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< | Davies J Curve and the Internet |
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> | Commodifying Addicts |
| | -- By CalebMonaghan - 04 Jan 2022 |
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> | Knowing I would not be able to talk him out of pulling his own rotten tooth out with pliers, I asked Brad to wait to do so until after I went home for the night. Michael’s insurance lapsed, resulting in him not having his psych meds for over a week; he started barbequing his pants in the back yard. Travis’ insurance ran out 3 weeks into his stay and had to return to living on the street; he was found dead 3 days later. Jason’s insurance would not cover a stay at the only rehab around with an open bed; he died while waiting for another one to open. During my time working in treatment, I saw these same stories repeating themselves over and over. The names changed but the underlying cause stayed the same: the health insurance industry treating people as commodities rather than as human beings. |
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No, it wasn't. This is a mistake, not a typo. It results from not having done the learning that even a Google search would have produced. The ARPAnet was called that because it was supported by a grant from the Advanced Research Products Agency of the Department of Defense, now called DARPA. This history has been written many times but you didn't look for it.
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> | While not unique to those suffering from substance abuse disorders, this phenomenon is especially profound in these instances given the young age at which people are becoming addicted to substances, particularly opiates. Indeed, in 2016 the average life expectancy dropped as a result of all the opioid crisis (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/the-opioid-crisis-is-driving-down-u-s-life-expectancy-new-data-shows). And while overdose rates briefly started to decline from 2017 to 2019, data shows that during 2020 rates skyrocketed above their previous peak. (https://nida.nih.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates). Though we don’t hear about the opioid crisis nearly as much as we used to—with the Covid-19 pandemic taking center stage—there is still a real need for reform in this area. |
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< | what we know as the Internet started during the Cold War and was a decentralized mechanism through which government actors could communicate with each other. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. Since this time, the astonishing rise of the internet has heralded in unimagined social and economic change. Accompanying this transformational change has been societal expectations that conditions will continue to improve commensurately, and it was assumed that equality would be a principle directing these improvements. In some ways this dream has manifest. But, in many other respects, in particular related to personal privacy and identity, the internet has been a sheep in wolves’ clothing, ushering in a dystopian era of Big Brother tracking, identity theft and a host of other unintended maladies. The result of this has been a disconnect between what individuals have come to expect and the reality of their circumstances; and, while American sociologist James C Davies did not directly anticipate either the internet or its far-reaching impacts on society, he did philosophize on the social and political unrest that may be precipitated by a brief period of sharp decline in economic welfare after a prolonged period of economic growth and benefit. |
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No references?
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> | One possible solution, albeit a partial one, is to prohibit health insurance providers from denying or cutting off coverage for substance abuse treatment. This would reduce instability in treatment progress and would likely improve outcomes as a whole.
There are, however, several limitations preventing this from fully solving the problem. First, entering rehabilitation is not a guarantee of success. Indeed, some 40-60% of patients who enter rehabilitation end up relapsing |
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> | (https://nida.nih.gov/publications/principles-drug-addiction-treatment-research-based-guide-third-edition/frequently-asked-questions/how-effective-drug-addiction-treatment).
Second, it seems likely that if insurance providers were not allowed to provide only partial funding, there is an increased risk of patients being fully funded for lower quality treatment centers. Insurance providers might not be willing to pay for certain treatment centers all together, and if there was a shortage of beds those suffering from addiction would be left with long wait times before they could get treatment. |
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< | Davies’ writings, first introduced in 1962, became known as the J-curve hypothesis and is a crucial approach for understanding the dangerous crossroads at which society now finds itself in relation to the promised splendor of the internet vs. the stark reality of invasion of personal privacy. In other words, while it is easy to see the desirability of a revolution, Davies provides us with the framework to understand why this is an inevitable endgame as we look to tame the headless beast of surveillance capitalism and the internet. |
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As you say, Davies wasn't writing about anything like the Internet and whatever your estimation of the nature of social change occurring now, there is no relationship between the socioeconomic circumstances he was writing about and the effects, intended or otherwise, of the Net. The juxtaposition doesn't seem enlightening.
