Let people find their own solutions

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for June 12, 2019)

It amazes me how often people create worse problems while trying to solve problems.

Most problems can be solved; some probably can't. Don't give up trying to solve the hard problems, though. You never know if the Elixir of Life is waiting for you to discover just around the next bend.

The best approach is to let people find their own solutions. Most of their ideas will fail; some will be spectacular failures, but as long as no one's solution is forced on everyone else, people can keep trying different things. The more ideas which get tried, the more problems will be solved.

Often you won't know if an idea is good until you let people try it for a while. Then, if it turns out badly the people need to be free to drop it.

Even some of the bad ideas might have the seed of a real solution, just needing a little tweak to work. It's only when you set a bad idea in stone-- or in law-- that it becomes hard to reverse.

When you force a one-size-fits-all "solution" on everyone a bad idea can do lasting damage.

Most proposals for solving Anthropogenic Global Climate Change-- "Global warming"-- are like this. Whether the crisis is real or not matters little. Let people try the ideas they believe will help, but don't let them impose those solutions on anyone. This would limit what others can try and is almost guaranteed to prevent a real, lasting solution from being discovered. If one is needed.

The most tragic examples are when someone causes more of the social problems they imagine their ideas would address. Things like poverty and crime come to mind.

If your anti-poverty program hasn't resulted in a measurable easing of poverty it's time to drop it and try something else. Many times, doing nothing would be better than what is being done.

Crime is another topic where this applies. Of course, I'm referring to real crime-- violations of life, liberty, and property-- not acts which harm no one other than the feelings of politicians. I believe, from personal experience and observation, that universal voluntary gun possession would prevent most crime. Others believe a total gun ban (exempting government employees) would be the fix. Only one of those doesn't rely on forcing a rights-violating, one-size-fits-all approach on every individual in society, so only one is ethical.

If your idea isn't ethical, I'll pass, no matter how well it works. With this one limit, find your best ideas.

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