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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Statists want you to believe you're stupid

Statists want you to believe you aren't smart enough to know how to solve problems. They say you have to trust the president or congress or the city council to do what's necessary because you can't possibly understand the issues. You don't see "The Big Picture"* and don't understand "how these things work".

How convenient for them.

Erich Fromm had something to say about this vulgar lie:

"One kind of smokescreen is that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary it would seem that many of the basic issues of individual and social life are very simple, so simple. in fact, that everyone should be expected to understand them. To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a "specialist" can understand them, and he only in his limited field, actually-- and often intentionally-- tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter. The individual feels hopelessly caught in a chaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the specialists have found out what to do and where to go." -- Escape from Freedom

I see statists use this tactic all the time.

• You can't understand why it's not a good idea to get rid of all anti-gun "laws" because you don't have the wisdom and experience of the police unions, the BATFEces, the FBI, or federal judges. It's simplistic to believe you can be responsible for yourself and that an armed populace would deter archation.

• You can't understand the nuances of "border security" because you aren't an expert. You can't just respect all property rights (including ending all welfare) and respect the right of defense-- it would be chaos.
  
• You're not a scientist so you can't understand the data pointing to Climate Change. Trust the experts to tell you what you'll have to do to avoid this disaster they say is coming.

Statists need to make you believe the world is too complicated for individuals to understand. Otherwise, you might realize you don't need their god to save you. So they constantly order you to "leave it to the professionals who know best". They constantly insult you and your intelligence. They get paternalistic and condescending as they assure you "government knows best".

Don't be so uppity as to notice that their "professionals" and "experts" are always on the side of violating YOUR natural human rights and imposing more control over YOUR life.

Yeah, the world is complex. But if the average human can't understand it, clumping sub-average humans together in a gang you call "government" isn't going to magically give them superhuman abilities. Quite the opposite. I'll trust the spontaneous order arising from the self-interested actions of free individuals before I trust the "wisdom" of monopolistic government being imposed on everyone.

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*I once worked for a business that I saw doing really dumb, self-destructive things on orders from the manager. Being a good employee who wanted to see the business thrive, I told this manager what I thought and his standard response was that I didn't see "The Big Picture" that only he could see.
I swear I didn't say "I told you so" every time the things I warned him of came to pass.
But I sure did think it a lot.

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