Ep. 28: What Happens When We Take Accountability?

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Referenced in this Episode

• Associated Press - ⁠"ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks"⁠

• LinkedIn News - ⁠“Nearly 1 in 4 workers staying at job for insurance”⁠

• The Wall Street Journal - ⁠"Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills"

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TRANSCRIPT

Right now on It’s Gonna Be Fine, we’re going to be talking about the A-word. No, not that A-word. Another one that I’ve been noticing over and over again recently. And that word is accountability. Here we go.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to It’s Gonna Be Fine. I’m so glad you’re here.

Lately, I’ve found myself looking at people’s behavior, or lack of behavior, and thinking: If only you took accountability or held other people accountable, things would be better. Whatever problem you’re dealing with could be solved, or at least improved.

Even last week on the show, my guest Ethan Weiss discussed how accountability in leadership and parenting can make all the difference. By the way, if you haven’t heard that episode, go check it out after this one. It was so meaty that we made it a two-parter.

And then, of course, I’m trying to keep up with what’s going on in the world, following topics, stories, and articles. I kept seeing a variety of topics, whether it was government, jobs and employment, or education. Across all these different subjects, my brain kept reading these things and going, “Yep, these are all actually screaming accountability.”

So today, we’re asking: What would happen if we took accountability? We’ll try to answer that question by looking at a few different angles. What happens when there’s zero accountability? What happens when the line of accountability gets blurred between individuals, like employees, and systems, like healthcare? And what happens when people start taking accountability and saying, “Enough is enough”?

When Accountability Seems to Be Missing

Let’s start with that first question: What happens when accountability just doesn’t seem to exist? The first place where this screams accountability to me, and probably the most obvious example, is everything that’s been going on with ICE this year.

Remember them? Remember ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency? This isn’t about ICE being good or ICE being bad. We’re not getting into any of that. This is really about what continues to transpire with the agency and why.

And honestly, I’m going to pat myself on the shoulder for a second because screaming is a really great word for this. This particular example is probably the most frustrating of them all, at least for me. It’s a situation where no one seems to be taking accountability.

The Associated Press has been covering everything happening with ICE extensively over the course of the year, and obviously before that as well. Many other outlets have, too. So I wanted to take a quick look at a timeline of events and then consider how they relate to this idea of accountability.

If we’re speaking generally, it started with the new administration coming into office in January 2025. Pretty soon, we saw raids beginning across cities in America, and it felt like all-out chaos, at least to me. Almost as if they were doing it for the thrill of it. How crazy can we get? How loud and in-your-face can we be about this?

I mean, that was my reaction. I often wondered: What would happen if ICE just did its job the way it was meant to, rather than through spectacle and chaos? But I digress. I won’t go too far down that road. That’s the first piece of the timeline.

The second piece takes us to Minneapolis, where we saw the tragic death of Renee Good, who was killed by ICE agents. We’ve all seen the video. Shortly afterward, about a month later, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal immigration officers, also on video.

As I was putting this together, I found myself wondering: Whatever happened with those cases? Were there investigations? Was any disciplinary action taken? It almost felt as though the agents simply walked away from the scene and went back to business as usual, which is very concerning.

I’ve looked into it a little. I’ve heard rumblings and seen a few things about investigations underway into these and other events, but honestly, not a lot. And maybe I missed something. If I did, please send it my way.

Then, fast-forward to July, when two more incidents happened relatively close together. An ICE officer shot and killed a driver in Houston, and about a week later, another officer shot and killed a driver in Maine. There was some fairly credible reporting suggesting that neither victim was actually the suspect ICE was looking for.

These incidents happened just a week apart, much like the killings in Minneapolis were roughly a month apart. The pattern of these incidents is deeply concerning.

After four separate incidents involving tragic, potentially preventable deaths, you’d think we’d hear about some changes. Maybe someone would do something. Maybe we’d see significant reforms. There was some movement, I think, including changes in leadership at the agency. But then I came across this headline from the AP: ICE Plans to Give Officers Gloves That Can Deliver Painful Electric Shocks.

I’m sorry. What?

That feels like the opposite reaction we should be having to these events. Not only are we not taking accountability, but we’re potentially giving ourselves more opportunities to make mistakes. After so many incidents like these, it’s hard to trust that the agency knows what it’s doing or that it’s going to do its job effectively.

