Only 10%! A Dying World Reborn

10% of what?

$100 or $1,000 or $1 million?

All too often, these articles leave out this vital bit of information -- which is essential context for one to read such articles with any intelligence and understanding -- which unfortunately, is the intent of the source providing the information. But the reporter should dig a little deeper at what is being unsaid as much as what is being said.

If someone is paying $100 a month for health insurance (not even health care), 10% more is probably not going to be a deal breaker, but when they are starting off at $1,000 a month, that is going to break the camel's back.

And now there is a plan afloat, that people will be required to make such payments -- or be fined $15,000 for not paying it -- for nothing.

If one has to spend more money for insurance than actual goods and services, how is anybody better off, except to indicate that the rewards to risk ratios have turned negative, and one can expect to get nothing, for a high fixed cost?

Actually, I should have used the more real world figure of $100,000 rather than the more whimsical $1 million dollars, as a more fitting illustration of such distortions.

Then we can include these "poor," starving, underpaid and undeprivileged "public service" union employees, demanding their 7% increases to continue -- just like the poor guys at the bottom who altogether are "rich," and so won't miss their plate lunches being stolen for that purpose.

I don't think it is so much that the people of Hawaii are ignorant and uneducated -- so much as they are misinformed and manipulated in this manner, to overwhelm us with everything that is irrelevant so that we cannot see the only thing that is significant.

And in the health insurance discussion, that would be, that one is no longer entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but one has to pay a premium to even remain a free citizen. And thus the premises for this society, has lost all meaning, and become the opposite.

No, the irresponsible dregs will find a way to milk the system.

What is hoped, is to spread the burden, among the many more who don't purchase health insurance but pay for medical actually received. These are among the healthiest people and so it is economic for them to do so because they are usually also, the prudent businessman, rather than the union workers who think they are not getting their moneysworth unless they take all their sick leave and run up as high a medical bills to cover the premiums they are not paying for anyway.

That's the motivation for attacking the health crisis as a health care insurance problem, and not as a much more overarching problem of this union mentality of getting something for nothing.

But some people actually have to pay the bills -- for everyone, which are your legions of small business operators just trying to get by, and needing whatever cash flow they have, to keep their businesses running -- which are taxed at gross receipts, and not profit.

That's the key concept -- personal responsibility.

The very antithesis of this, is insurance -- that spreads the risk across everyone equally -- rather than those outcomes being an indication for specific individuals to change.

Insurance is based on the "average," and not the specific, and we shouldn't be moving more in the direction of the generalized but actually in the direction of the validity of the specific.

In every activity, we're not trying to achieve the average; we're trying to achieve the exceptional, or the winning performance, and choose those activities and behaviors that enhance our chances of a favorable outcome. This is the critical failure and misunderstanding in the study of human behaviors -- this thinking that the average is the meaningful entity to consider, instead of the exceptional survival skills, and beyond that health beyond what most accept as "normal."

And what is the norm now but more resources to care for an increasing disabled and sick population.

Actually, the whole significance of the first decade of this century, has been this shift from the preoccupation with the "average" or mass -- to the individualized, just as the last ten years before this century, there was this shift from mass data processing, and mass media, into the world of the personal computer, and individually designed realities -- which are not false because they are not the average or mass (media) experience.

That world is dying, to be replaced by something entirely different -- unless we invest all our time, energy and resources to continue that dysfunctional trend into the future. But such a future has no hope and meaning -- if all we can look forward to are more vital people and resources, taking care of the dying and dysfunctional. We cannot continue on that path.

That was the society of the "More," in which the only solution for everything, was that we needed more of what we thought was the only possible. Health has to be personal responsibility.

Is There a Solution to the Problems of Hawaii?

Of course there are solutions to every problem but always, they require changes and adaptations until they are no longer problems -- but simply hoping things were different while continuing with all the ways that are creating (causing) these problems are not going to work.

Chief among them is the Island mentality of people thinking they can get something for nothing rather than determining "fair exchange," and that everybody else exists just to be exploited and manipulated by themselves.

And so these problems multiply wildly and hopelessly out of control -- from homelessness to rat infestations to the suicides of caregivers. They're all the same problem of everybody trying to get over everybody else -- and not many unrelated problems that we read in the news, as though each is totally unconnected to one another.

In fact, the very solution is the realization that every action is totally related and connected to every other. If one demands more than their fair share, others will suffer. As long as each individual or group places their own demands above that of the common good, the undermining and eventual destruction of all, is virtually assured.

But once the common good is assured for all, surpluses and prosperity become possible, but very few think in this way. Always, their concern is only for their own benefit or their own group's first and not the whole -- and that is the continuing and endless source of all the problems in Hawaii.

It's Very Simple and Obvious What is Wrong with Hawaii

It's everybody's responsibility, including unions. to provide for the common good -- first and foremost -- and then advance their own narrow self-interest, once that common good is ensured for all.

If anybody or any group places only their own interest over everybody else's, then you have the great problems in the world -- of one narrow self-interest eliminating all the others, or advancing their own interests above the common good.

That grave misunderstanding of human pupose is the cause of the great catastrophe that is present Hawaii society as well as places with these sectarian violence in which one group feels justified to advance their own interests above all the others as their highest imperative.

Obviously that is wrong, and until the unions and its constituents understand that basic principle of human decency and fairness, everything will continue to go wrong and the homeless will live on beachfront property, and the rats and vermin will defecate and unrinate on your food.

But who are "teaching" the people wrongly? And so the legacy of every generation is that things can only worse for the common good, because a few, think their highest purpose and calling, is to think that they should have everything, while everybody else has nothing -- and think that they are fair and decent human beings who are entitled to it. That's how societies do not work, and become extinct -- which is the way and wisdom of the world.

The Impossible Cost of Government

The fact of the matter is that EVERY government employee in EVERY state now makes more than the MEDIAN income -- so where does that leave the rest of us -- who they are calling rich?

Obviously, if ALL of the public service (unionized) workers are in the upper half of wage earners, who are these other rich people they are referring to as the ones they are asking to pass these measures largely to fund their own salary increases -- and virtually demanding that is the only thing everybody else has a right to spend their money on.

The government itself is responsible for ensuring the fair treatment of labor, and if they aren't going to do it, why should anybody else? So why should the public service employees be unionzed at all -- and now demanding that the rest of society has no right to organize to resist them?

Every time I read about these tactics and logic employed by the unions I'm not convinced that the public has no right to resist or spend their own money any way they want to.

"Government" has now become an ENTITLEMENT by public service workers with a prior claim before actual services to the public are even delivered -- and few in Hawaii can see the absurdity of teachers being paid to "prepare" to teach but not actually teaching. In fact, the preponderance of the money goes to nonteaching positions and the supporting administrative overhead, which is not even required to account for any of these monies even.

And that is why there is no government services and problems languish and get worse save but for the grace of good weather. But sewers are not supposed to explode when people flush the toilets and then flow into the Ala Wai to create another ecological calamity that in a previous time, could easily be washed away by the great natural forces.

And that is the real crisis that a government culture of not doing anything but to create high-paying jobs for themselves can no longer be sustained as the benefits shrink to zero while the costs multiply. That's why the real problems merely multiply out of control -- as though there weren't any government entity at all except to rationalize problems, yet demanding eve more in taxes to fund higher salaries for people whose job now is to lobby for higher wages -- while doing less, if anything.

And then they become infuriated, outraged and insulted when they are asked to actually do these jobs they are paid so exorbitantly for.