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> | Third, and relatedly, the lack of oversight over treatment centers and halfway house programs means that there is no guarantee that substance abuse sufferers will receive effective treatment. Indeed, there have been numerous horror stories the last couple years of people seeking treatment only to end up being sold into human trafficking. (https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/florida-sober-home-owner-sentenced) |
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< | Throughout history there have been numerous examples of two potential “end-states” for a society but existing but at differing levels of value to society. Think of pre and post civil war America. Consider the current states of North vs. South Korea. This situation can be imagines as the end-points on a capital letter “J,” This is a powerful visualization because we see there is no direct path to migrate from the lower endpoint directly to the upper, more desirable, endpoint. Rather, the only path is via descending through some lower and undesirable intermediate state. This downward journey is analogous to revolution. Davies’ J-curve hypothesis focuses on the circumstances under which a society would be willing to take this undesirable route in order to migrate from one steady-state to a more desirable one. These ideas, both of the J-curve shape and society’s rationale for traveling along it, are a powerful framework for understanding the society’s current predicament with the blessings of the internet and the attendant problems such as privacy and identity theft. |
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< | An antecedent condition for a society traveling down the J Curve is dissonance with the current state of affairs. There must be a gap between what a society expects and what it gets. The mode of comparison varies between theorists. Ted R. Gurr focuses on relative deprivation, and posits idea that within the J Curve model feelings of relative deprivation arise from discrepancies between what is and what should be across groups while Davies emphasized temporal comparisons. Though there are variations in terms of how different groups can access the internet, the previously mentioned maladies seem to be ubiquitous, implying that there is no ideal group that could serve as a source of relative deprivation. Rather, discontent stems from comparing the current situation to the promise the internet held before the undesirable practices were adopted. |
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> | The proposal limiting the ability of insurance companies to deny or cut off coverage for substance abuse treatment would, therefore, have to be coupled with efforts to improve the quality of treatment across the board. There will always be higher and lower quality treatment centers, but there needs to be some sort of baseline below which a facility is not allowed to operate as a treatment center. |
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< | Additionally, the degree and character of the dissonance is relevant in determining whether a society would be willing to travel down the J Curve. Marx posits that long lasting deprivation leads people to realize that they have nothing to lose but their chains. DeToqueville? , on the other hand, holds that there needs to be a glimmer of light that conditions can improve before people are willing to engage in revolutionary activities. Despite all the harmful features of the internet, it still provides beneficial services and has improved society in incalculably valuable ways. Thus, the complete razing and rebuilding associated with Marx is likely not what society would want; rather, society would simply need to believe that they can get back to a place that is better than their current position (i.e., they can improve their situation by traveling through the J Curve). |
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< | Applying these concepts to the internet, the J Curve hypothesis fits neatly and suggests that a revolution is not only desirable but imminent. No technology determines its own future, and seemingly arbitrary decisions made decades ago have caused us to exist on the lower end of the J Curve. We spend every day with spy satellites in our pockets that not only monitor everything we do but also use this information to alter our behavior. This relationship to technology has become so normalized that it is now present in our educational platforms (Courseworks) and despite growing concern about how our data is used there do not appear to be any neat solutions to fix the problem. While regulation and economic policies could provide partial solutions, there is no silver bullet. Davies J Curve hypothesis suggests that once the gap between our expectations and our reality is sufficiently wide, our society will engage in revolutionary activity in an attempt to move from our current state to a higher, more desirable state. |
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> | As a whole limiting this behavior by providers of health insurance combined with regulatory reforms would seem to improve the likelihood of addicts getting the help they need and would hopefully improve treatment outcomes. |
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We need a different sort of draft altogether. The subject should be not a metaphor or a theory fetched from afar, but a factual condition about which—seen from technical, legal and political perspectives—you can teach the reader something you have learned. "The Internet" is too big by far to be that subject. So is "revolution." So "Davies" or "Freud" or "Darwin." Begin somewhere concrete and help the reader learn outward from that starting point.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |