Greetings from the road! As I write this, I am sitting in a series of motel rooms, on a cross-country road trip to visit family – which does nothing to stop my overactive mind from reacting to news and information I happen to see – no matter how hard I try to avoid it – during my dinner in the bar next door…

One of the things that has been kind of niggling at the back of my mind for a while is that I wanted to enlarge on the most blatant logical disconnect I see in most of the arguments we’re hearing for centralizing (i.e. the federal government taking control of) certain things, primarily healthcare. I’ve written about government-run healthcare before, but I want to expand on one specific facet.

And there are a lot of people outraged over the current effort to “make the government more efficient”; the whole DOGE/Musk brouhaha. It should come as no surprise that I am all for improving government efficiency. By its very nature, government is horribly inefficient, so steps should be taken to reduce the waste and incompetence. The problem I have is with the wholesale evisceration of offices and programs without regard to their value (I’m thinking particularly of the layoffs at NOAA, which may jeopardize severe weather forecasting, which is a rather critical function). And completely dismantling the Department of Education may not be the best idea (reform, sure, it’s needed, but utterly destroy? Maybe not).

And remember, the crisis with the Social Security system – which is NOT an “entitlement,” Mr. Musk, no matter how much you want to say it is – is 100% the fault of the Democratic Congress during the Johnson Administration, when they wrote laws permitting themselves to raid the theretofore protected retirement funds of Americans who were forced to contribute to it.

That’s right, Elon, the “Ponzi Scheme” that is the current SSA system is Congress’ fault, not the fault of the people paying into it or receiving benefits from it, so they’re not the ones who should suffer from your ax-wielding. I would suggest adding a budget requirement forcing Congress to start repaying the money stolen from the fund…

Anyway, back to the logical disconnect.

I have friends and family on both ends of the political spectrum, so I hear it all. And like I said, there is a logical disconnect I hear loud and clear that seems to escape most of the (in particular, but not exclusively) left-leaning comments (and diatribes) I’m hearing. A forgotten, ignored, yet fundamentally critical element:

Human Nature.

Nowhere in anyone’s grand plans to make our lives full of rainbows and unicorns is there even lip service being paid to basic human nature. And basic human nature will either make or break any such plan.

Homo sapiens – the human being – is an animal. We have a hard-wired survival instinct, just like any other animal. We naturally conserve our energy, just like any other animal. Which means that on an instinctive, unconscious level, we seek the most gain for our energy expenditure. In other words, maximum gain for minimum effort/risk. We need incentive to push the envelope, innovate, create – the potential reward of any action must warrant the risk of taking that action. Do you follow that?

We also need to be in control. After all, we are at the top of the food chain – at least at the moment – so we have an unconscious need to have at least some degree of control over our immediate environment. And the wider control we have, the more power we have, and the more control we can assume.

And just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans abhor a power vacuum… It’s basic human nature.

This is an instinctive, unconscious, perfectly natural reaction. But it does not bode well for large-scale social engineering. Because, although many of us have learned to override the instinctive reaction (at least to some degree), some of us have not – or choose not to, because the appeal of personal gain at others’ expense can be an overwhelming temptation.

And it’s those people who will step into any kind of power vacuum – perceived or actual – and manipulate the program to their advantage, and take more than their fair share. We’ve seen it throughout history; the most blatant example being Communism which, in the ideal (← note the emphasis, please), really would be rainbows and unicorns because everyone is looking out for everyone else; no individual ownership of anything, nobody takes any more than they need and labors for everyone’s benefit, the warm glow of accomplishment the only needed satisfaction of that whole risk vs reward equation. Everyone succeeds.

Basic human nature prohibits anything like that from ever happening. Ever. It only takes one; there will always be a Lenin or Stalin or Mao who steps in and creates a dictatorship out of it. Always. It’s basic human nature.

So, explain to me again how the government is going to make everything rainbows and unicorns?

Oh – and a note to drivers in the South: you do NOT need to ride my bumper if you want me to move over. 99 times out of 100 (which is about as fast as you were going in that 65 mph zone), I saw you coming and I’m already 10 over the speed limit, so I will move just as soon as I get past the truck I’m passing.