Category Archives: Random Blogging

Sometimes You Have to Eat a *** Sandwich

Pat McCarthy is a very thoughtful commenter to this blog, and he made an important point yesterday about compromise–a point that deserves consideration. What, exactly, do we mean by these repeated calls for political compromise? Should progressives “compromise” our insistence that GLBT citizens are entitled to the same civil rights as the rest of us? Can we really expect–or demand–that conservatives “compromise” deeply-held religious beliefs?

I think there are two different, albeit compatible, answers to that question.

The easy answer–the facile answer–is that honorable people don’t compromise on matters of moral behavior; we don’t sell out our gay citizens, act in ways that violate our consciences. The caveat here is that few political battles really involve such choices. Votes on tax rates, minimum wage, health care, the social safety net and the like may have moral underpinnings, may implicate our beliefs about social justice, but rarely present us with stark decisions about Good and Evil. (Note caps.) You’d have to be morally obtuse to characterize the recent, shameful mud-wrestling over the fiscal cliff negotiations as a fight for first principles.

Which brings us to the more honest–and arguably more difficult–definition of political compromise:  prudence, a recognition that few votes are “all or nothing” and a willingness to accept less than everything in order to get something, in order to move, however incrementally, toward one’s goal.

One of the more memorable quotes in the wake of the fiscal cliff vote was Senator Bob Corker’s glum conclusion that sometimes, it is necessary to “Eat a *** sandwich.” The difference between a passionate advocate and a zealot is that the advocate will be willing to “suck it up” on occasion in order to achieve broader goals, willing to do what is necessary in order to advance his cause over the long term. The zealot is the “all or nothing” guy, and generally, what zealots get is nothing. As someone once said, politics ain’t beanbag. Or as Kenny Rogers might put it, people who actually get things done know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.

There aren’t bright lines when principles are at stake. We’ve all seen people selling out their principles and justifying that transaction on prudential grounds. But when zealots insist that every s**t sandwich is a betrayal, we all lose.

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Why I Hate AT&T

AT&T is trying to drive me crazy. And they’re succeeding.

I know a lot of people have problems with AT&T’s service, or their arguably evil politics. That’s not our complaint. (Yes, it probably should be, but I have limited amounts of political spleen to vent, and what I’ve got doesn’t extend to my phone service.)

No, my problem is with their billing. Not only are the statements themselves incomprehensible–I made it through law school, I teach graduate students at a major university, I don’t think I’m unusually stupid, and I don’t begin to understand them–but their record-keeping is screwed up and their website has clearly been designed by the liquor industry in order to drive users to drink.

We’ve had an account with AT&T for years. A credit card on file with the company was routinely charged as bills came due. And then, for reasons that will forever be beyond me, it wasn’t.

We were out of town, and I picked up my phone to make a call. I got a message telling me that service was being cut off for lack of payment. We couldn’t figure out why, and we weren’t at home where we could look at our records, so we called the billing office (that call is allowed!), made a payment from our bank account, and then pretty much forgot about it.

Then today–barely ten days after we’d made the late payment–we got a text message telling us that we still owed money. Confused, my husband called. In the two or so hours he was on the phone, he was told that the credit card on file had been rejected. When he asked for the account number of that card, it was a number totally unfamiliar to us. I don’t know whose account it was or is, but it was a number and an account we don’t currently have, and have never had previously.

The “service representative” (!) was unable to explain why they showed a number utterly foreign to us, but insisted that AT&T would not take a substitute–indeed, that the company could no longer accept any credit card from such dubious customers. (We’ve been paying AT&T regularly and without incident for well over 25 years, but evidently that wasn’t enough to earn us the benefit of the doubt.)

Long-suffering husband paid–again–through bank transfer. Per instructions from “customer service” (note quotation marks),  he then went online to correct the credit card information.  There he encountered a form clearly devised by Kafka: upon filling out the profile, with name, account number, etc., and clicking “submit,” a message comes up asking that the type of credit/debit card be entered. But there is no place to enter that information. NONE.

Another call. Another “service” representative unable to explain the rather glaring omission on the online form. A lengthy effort to convey the information verbally.

I hope we’ve finally gotten our account straightened out, although god knows I wouldn’t bet on it.

Bottom line? The two of us have spent a significant part of our day talking to people who were unable to answer reasonable questions like “why do you show a credit card that isn’t ours” and “when did you start seeing rejections from this card?” and “where on your profoundly fucked-up online form can we insert the information you are asking for?”

The next time someone tells me how unresponsive “big government” is, I’m going to suggest they try dealing with big telecom. For now, I’m heading for the liquor cabinet…

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Season’s Greetings

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice or just the blessing of a couple of days off work: Have a great one!

Or–as my favorite holiday greeting this year put it–Heathen’s Greetings to you and yours!

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Exit, Voice and Reform

Albert Hirschman, an eminent economist and political thinker, has died. He was a towering figure, an economist who refused to reduce human interactions to commercial transactions, and who understood that human behavior is motivated by more than a desire for comparative advantage.

The book for which Hirschman is best known is his classic  Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. The Economist gives a good summary of its basic argument:

Mr Hirschman argued that people have two different ways of responding to disappointment. They can vote with their feet (exit) or stay put and complain (voice). Exit has always been the default position in the United States: Americans are known as being quick to up sticks and move. It is also the default position in the economics profession. Indeed, when his book appeared, Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Chicago School were busy extending the empire of exit to new areas. If public schools or public housing were rotten, they argued, people should be encouraged to escape them.

Mr Hirschman raised some problems with the cult of exit. Sometimes, it entrenches the status quo. Dictators may rule longer if their bravest critics flee abroad (indeed, Cuba uses emigration as a safety valve). Monopolies may have an easier life if their stroppiest customers find an alternative. Mr Hirschman got the idea for his book during a ghastly train journey in Nigeria: he concluded that the country’s railways were getting worse because the most vocal customers were shifting to the roads.

Exit may also reinforce the cycle of decline. State schools may get worse if the pushiest parents take their custom elsewhere. Mr Hirschman worried that a moderate amount of exit might produce the worst of all worlds: “an oppression of the weak by the incompetent and an exploitation of the poor by the lazy which is the more durable and stifling as it is both unambitious and escapable.”…

But Mr Hirschman’s overall point was not that exit is bad but that exit and “voice” work best together. Reformers are more likely to be able to fix an organisation if there is a danger that their clients will leave. The problem with Friedman et al was that they focused only on exit and not on how exit and voice could be used to reinforce each other.

I’ve quoted a rather long segment of the Economist’s piece, because Hirschman’s point is critically important, and all too frequently ignored.

Without the right to exit, there can be no freedom. But if our only choice is between shutting up and leaving, there can be no progress, no institutional improvement. That’s the great virtue of dissent, of voice–something the  “love it or leave it” folks seem unable to grasp.

Sometimes, we want to remain in a situation–a marriage, a job, a country–because we care enough to want to improve it.

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