BEST OF JIM COOK

March 2, 2007

MAKING MATTERS WORSE

"Government intervention cannot work as a permanent system of societies economic organization," said the great Austrian School economist, Ludwig von Mises. According to him, the various government measures bring about results that are more unsatisfactory than the state of affairs they were designed to improve. We can see that in examples like the Great Societies social schemes, which were designed to eliminate poverty. The facts reveal that matters are far worse in terms of education, crime, addiction, family responsibilities, and economic equality than they were back then.

Mises instructed that if the government and the proponents of intervention do not learn from their mistakes, they will supplement their first steps by more and more interference. By abolishing private controls and curbing private initiatives they pave the road to Socialism. The fact that the left refuses to see the incredible failure of its welfare initiatives leads to more of the same bad medicine. If you ever wonder why liberals are soft on crime and left wing judges coddle criminals, it’s because they don’t want to take the blame for the mess they’ve made. They downplay crime to avoid responsibility for the great step backward they engineered, and to make us think nothing’s gone wrong.