Horror of Horrors, The Poor Have Too Much Computer Access!

Leave it to the New York Times to sound the alarm on the latest "gap" separating the rich from the poor-which of course can only be remedied with a billion-dollar government program. In an article titled "Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era," reporter Matt Richtel describes the latest specter haunting children of the underclass. They are spending too much time on their computers!

According to the Times, "Studies show that as access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites." The problem is apparently so severe that the Federal Communications Commission is looking to spend $200 million to create a national digital literacy corps. This new agency would deploy thousands of trainers to teach more productive uses of computers to parents, students, and job seekers.

At the risk of seeming ungrateful for the swell job the Times does informing and educating us less enlightened members of society, let's review the bidding.

First we were told that it is a crisis that the poor do not have sufficient access to computers, demanding government intervention. Now they are telling us it is a crisis that the poor are using computers too much, demanding government intervention.

First we were told that it is a crisis that the poor do not have enough to eat, demanding government intervention. Now they are telling us it is a crisis that the poor are eating their way to obesity, demanding government intervention.

First we were told that it is a crisis that the United States is not installing enough solar panels and windmills, demanding government intervention. Now they are telling us it is a crisis that the Chinese are shipping us too many cheap solar panels and windmill parts, demanding government intervention.

First we were told that anthropogenic global cooling is a crisis, demanding government intervention. Now they are telling us anthropogenic global warming is a crisis, demanding government intervention.

Home prices are too high! Home prices are too low! We're not taking enough mammograms! We're taking too many mammograms! Interest rates are too high! Interest rates are too low! I could go on for three more pages, but you get the idea. What do all these crises have in common? Some measures of something are not where some elite experts think they ought to be, so let the clarion call go out through the mainstream media megaphone demanding ... more government intervention.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ten thousand times, shame on me. Make us pay hundreds of billions for the privilege of being jerked around, shame on a once-great republic that has strayed so far from its founders' original intent that they wouldn't even recognize it today.

What part of "government is not the solution to every problem" is so hard to understand? Why do so many people find it so difficult to believe that experts do not know the answer to every question?

Learning to live with each other is a process of constant discovery and experimentation. Growing and balancing an economy is a process of constant discovery and experimentation. Solving complex distribution problems is a process of constant discovery and experimentation. It takes the cumulative impact of millions of independent decisions made by a free people to make a society thrive, adapt, and grow. Intervene in these processes at your peril.

Yes, government needs to set the ground rules, generally known as the rule of law. Without rule of law we have anarchy and chaos. But when government goes beyond establishing basic rules and instead imposes complex solutions designed by alleged experts, it almost always gets things wrong. And almost always future legislators compound the errors by imposing further remedies for the failed solutions, which also usually turn out wrong. Continue this cycle and you create such a thick pile of bureaucracy, entrenched interests, distorted economies, runaway spending, and gross inefficiencies that even after everyone has long forgotten what the original problem was, the Leviathan lumbers forward, consuming everything in its path.

What we need more than anything else to correct the excesses of government is not more brilliant experts but more humble officials. We need rulers that respect the rule of law in its most concise form, who trust that we the people are perfectly capable of solving our own problems, each in our own way. Is this not what made us the greatest country on Earth? Show me a country run by experts and I'll show you a Rube Goldberg monstrosity ready to collapse under its own weight-otherwise known as the European Union.