And honestly, the AP put it perfectly. This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article. It said, “Civil rights activists expressed alarm at the plan, saying that ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability.”

So there you go. To me, this is one of the most obvious examples of a lack of leadership where it arguably matters most: our government. And it’s an example of the tragedies and egregious errors that can result from that lack of leadership, lack of accountability, lack of common sense, and, honestly, lack of awareness, based on some of the things we’ve seen.

That one’s pretty obvious and relatively easy to pinpoint. But things get a little more interesting when we ask what happens when we fail to take accountability because we start confusing something that’s unacceptable with something we simply don’t like or find difficult.

Who’s Accountable When the System Is the Problem?

About a month ago, LinkedIn editors shared a post titled Nearly One in Four Workers Staying at Job for Insurance. The article discussed what’s known as “job locking.” It reported on recent research showing that one in four workers, or 25%, stay in their jobs to maintain health insurance.

The research director said this was a concerning figure even at 10%. When you’re seeing it rise to one in four employees, that’s pretty serious. The research center, West Health, also posted the findings on LinkedIn, saying that a job should be a source of opportunity, yet millions of Americans are stuck in unwanted roles solely to maintain health coverage.

My initial reaction was: Yeah, isn’t that kind of what work is? Most people don’t like working. Most people would probably rather not do it, but they do it because they have to in order to live the lives they want. They need to be accountable for the lives they want to lead. If they want to make money, they’ve got to work.

And whether we like it or not, as we’ll discuss in a second, here in the United States, getting quality commercial health insurance often means working at a job that provides it.

I think what initially prompted my reaction was that statement from West Health about a job being a source of opportunity. It felt a little flowery, a little too good to be true. And I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. An opportunity for what? To live out your dream? To work your dream job? To have fun and enjoy every second of it? An opportunity to make money?

I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect that 100% of people will have jobs they love more than life itself, jobs that provide all the satisfaction and passion they could ever want. Maybe that’s what people would like, but it’s usually not how things work.

Jobs are opportunities to make money. You can be very successful in certain careers. And yes, a job can also be an opportunity to get competitive healthcare, along with the other benefits and perks employers offer.

I also wondered: Would people be just as bothered if workers stayed in their jobs because they were making a ton of money? There’s a concept for that, too: the golden handcuffs. People stay in jobs they don’t like because they’re making so much money that it’s difficult to leave.

I think about sales jobs, for example. A lot of people don’t like sales, but you can make a lot of money doing it. It’s hard to leave a sales job, or any job where you earn a lot, to pursue something that might be more fulfilling, more satisfying, or better aligned with your interests and passions.

If a job paid someone a ton of money, would we say, “Hey, stop paying people so much because it’s keeping them from doing the work they actually want to do”? I don’t think so.

Those were the things running through my head. Then, of course, I took a step back and recognized that much of this discussion is probably also commentary on the desire among many people for universal healthcare, affordable healthcare that isn’t tied to an employer, or some form of socialized medicine in the United States. That’s a much stronger argument for why these statistics should be alarming.

When you dig deeper into the commentary surrounding this research, you’ll find that many of the outlets covering it raise this point: If we had better access to healthcare in the United States, more people might feel free to leave jobs they don’t like.

I would still argue that even if the US had socialized medicine or national healthcare, we’d have people staying in jobs they didn’t like. They’d stay for the money or for any number of other reasons. So while I understand that argument and recognize the point people were trying to make with this research, I don’t think we would suddenly see the percentage of people who feel job-locked drop to zero.

But back to accountability. This is where things get pretty interesting. Who’s actually accountable here? Is it the individual, who has to make things work within the current system? Is it the system itself, which needs to fix its problems? Or is it both?

That could lead us down a completely different path about health insurance and access to healthcare. But from an accountability perspective, it raises some very interesting questions.

When Consumers Force Institutions to Take Accountability

And that brings us to the third story that had me thinking about the A-word. This one comes from the world of education, where we’re once again confronted with the idea of shared accountability.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article titled Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills. As you can imagine, it’s about how friggin’ expensive college has become, especially at top schools, where attending can now cost upwards of $100,000 a year.

One hundred thousand dollars a year! Let’s see. $100,000 a year, four years… That’s $400,000 for a degree in philosophy. No shade to the philosophy majors. We love you. But you know what I mean? That’s insane.

I feel like I remember when graduate school might have cost $100,000 for an entire degree. Now we’re talking about undergraduate schools costing that much. Students and families are finally saying, “You know what? No.”

