If you want solutions, don't go to people who restrict. //

“That’s what a government is for, gettin’ in a man’s way.”

That quote from the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly is just one of many sayings that tickles my libertarian sensibilities. //

The government often bills itself as the fount of opportunity, yet the government gives us the most opportunities when it removes itself from the equation. This is because a government is a system that naturally curbs the imperfections of man and allows us to work with them to form a society. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, if man were perfect, we wouldn’t need government:

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.

Paine went on to say that though a government is necessary, the one that governs the least is the one that governs the best. This is pretty evident given the fact that America’s freedoms have made it the most abundant, wealthy, and powerful country on the globe.

Yet authoritarians believe that if a little government is good then a lot must be better. This is never the case, and we can refer to the outcomes of countries that turn their government up to 11. //

The citizen makes his own solutions so the government doesn’t have to take the time and resources to make one for him, and very likely, do a very poor job of doing it anyway. Jenkins thought he was providing solutions, but in truth, his solutions don’t elevate, they restrict. He effectively stopped a host of problem-solving citizens from providing a solution to a problem.

It’s maddening if you think about it for too long. The free market had the solution to a major problem from the very beginning but the government didn’t allow it to step up to the plate. Thus, the government exacerbated a problem it was trying to solve.

Because that’s what a government is for…getting in a man’s way.

Always trust the free market and the people to solve the problem. The government should be the last thing you look to.