Looks like if there is going to be a public option it's going to have a trigger attached to it.  The public option, even a weak one, won't actually become available unless the private insurance industry fails to deliver cost savings or to cover everyone, though we all know that these simple metrics will be written so broadly and with so much wiggle room that the trigger will likely never be pulled. A trigger on the public option means no public option.

Fine.

So let's add a second trigger -- on the individual mandate.  The mandate exists because insurance companies say that if they have to cover everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions that people will refuse to buy insurance until they get sick.  It's called the "Free rider" problem and it's very compelling.

But it's also hypothetical.  We don't have any evidence that people will actually behave that way. For example, a lot of insurance policies won't let you make a claim in the first 3-6 months -- that alone creates a risk to not buying insurance until you think you're sick. What if you break your leg, you going to wait 6 months to get it set?

 There's an excellent chance that the free rider problem isn't actually real. But, who am I to judge? Let the insurance companies prove that it's a problem and if it is, by all means we can have a mandate to solve it. But, make them prove it.  And lets make the trigger rules at least as vague as the public option trigger rules will be.

At first I thought Bernard Avishai's post here was just provocative with a couple of over the top lines but the more I think about it and read the criticisms of my fellow commenters here, the more I realize that Avishai is really at odds with what most of us progressives want out of our government and our economy.

The first thing that has to be addressed is Avishia's condescending tone.  He talks about people with "not-quite-enough schooling, too much beer, too much TV," and the case study is really the charming tale of a mechanic who surprises Avishai by figuring out the inner workings of his super-sophisticated BMW. Everyone who knows me here knows that I have a sense of humor and that I'm not above picking on country bumpkins but that's only when they try to impose their morality on me.  Here, Avishai is trying to impose on others.

His conclusion is that we need a "mentor state," an idea that he promises to detail in a future post.  I'm going to hope for the best on that but I have to wonder to what this mentor state is going to teach.

Avishai emphasizes flexibility and networking. In the end, this will really mean constant work for everyone. Avishai describes what his mechanic did as a clever use of a communications network to solve a problem.  But what I see is a guy hustling for a job.  He goes to a network, gets 18 opinions about how to fix Avishai's car, shows Avishai the data and even offers to let him go to another mechanic or the dealer. Presumably, whenever our hero mechanic isn't fixing cars he's talking shop with other mechanics all over the world or taking training courses in new car design. He doesn't have to worry about too much beer and TV because he's pretty much always working (whether he's getting paid or not).

Now it used to be that if your employer needed you to learn a new skill you employer would teach it to you. But now you're much more on your own.  Your studying after hours, going to seminars at your own expense and you're not even getting a sure pay-off.  At work, you're giving 100% and then when you're not at work you're spending your energies trying to improve yourself as a worker.

How will the government mentor state work?  Thus far government job retraining programs haven't been all that successful. The job seeking lessons that people on unemployment must endure seem more like ways to punish people for collecting the unemployment assurance payments from the system they paid into while they were working. Presumably this government mentor state will have to teach people about technology and entrepreneurship.  But really, that's not going to do the trick. You can teach entrepreneurship all you want, what usually stifles people isn't a lack of guts or intelligence but a lack of access to capital.

So what it's really going to teach is the new work ethic.  Or how to kiss Bernard Avishai's ass so he'll let you fix his luxury car.

What's most dangerous about this line of thinking is that it holds the victims of this economy responsible for their circumstances.  Too much beer and TV when you should have been taking night school classes after work! At that point we're blaming the poor for their own problems even as we let 20% of the country hoard 80% of its wealth.

None of this is to say that the economy isn't changing or that there aren't new challenges ahead or that hard work is necessarily a bad thing.  We're a democracy, not an economy. I don't think Avishai quite gets that.