Thinking about “Not Enough Money”
John O’Brien – 22 April, 1999
Those of us who work for inclusion hear a lot about “reality” from those looking for good reasons to discourage us. Many such discouragements stem from the scarcity of funds to pay for necessary assistance or accommodations. Belief in the scarcity of money also justifies dominating people’s lives in the name of “cost control” and denying the support people need to participate in community life in the name of “prioritizing scarce funds to assure health and safety.”
Few of us actually imagine limitless public resources, though control-seeking policy makers and their allies often accuse us of such fantasies. We know that the costs of honouring people’s right to inclusion are both reasonable and offset by many social benefits. But we do need to think clearly about scarcity and act to overcome its negative effects. In doing so, it helps distinguish between “real” resource limits and policy-imposed scarcities. Both limits matter, but each calls for a different kind of action.
This diagram suggests the difference. The edge of the star represents limits such as the carrying capacity of the earth and the productivity of the local economy, given multiple legitimate demands on natural resources, public funds, and human energy. The edge of the box represents the scarcity created by the decisions of governments and officials within professional bureaucracies such as schools and human service agencies. The area between the edges of the box and the edges of the star represents the resources people can claim to grow in by working “outside the box”.
Because the policies that impose scarcities serve important social and political interests –such as minimizing taxation, or distributing wealth to the wealthy, or returning profit to nursing home investors or protecting the working conditions of union members or reducing contact with socially devalued people– the box will fight strongly and skillfully to protect itself. Change will come through organized political action in conflict with the powers that the box serves.
Bracketing the real in “real” limits with quotation marks acknowledges the ambiguity suggested by this diagram: limits are both real and subject to purposeful efforts to push them back, such as the eight forms of action listed next to the arrows.
Most of these limit-expanding forms of action lie beyond the power of policymakers to command. They lie within the power of groups of people with disabilities and their families and friends and co-workers and schoolmates and neighbours. Policies can create barriers or facilitate these kinds of actions. Still, people must engage one another to make the most of what is actually available to imaginative people who benefit from strong mutual support and access to necessary knowledge, skills, materials, and funds.