The Colorado Springs Experiment, Part II

In my last post on the Colorado Springs Experiment I wrote about the liberal/conservative divide over municipal services. Liberals, I suggested, failed to face the real economic costs of equal access to municipal services. Conservatives have rejected equality of services as a priority of municipal government. Here I’d like to approach the issues, especially the choices about how to run Colorado Springs, from the perspective of citizenship and capitalism. In the last part of the This American Life segment, the example of the landscaping employee who worked first for the city and then for a private contractor brought the two systems into stark relief.

Capitalism

The logic of capitalism says: get as much work as possible from the worker for as little pay as possible. We sometimes suggest that pay is tied to value, that employees are compensated in the market according to the value they add. In fact, though, at heart capitalism is exploitative – firms extract more value from their employees than they pay for. Otherwise, there would be no money for the firm’s profit. So, in this case, the private contractor pays the landscaper much less than the municipality did. But it also gets more work out of him by increasing the threat of being fired.

The logic of capitalism also says it is acceptable for services to go to those who can afford it. Capitalism depends on the market to distribute goods according to what people pay. It also depends on the market to distribute wealth. So there’s a kind of market justice to better goods and services going to the wealthy.

Citizenship

The logic of citizenship, in contrast, calls for the equal distribution of goods because it values each citizen equally regardless of individual characteristics. Everyone gets the same right to a trial by jury, one vote in each election, free speech, right to bear arms, etc. While the capitalist model seeks to maximize profit, the citizenship model seeks to maximize equality.

The employment model of citizenship is a bit trickier, mostly because it doesn’t exist in practice. Even government employment is enmeshed to some extent in the capitalist labor market to a greater or lesser degree.* But municipal employment in Colorado Springs reflected elements of a citizenship model. The landscaper recalled his surprise when he was (a) paid a much higher wage than in the private sector and (b) received a string of pre-determined raises.

Conclusion

I think the Colorado Springs example demonstrates the need to balance these two models in our society. The capitalist employment model, carried to its full logical conclusion, would spell disaster to democratic government. The wealth gap would spiral out of control entirely until we had a permanent wealth class and what little government remained would be dedicated entirely to serving their interests.

On the other hand, imposing the logic of the citizenship model on the economy would take us even beyond Marx (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”). We need the dynamics of capitalism and the profit incentive to keep our economy productive. But we also need to shield some aspects of society from the logic of market distribution. Sometimes we do this as a direct means of protecting our rights: I don’t hear any suggestions that people pay for their right to bear arms, for good reason. Sometimes we do this to promote democracy less directly: in establishing things like public education we sequester some of the product of our economic system to distribute goods to the next generation on an equal (or more equal) basis.

So the questions raised by Colorado Springs don’t have clear either/or answers. Privatizing everything isn’t the answer in a democratic society. But neither is providing everything through government in a capitalist society. From the federal government down to the local municipalities, we have to seek a positive balance between the systems in order to promote both greater prosperity and greater equality.

* Currently, certain classes of teachers (mostly those with tenure and less-transferable skills) are among the most shielded from the market.

† This is also, of course, partly the result of public sector union gains. Unions, as a fundamentally collective agency, are much more closely tied to the citizenship model than the capitalist model.