Family Issues Friday - part 5

  "Something MUST be done"... the rallying cry of do-gooders everywhere, in response to a perceived problem. We've all said it at some time, I suppose, when outraged by some problem we view as serious. The rub occurs when we try to "flesh out" the statement in reaching for a solution.

• What should be done?
• Who should do it?
• By what means?
• At whose expense?

This will be about family issues and solving the complex, vexing problems that occur within families... divorce, child custody disagreements, abuse and neglect, etc., and how those problems might best be solved. Over the past few weeks, we've seen that these problems are currently covered by complex laws and administered by clumsy, sometimes corrupt, government agencies. We've also seen that those laws and agencies, and the courts, very often produce results that are far worse than the original problems. Those results beg the question "how else could the problems be solved?"

The instinctive answer for a libertarian is bound to be "look to a private, non-governmental solution", and that is what I want to explore. A hundred years ago, Americans would have naturally looked to private solutions, and did, but since then our government has gradually intruded into family life, as it has into almost all aspects of our existence. We've been told, in one situation after another, that only government can solve problems well.

Politicians, in an effort to gain votes, have incessantly grasped at naturally-occurring problems, puffed those problems into national issues, and campaigned on them, promising that their government solution would save us from ourselves. Each campaign, we hear claims about the marvelous progress such plans have wrought, with further claims that the battle isn't over, so we'll have to re-elect said politician to continue the battle. You may have noticed that those "battles" never end, and the problems never dissipate, despite all the "progress" over the years. Thus, the War on Poverty has, if anything, increased poverty, the War on Drugs has increased drug use, and on and on, ad nauseam.

Despite all the evidence, most of us have been coached throughout our lives to expect solutions to our most confounding problems from only government. As a form of self-fulfilling prophesy, government has, at the same time, taken increasing percentages of our earnings, making private problem solving more difficult. Private organizations that are trying to really solve some of these problems are hampered by excessive regulation and by having to seek contributions from citizens who have less disposable income after taxes.

Before exploring private solutions to family problems, I think I must first make some effort to convince many of you that we, the people, working with no government assistance, or interference, are vastly more capable of problem solving than government ever has been or could ever hope to be.

Humans have a marvelous, yet largely unappreciated, knack for solving problems. Human history is a cavalcade of innovation and invention. Take any very specific field of endeavor and trace it, and you'll find a continual string of small improvements with an occasional breakthrough. More importantly, you'll find that most of the people who implemented each improvement, or gave birth to a breakthrough, were pretty ordinary people going about their daily work. The brief period of the development of the personal computer, for example, is a history filled with thousands of names... of companies now gone, and of individuals you'll never hear about.

No single corporation, even with unlimited capital, could have deliberately developed this device I'm writing on and from which you're reading. The development of the personal computer is a stunning example of the power of unregulated free enterprise.

Most of the innovation was unplanned... just a germ of an idea that got modified many times until it was good enough to get people to spend money for it, and stayed good enough only until somebody replaced  it with a better idea. The laser printer I bought 15 years ago for $2,500 is now in the trash, replaced by a $100 printer than does more, and faster, and in full color.

I'd love to continue recounting the many ways in which the personal computer has improved our lives, but my point is to make you realize why it was possible, and the lessons we must learn from it.

Lesson number 1: Government had nothing to do with it... except that it didn't interfere. PC's developed so quickly that government could never get a handle on them... and still haven't. Government has always been years behind the rest of us in adopting new technology, so they were never able to tinker in an industry that was such a fast-moving target.

Lesson number 2: The PC growth was "regulated" by the marketplace... the harshest regulator of all. Major corporations, sometimes with superior products, often didn't succeed because they couldn't react and improve as fast as smaller firms, or because they couldn't feel the real "needs" that users felt. They tended to make excuses while smaller competitors just filled the needs. Many tried to "protect" what they had while others just went around them. Major companies, like Apple, IBM, WordPerfect, and Lotus had near-monopolies in their niches, and lost them by trying to sit on their laurels. None of those examples are gone, but they're no longer the powers they once were.

Lesson number 3: Left unregulated, with free competition, the PC industry has grown far more than was expected. Pundits of the past predicted that PC's would peak at some level, but only dreamers thought every home would have one... and even they (we) couldn't tell you why every home might WANT one. As the price of PC's dropped, the market was bigger. As the market grew, the competitive nature of the unregulated market meant that other suppliers would produce still cheaper PC's to get their piece of the market... which increased the market more... and so on.

BOTTOM LINE: The development of the computer industry cost us no tax dollars. It wasn't done through government grants, or licenses, or subsidies. No legislation forced suppliers to improve products, or increase reliability, or protect users. Nobody forced us to buy PC's. No government public service commercials urged us to get on the bandwagon. The few companies that tried to sell "a pig in a poke" were quickly detected and punished, not by laws or police or courts, but by buyers hearing about them and simply not buying. A few people bought stuff that didn't work well, spread the word, and others avoided the same mistake.

In a mere 20 years, personal computers went from relatively worthless, $2000 gizmos that few people had any use for, to modern and powerful devices we can have for $500, ready to plug in and employ in many useful ways. It is the best recent example of what a free market can do when it's actually left free to do it. The PC industry is an example that should give all of us great confidence in ourselves, because that revolution was generated by ordinary people simply trying to make money for themselves... doing what you and I do every day of our lives. No magic, no big programs, no government... just thousands of small steps that fell together as unimpeded free market progress of a kind that was once common but is now hard to find, because government has wedged itself into most other aspects of our lives.

That process... that free, natural, creative process, was what made our nation great to begin with. If we can again move from wasting our time and money on government programs that don't work, and instead develop our own solutions, we can solve our problems. Next Friday, I'll begin to explore what "family issues" would be like without government involvement.