[P]oliticians invariably feel the need to “do something.” Despite volumes of evidence from disparate fields like economics, social work, ecology, and medicine, it never seems to occur to politicians that sometimes doing less, or even doing nothing, is by far the better approach. Why should it occur to them? When politicians act and their actions do more harm than good, they always say the same thing: “Imagine how bad it would have been had we not acted.”
But this time, we have evidence. We can compare what happened where politicians reacted with a heavy hand to what happened where they reacted with a light touch. And the evidence we have so far points to the same conclusion: Our politicians destroyed our economy unnecessarily.
-Antony Davies and James Harrigan (The Covid-19 Catastrophe))
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
Most of the “do something” comes from their self-need to justify their elections, showing to their constituents that their votes enabled them to “do good things”. Well, doing “good things” is not the same as “do something” (kinda similar to that “no, practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect”). The point, as our Declaration of Independence makes clear, is that the “Do something” is to always protect our Rights FIRST and foremost – not micro-regulate our lives (which is what most “do something” end up as).
In office, use a very light hand – we Individuals in Civil Society have the responsibility to do the heavy lifting in taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. Don’t believe that it is the proper role of Government to sweep all impediments of Life out of our way for that is, in large part, our “doing something” because we know best what is good for us – not you.
The Founders deliberately set up a form of Government in which getting anything done was HARD. I’m glad when they are deadlocked – it means that the ideas that they want to “DO SOMETHING!” are horrible. Instead, we get to fix our own problems in our own ways instead of some “one size fits all solution” gets rammed down our throats. We in Civil Society are much more nimble and quicker than Government – just think of all the private boats in Manhattan getting people off this island just after 9/11 – the Feds didn’t really show up until 4 days later to “take charge”. Think, too, of the “Cajun Navy” – ordinary folks driving for miles with boats on trailers to save people from the aftereffects of a hurricane.
We rely too much on Government thinking it is the one to “do something” instead of we ourselves.
