and to rush it into implementation before it’s ready would not be in his overall interest,” said Donelon, a Republican who’s also Louisiana’s insurance commissioner. State officials around the U.S. “don’t want it to create chaos.”

But we've seen this movie before.

Health Care Plan Falters In Massachusetts Slump

Published: April 11, 1991

BOSTON— The Massachusetts plan to guarantee health insurance for all, once hailed as a model for the nation, is faltering under the weight of a soured economy, a hostile new Governor and the fierce opposition of small-business owners, who would be required to pay for coverage of employees.

The pathbreaking plan was adopted in 1988, as Gov. Michael S. Dukakis promoted universal health care in his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, and was to be phased in over several years. Major parts of it resemble proposals being considered in other states and Congress as the nation confronts spiraling health costs and widening gaps in the insurance system.

The plan's centerpiece -- a requirement that businesses employing six or more workers offer them health insurance or pay the state to do it -- was originally scheduled to take effect next January. But it now seems unlikely to materialize for years, if ever. The new Governor, William F. Weld, a conservative Republican, has asked the state legislature to repeal it, calling the requirement "an obstacle rather than a vehicle for improved health benefits for all."

The 1988 law required every resident of Massachusetts to have an offer of coverage by April of 1992. But given the challenges noted in the 1991 New York Times article above, the state delayed implementation of the law's linchpin, the employer mandate.

Even proponents of the mandated employer benefits want a delay to let the recession ease, and the Democrat-controlled state legislature voted last month to postpone the requirement until 1994.

Ultimately that delay proved indefinite and the employer mandate was repealed in 1996. And while some pieces of the 1988 law stood and were expanded upon in the same 1996 legislation that repealed the employer mandate, the fact remains that delaying implementation hollowed out and ultimately killed the centerpiece of that reform law. And it was a full 18 years after its 1988 universal health care law was passed that the state went all in and tried again.

There may well be some chaos later this year. But no delays.

Philosophical thought of the day

Cheer up: even if you didn't have a good day today, someone indistinguishable from you did, somewhere.

Philosophical Implications of Inflationary Cosmology

It is said that the ancient Greek philosopher Diodorus Cronos once put forth a powerful argument for a peculiar view about the relationship between the possible and the actual. Diodorus claimed that everything that could possibly happen is either occurring right now or will occur at some point in the future. His claim, in other words, was that there are no unrealized possibilities. Unfortunately, the works of Diodorus have been lost, and although a number of modern philosophers have tried valiantly to reconstruct his argument, no one really knows exactly how it was supposed to go.

Nonetheless, we think that Diodorus's conclusion was essentially correct, and we will here provide a new, entirely modern argument for it. Unlike the orignal argument of Diodorus, however, our argument draws on inflationary cosmology and quantum mechanics. It follows from inflationary cosmology that the universe is infinite and can therefore be divided into an infinite number of regions of any given size. But it follows from quantum theory that the total number of histories can occur in any one of these regions in a finite time is finite. We draw on these two premises to argue for our central conclusion: that all possible histories are realized in some region of the universe.