ON INDIGENCE

ON INDIGENCE
©Chippy's Dad

One time while discussing medical care, I was asked: "Don't you think it is best if all people and not just sick people pay the costs of indigent care?" As part of my answer I said, "While I cannot prove it, I believe that through the elimination of moral hazard there would be far fewer indigents if everyone knew they were on their own." The response was that "I would find it interesting to hear your ideas as to the common causes, environments and education that lead to indigence."

Before I start I will say that, except as described below, education has nothing to do with it. Also, despite the conversation below, I suspect that in rare cases, indigence may result from bad luck such as coming down with a debilitating illness or being seriously injured. However, if bad luck, not fear, is the sole cause of indigence and nothing that follows applies, then the indigent will probably have insurance and will certainly have loved ones who care for him. Following is my response.

The short answer is included in the exchange described above. The moral hazard provides a systemic account for indigence. The conviction that someone will take care of me leads to a tendency to become indigent.

It is not that simple because, as children, almost all of us are convinced that our parents will take care of us. As a person matures, the realization sets in that this idyllic situation will not last. Most people learn to take care of themselves and go on to raise children of their own. So, perhaps indigence results from poor parenting. If the parents continue to fret about the child with great ado through adolescence and early adulthood, he remains dependent. That is, he becomes indigent. Yet, most children become rebellious towards fussy parents. As he matures, why would a child remain dependent after leaving the nest and become indigent when most do not.

What if indigence does not simply follow from a conviction of dependency? I think the indigent lives in fear. Yes, it can be parents who instill a sense of fear even as they fuss, but the key element is the experience of violence such that the indigent feels no control. If the parents inflict arbitrary or unpredictable rewards and punishments on the child, she may become convinced that not only the home but the entire world is chaotic and that all she can do is sit there and take it as it comes. Even if no reward or punishment is intended, but the child perceives the actions of her parents as such, then the world will appear chaotic. She may experience a certain comfort in keeping an extreme low profile in order to not attract attention. When out in the world, a low profile this extreme is indigence.

Notice then, that indigence does not necessarily involve poor parenting. For example, an experience with slavery can produce the same effect. A person, who is a slave, is a person who experiences violence daily yet is perpetually fed, cultivated, and tended. A slave is totally dependent and has no control: dependent for food, housing, direction, training, everything. A slave experiences the extreme fear that at any time, the master may announce that he will be sold and separated from everyone he loves. After slavery, he might live in fear since he was always dependent on the master for direction as to what to do and how to live. When turned out to face the world on his own, the former slave may freeze in the headlights out of fear. Because he is frozen in fear, he would not be free. He thus becomes indigent or tends towards indigence. This feeling of no control and chaos can be passed on through generations. The fear passed through generations can manifest itself in a poor education, a low paying job, violence in the home, anger at the world, and indigence. The fear becomes self fulfilling.

(As an aside, I often hear people refer to "slave wages". This term completely misses the point of slavery. Slavery has nothing to do with low wages. Slavery has everything to do with being directed and with not having the freedom to act according to one's own will. The conviction that low wages are slave wages is a manifestation of materialistic beliefs.)

Oppression can occur in schools. Should a teacher hand out rewards and punishments on an arbitrary basis, the student may experience a loss of control. This can be particularly true if the punishments themselves are strange. For example if the punishment is to be publicly dressed down and to be forced to issue an unfelt apology for some infraction, the student may experience a loss of control and may not understand the object of her anger. She can be lead into a situation where every attempt to break free becomes another ineffective act of defiance that turns into another embarrassing experience. It can be much worse than out right physical punishment. Not that I am a fan of physical punishment, but at least it can generally have the effect of focusing her anger in a simple and understandable way. The feeling of loss of control can result not only from punishments but from the perception of punishment. A student who is constantly oppressed, or perceived to be oppressed, in school year after year by multiple teachers and fellow students and who cannot effectively defy her tormentors may become indigent.

Whether inside or out of the family, indigence results from a fearful attitude adopted to keep a low profile. In a radical sense, everyone is free at all times. The oppressed child is free to defy her parents and suffer the violence. The slave is free to run away and risk being caught and beaten. However, these choices are radical because the consequences are very hard to take especially if the consequences are continuing and unpredictable, especially if death is feared. This defiant attitude explains how some people are able to break out of the circle of violence and become prosperous people, and the difficulty of defying an oppressor also explains why most people do not.

The defiance does not have to be ubiquitous. As an example consider Uncle Tom. Those who use the Term "Uncle Tom" to refer to a compliant black person, fail to understand that in the end Uncle Tom is defiant. When asked to plow the field, Uncle Tom plows the field: compliance, apparently. But! When Simon Legree asks the location of Cassy and Emmeline, Uncle Tom refuses to tell. In the end, he is defiant; he is his own man; he is a man with convictions who will suffer whatever is dispensed without compromising his principles. Uncle Tom is not a compliant black person; he is a self-made man. Any kind of defiance in the face of oppression will forestall indigence.

The discussion above has implications for government. The more control governmental leaders exercise, the more indigence will exist. Governmental leaders can and do take on the role of the slave masters when they take the fruits of the people's labor through taxes, apply thousands of pieces of petty legislation which they presume to call "law", and throw thousands of people in jail for violations of arbitrary petty regulations. Even worse, governmental leaders become slave masters when, enforcing political correctness, they inflict strange punishments like publically dressing down an individual or group and forcing an unfelt apology for some supposed infraction. When a person meets the government face to face and is unable to defy it, he may retract into a shell of fear and become indigent. When a person is tended by well meaning bureaucrats, he may become frozen in fear should he feel the threat that the largesse may cease. Because the government is well armed, he may feel the threat of death. He would be an indigent.

Indigence, then, results from the individual's unwillingness or inability to defy an oppressor.