A college degree isn’t the same as it was five, 10, 15, or 20 years ago, or whatever timeline we want to look at. People are questioning its value and essentially saying, “I don’t know if this is worth it anymore.” Or, more specifically, “I don’t know if a school like Syracuse is worth it anymore when it costs $100,000 to attend for one year.”

Of course, the actual cost depends on financial aid, where you live, and a whole host of other factors. But let’s use that figure as an example.

Students and families are holding themselves accountable, which is really good to see. They’re saying, “Enough is enough. This isn’t worth it.” They’re taking responsibility for their decisions, whether that means attending a smaller, cheaper school or not going to college at all. And that’s a perfectly viable option.

I don’t think I need to say too much about this, but we all know that AI and different educational opportunities, like trade schools, are changing the landscape. Trade schools seem to be particularly popular these days. These developments are upending higher education in some ways and prompting people to ask a lot of questions.

And the decisions students and families are making are forcing schools like Syracuse to hold themselves accountable for their own decisions, including what some might call the highway robbery they’ve been engaging in over the years. Now they’re not getting as many students or applicants as expected. They have costs they thought would be covered by tuition revenue that may no longer be covered, and they’re finding themselves in a bit of a pickle.

I should also point out that it’s not Syracuse or nothing. There are so many other options, whether it’s a state school, a smaller institution, or a school that costs less. Every student and family will make the decision that’s best for them.

But the point is that the idea of saying, “I went to a school like Syracuse” or “I went to an Ivy League school” may not carry the same value or importance it once did.

I looked up some very general numbers, so please don’t quote me on these. There are obviously a ton of variables involved that I haven’t accounted for, along with other specifics that might apply. But looking very generally at inflation over the last 20 years, it appears we can reasonably say the average annual inflation rate has been around 2.6%.

Meanwhile, college costs have increased by almost twice that rate, approaching 5% annually. Those two things aren’t keeping pace with each other. College costs are far exceeding inflation.

So, yeah, if you’re significantly raising costs year after year, eventually that bubble will burst. And then, as an institution, you’re faced with the consequences of your decisions. You have to hold yourself accountable.

Honestly, this particular Wall Street Journal article made me want to stand up and cheer. I think it’s such a great example of institutions being forced to take accountability because consumers, in this case students, have said enough.

And not only have they said enough, but they’ve recognized their own responsibility to be accountable, too. They’re asking themselves: If I decide to attend this school and spend $100,000 a year, what does that mean for me down the line?

That’s different from saying, “I’ll take out loans and worry about it later.” I think that approach may have been more common years ago, when people were going to college without necessarily thinking through the long-term financial implications. We’ve all heard about the student loan crisis and people struggling to repay their loans, especially after attending graduate school or continuing their education.

So it’s really nice to see people thinking about those decisions more carefully now. Of course, as we discussed, there are other factors contributing to this shift. But this story really made me want to fist-pump a little.

I’m curious if you feel the same way. If you want to share your thoughts, questions, or comments about this topic or any of the others we’ve covered, or if you have ideas for future episodes, reach out to me at hello@itsgonnabefine.fm. The show’s Instagram page is @itsgonnabefine_pod.

What Can We Actually Control?

So, yeah, accountability has been a theme for me for a while now. I’ve kept noticing it in so many different things I’ve come across. Even when topics like government, jobs, and education seem completely unrelated on the surface, there’s an underlying theme that I kept noticing.

And as I think about it more, there are two things on my mind.

The first is that if people and institutions don’t take accountability, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable, hold each other accountable, and hold our institutions and systems accountable, then I hate to say it, but no, it’s not going to be fine.

But honestly, that’s a monumental and pretty depressing task when you think about everything involved in making that happen. We know it won’t happen all the time, and we have a lot of work to do to get closer to that ideal. Obviously, we can’t control everything our leaders do or don’t do. And unfortunately, we don’t always have a say in how our systems operate.

So the other thing I’m thinking about is this: Why don’t we simplify things for a second?

What if we focused less on which systems are going to hold themselves accountable, which AI companies are going to prioritize safety over profit, or what the government is going to do, even though all of those things are, of course, very important?

What if we focused on what we can control? The decisions we can make.

Because if we did that individually, maybe we’d start to see the benefits collectively. And then I think we’d have a better chance of things being fine.

And hey, guess what? I’ll see you next time.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.