Thinking About Consequences

Yesterday, around 6 am, I was in a car in the Tel Aviv area, when I saw a mass of men sitting by the side of the highway. The following conversation took place in the car:
Father: Look at all those Arabs waiting for work. I can't believe Jews hire them.
Son: Of course Jews hire them. They'll work for cheap, even for below minimum wage, sometimes even for ten shekel an hour. (Note: This is about 3 dollars an hour.)

Israel does not have official discrimination against its Arab citizens.* Israeli Arabs are represented in Israeli universities and the Israeli parliament more proportionally than African Americans and Hispanics are in American colleges, and more proportionally than African Americans are in Congress. Yet there is much unofficial discrimination: The idea of a half-Arab Israeli prime minister is laughable. The construction and paint industries, along with other manual industries, are dominated by Arab workers, to the point where there even was a joke about it in the Oscar-winning short film, "West Bank Story".** Illegal immigration from Thailand, the Philippines and China has forced the Arab workers to become more competitive when pricing their wages - ie, to work for even less money.

For a moment, I had an image of myself unionizing the Arab workers. I had an image of myself saying, "So-and-so will only work for minimum wage." I had an image of myself trying to restore to people the sense of human dignity which backbreaking labor for little pay can often shatter. But then I realized: If I did that, the probability is that the bosses would simply not hire the Arab workers. They hire them because they can get away with illegally paying them less than minimum wage. If they had to pay minimum wage, they'd look for other workers. So the Arabs would lose their jobs and livelihoods, and going from poverty to even worse poverty.

At least, that would be the short-term consequence. But in the long term, maybe we would succeed: Maybe they would permanently unionize and wind up making it standard practice for them to be paid minimum wage, at least. Most liberation movements are bad for people in the short term, during the movement, but worth it afterwards. Think about the civil rights movement and people languishing in prison, or even the Exodus: After Pharaoh made the Jews build their own bricks as punishment for their new notions of freedom, the Jews all rose up against Moses. But he sure did help them in the long term by leading them to eternal freedom.

So how do you measure the consequences of your actions, especially when those actions can immensly impact the lives of others?

* I would like to distinguish between Israeli Arab citizens, who live in Israel proper, and Arabs who live in the territories won in 1967, who do not have Israeli citizenship.
** I highly recommend the film

Some things to keep in mind About Obama's Healthcare Plan

1. People complain about the high cost: Its true, the plan is expensive - but so is the current healthcare system. Right now, sick people go to the emergency room and receive treatments they can't pay for - treatments that wind up costing the hospitals, doctors, federal and local governments and taxpayer millions of dollars. The true cost of Obama's plan is the sticker price minus the current cost of healthcare - and that figure is not so large, especially since, unlike the current healthcare system, it will actually ensure that most people receive adequate coverage, the type that prevents them from having to go to the emergency room in the first place.
2. People complain it will be beaurocratic: It will be, but so is the current system, as anyone who's tried dealing with insurance companies knows. People say if government runs healthcare, you'll have to be on a waiting list for special surgery - but someone with insurance coverage under the current system might still have to wait a long time for special surgery, by the time they've gotten a referal from a general physician, found a specialist who is on their insurance's list of approved doctors, gotten that doctor to write to the insurance company testifying the surgery is necessary.... and at the end of the process they might find out that the surgery isn't covered by their insurance anyway, or that it's only partially covered. And we are talking about private insurance that people pay high premiums for.
3. If the government insurance plan doesn't satisfy people, they have the option of paying for private insurance. The government plan would be aimed at people who have no insurance now, or who can only afford the flimsiest insurance that pays for only basic services - and any insurance is better than no insurance, and if you're going to have a flimsy plan you at least shouldn't have to spend half your salary on it. Government plans benefit from competing with private plans, since when people buy private plans, it allows the government plans to serve less people and thus prevents them from becoming overburdened. People buying private plans still benefit from the government plan option, since it forces the private plans to keep their prices lower in order to compete with the government plan, especially if it wants to get money from the middle class. Right now, it knows it can rob the middle class because they have no other option.