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The River City Syndrome
by Bill Koehler
bkoehler8@comcastnet

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

From Albuquerque, creative thinker Valentine Michael Smith has recognized and described what he has named the "River City Syndrome". It was first presented to us in the movie The Music Man.

The way this syndrome works is that people are told they have a problem, then they are told how to solve that problem, by a charlatan attempting to profit from the people's gullibility.

"Oh, you've got trouble, right here in River City, that starts with T which rhymes with P which stands for poor!"

The people are told that government has to "fix" this non-existent problem. (Remember, as Ronald Reagan said, "Government is the problem, not the solution.") Government always makes any problem, real or imagined, worse, but no one tells the people that this is what always happens every time that government "fixes" a problem.

"It's terrible that the poor must rely on charity for health care! Oh, boo hoo hoo! Let's plunder the rich and provide them with health care!"

But when charity provided health care for the poor, it was the same "rich" who provided that health care. Now, with government running things, the cost of health care has risen 100 times higher than when the rich voluntarily paid for health care.

Another problem is that the health care is now very poor quality—if you can get it—and everyone must pay for it, whether they want it or not.

And now you really do have trouble, which starts with T which rhymes with P which stands for politicians. The only way to fix the problem is to remove the cause.

When "fixing" a problem makes it worse, quit fixing it!

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