Find better solutions without government

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for June 17, 2026)

I hear a lot of people saying the local community should have this or that. Or pointing out things they believe should be improved. But they always seem to want government, or at least someone else, to provide what they want or to fix their problems.

If you have complaints about the local community, don’t wait for government to fix them. See what you can do for yourself, maybe with help from others, with or without government permission.

Government wants you to depend on it for solutions, but its solutions can be worse than the original problem. Plus, it will use your money for any solution it tries. It would be better and more efficient to use your money directly, rather than filtering it through the waste machine of government bureaucracy.

The responsibility is yours. It always has been. Keep in mind, taking responsibility can be dangerous.

If your solution is effective, government will probably try to punish you. Just like the people around the country who've been punished for repairing potholes that local government has ignored for much too long. In some cases, government crews even dug out the repair work and returned the road to its damaged condition.

When I lived in Colorado, residents were prohibited from plowing the snow off the road to their house if local governments insisted that the road not be plowed beyond a certain point. Some defiant souls did so anyway and were punished. Others left their vehicles abandoned at the end of the plowed road all winter and used snowmobiles to cross the distance between their car and house.

You aren't "authorized" to solve problems this way. This is how you can tell that solving problems isn't government's priority.

Government is not on your side. It always has sketchy justifications for what it does.

If you come up with a good solution or improvement, and you aren't punished for it, be aware government may try to take over and claim the credit before ruining it. Then you can start over.

One of the very worst things anyone can do is to take something good and hand it over to government to administer and ultimately squander. If you have something good, whether it's an invention, a solution, or real estate, don't give it to government. Take back your control. Stay silent and don't ask government for anything, and soon you'll realize it has always been an unnecessary evil.

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