Arbitrary Intervention
17th May 2012
Bryan Caplan speaks a little inconvenient truth.
Imagine writing a list of everything wrong with the world. There’s hunger. Broken hearts. Unemployment. Screaming at your kids after a bad day at work. Cheating on your girlfriend. Pollution. Heretics. Burning of heretics. Promiscuity on TV. Promiscuity in real life. Obese kids. Obese adults. People coughing without covering their mouths. The Islamist threat. Seniors eating dog food. The decline of marriage. Bosses who scream at their workers. Kids who don’t call on Mother’s Day. People who don’t read books. School bullying. Boring jobs. Boring teachers. Men dying years younger than women. People who don’t know how to start small businesses. You could go on and on. And on and on and on.
Go on, try it.
Now ask yourself, “How many of these problems does government even claim to try to alleviate?” No matter how statist your society is, there are probably ten problems the government ignores for every problem it tries to address.
May 18th, 2012 at 07:54
I was reading down the list and was brought up short at “Promiscuity in real life”. it struck a nerve. This truly is a problem that deserves our focus.
I hope the government will intervene soon to redress the lack of promiscuity by instituting a Promiscuity Awareness day and issuing buttons that say “I’m For It!” on them. I suspect many of our other problems would vanish if promiscuity were promoted more. When people are busy Doing It with each other they don’t have much time left over for getting into trouble.
May 18th, 2012 at 11:15
Statistically, the Kennedys and Bill Clinton make up for the lack of promiscuity of large portions of society.