Socialization – anew
It was back at NYU, late 60’s, in a required class called Introduction to Sociology that I first heard the word “socialization”. The field occupied itself in terminology that re captured common sense concepts and tried to make a science of it. Did not really work.
As a major in Latin and Ancient Greek – as you can see I have always been quite practical — I was a little puzzled by the philological provenance of “socialization”, but then went on to understand its overly broad and thus rather meaningless use. According to C. Wright Mills “the father of sociology”, socialization is the process through which people become accustomed and at ease – easy – with the morays and folk ways of their “tribe”. Socialization inures people to the comforts of the common will and ways of the existing society. We are absorbed, in this way, into the lifestyle and the beliefs of those around us.
Parallel today , there is a new use of the word, referring to the active process of “socializing”– establishing socialism and socialistic policies a la Marx / Engels –through which a society’s “influencers” do the inuring and accommodation of the newcomers into the “tribe”. Today, unduly ambitious politicians have taken over this process and have begun to pass laws that ease us into a new social order that may not be what we would – soberly – accept. Think of the great example of the frog in boiling water. Examples abound from the weaponization of textbooks to the latest laws on mortgages, cited recently in the Wall Street Journal. . This socialist redistribution plan tries to equalize applicants and erase common sense distinctions that work for the system. We are seeing and we are becoming comfortable with petite rulings such as these; it is time, however, to wake up to them – new angle on “woke” – and stop them cold now before we are socialized beyond recognition in a tribal dance of reverse discrimination and gross unfairness. We are finding that scoring of any kind, whether credit scores for mortgages, credit scores themselves, college exams and even sports scoring are all now subject to asterisks, elimination and twists. Oh, and ridiculous sexual transformations. For Insurance Advocate readers, proposed changes to mortgage underwriting market may throw more turmoil into the mix in the form of a new rule which goes into effect May 1. The Biden administration – whoever that is – is using a new law to raise fees on mortgagees with good credit to subsidize those who do not have good credit. Those capable of making a 20 percent down payment will pay the highest fees. Those payments will then be used to subsidize higher risk borrowers through lower fees for them. In other words, if you work to have good credit, you have to pay more; if you participate in a mortgage you somehow or other need to pay a debt to those who haven’t earned that privilege. What will happen as a result is not what the administration hopes to gain – that is more homeownership; instead, what will happen is that people will begin to find ways to miss having to pay the extrases. The Biden administration will also find that high risk borrowers will buy homes in low to middle income neighborhoods, and that those who already live in those neighborhoods, who worked hard and who earned their ability to obtain and keep mortgages and home ownership will will face all manner of problems as their home values fall.The idea here is again to make us comfortable with small unfairnesses accepted as normal everyday activity. Essentially, low income borrowers can get good credit scores if they pay back their debts. If they score well it’s the same as getting into a college with good grades. The deeper problem is basic fairness. As The Wall Street Journal has observed”tax payers already subsidize mortgages for low income borrowers through the F.H.A. Now, they want to punish those who have maintained good credit, rewarding those who haven’t”. In the name of making housing more equal, they are pursuing an inequitable policy. In fact, we see this as further encroaching socialization – using the word here to mean newly accepted socialist – driven policy. And if it’s happening in banking and mortgages, can insurance be far behind?
Not getting comfortable with it anytime soon; is that anti social or is the administration’s reverse discrimination? Will insurance underwriting policies be next?
