President Obama said this in his
2nd
inaugural address:
For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's
world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of
fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all
the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future,
or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and
businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things
together.
I object to this move, which seems to have become popular
with Democrats in the past couple years, of equating "doing things together"
with government. To suggest that anyone who'd like to see less heavy-handed
government regulation thinks one person can do everything alone is a straw-man
argument. It indicates a lack of understanding of how the private-sector economy
works and how libertarians or conservatives actually think about economics. The
private sector isn't just a bunch of people "acting alone." As Matt Welch
pointed out in his
critique
of the speech, making and selling an object as basic as a pencil is such a
complex endeavor that it takes lots of different specialists. No one person has
the knowledge to accomplish that seemingly simple task; that's how decentralized
knowledge is in society. And with a truly complex product, like a computer or
movie, the need for people to work together is even greater still. The private
sector isn't fundamentally about everyone being secluded and isolated from each
other; it typically involves many people working together. Government regulation
often
rules out the options people would otherwise want to pursue that
would let them work together
more. The idea that you're "alone" unless
you're being directed by the government strikes me as dehumanizing and almost
abusive. So I resist this scare tactic of presenting the government as the
alternative to being "alone."
by John Althouse Cohen
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