Common-Good Economics

February 21, 2007
It's common-good economics

Government should make essentials affordable

TIM SHIPE
GUEST COLUMNIST

   Tim Shipe, Guest Columnist Shipe is a teacher at
Melbourne Central Catholic High School who lives in
Melbourne.

As a teacher of modest income, with a wife who is a
real estate agent, I have become an avid student of
real-life economic theory and practice.

I ran for the state Legislature last year on a
platform dedicated to the premise that our political
authorities must guarantee that our essential products
and services are affordable for all Floridians.

This is not a socialist recipe. It is common-good,
common-sense economics.

At a pre-election town hall meeting on the home
insurance crisis, co-sponsored by FLORIDA TODAY, I
learned two very interesting things.

First, the big insurance providers don't truly compete
against one another on price — which reminded me of
how the big oil companies seem to "magically" arrive
at similar gas prices and exceedingly generous profits
for themselves.

Second, those who say the markets must have the final
say have no answer to my question: "If average
Floridians cannot afford an essential service like
home insurance, what are we supposed to do? Foreclose?
Sell and move out of the state?"

I am not against market economics. I think personal
economic initiative and trade between persons, states,
and nations is a proven winner. But the markets can be
abused, manipulated, and dominated by very large
players, such as the corporate conglomerates that have
free run around the globe today.

And the only force ever created to defend the
individual from such great powers is a government
authority.

A good political authority will seek to harmonize the
various interests that are competing all the time in
society — the industries, the workers, individuals
that "have" and those that "have not enough."

Unrestrained markets work really well when it comes to
most products and services — if a restaurant is too
pricey, you can just drive past it.

But it's different when we're dealing with the things
that all people must have to pursue their personal
happiness in community with others.

Those include infrastructure, healthy air, food and
water, military and police, health care, education,
access to home ownership, energy at home and for
transportation, even the right to life and related
rights to family wages for full-time work in a useful
profession.

Then, we need certain guarantees from someplace other
than God alone or Social Darwinism.

This understanding of things is what created the
social contract between citizens and their political
leaders. It is common good common sense.

The state has the duty to examine how the markets are
running. And if an essential product or service is
being provided to the average person, and no immoral
business practices with respect to workers and the
environment are taking place, then the state should
simply monitor things, not intervene.

But if the essentials are not available and
affordable, the state must assess the reason. Too much
collusion or profiteering and executive pay? Inability
to make a profit?

Then the state should respond by regulating,
subsidizing, or providing a non-profit entity to get
the job done.

Shipe is a teacher at Melbourne Central Catholic High
School who lives in Melbourne.