Thou Shalt Not Steal

Alternative Column: Natural disasters remind us how trivial our own problems are. When I saw a photo of two late-model combines and a grain bin mostly covered in Missouri River water, the trag-edy was driven home. What do you do with thousands of bushels of soaked corn and no still?
When faced with such a terrible situation, we have to wonder, how could this hap-pen? The wrath of God? Well, in a way.
Rain and snow fall on the earth. They soak in or run off. History shows where it is safe to build or farm.
The West Fork of the Ce-dar River runs through our property. Once I returned from town to find Dawn wading through chest deep water past fence posts covered with spi-ders. She was herding cows to high ground. It becomes obvi-ous that going underground in a tornado or heading for higher ground in a flood is the best way to deal with Mother Na-ture. Stopping the wind or water would never enter a logi-cal mind.
When I went to Alaska to work in my younger days, I got a job with a helicopter logging company. We were there to clear a right of way for a power line from a hydroelec-tric plant to the city of Juneau. Previously, a line was built on a ridge-top and it all blew down in the inevitable 100 mile-per-hour wind and wet snow. The locals warned the Army Corps of Engineers of the conditions up there. Private owners would have sold the timber and put the power line in its proper place to begin with.
When we arrived on the job site, a guy in fatigues was running a chainsaw through dirt and rocks trying to cut out a three-foot diameter tree stump. All the while he was cursing the saw as a piece of junk. The teeth on the saw looked like BBs. The saw's fault? We scratched our heads.
As hard as it is to imagine (to our government schooled minds), important jobs like power lines and dams should not be left to government. Government should only regu-late to control force and fraud because spending someone else’s money is too easy.
Government has certainly failed to manage flooding; and not just on the Missouri River.
I'm sure the call will go out that we need more government to fix the problems on The Missouri, when those problems were obviously caused by people expecting the govern-ment to “do its job.” We will be reassured that reform will work this time; an old story.
Think of a vision where the river was managed by an asso-ciation paid by those who would benefit directly from good management instead of taxpayers in New York or New Mexico who have no stake in the results and no right to refuse payment for bad performance. I know of a well-managed private lake that is a good example of this.
Imagine if, as in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, private individuals (such as retired Navy Seals) were al-lowed to hunt down criminals like Osama bin Laden for a reward instead of conducting an 18 year, $3 trillion war on terror. The benefits of privati-zation are so great it is almost beyond comprehension.
It is time we abandon the failed strategy of taxing and throwing money at problems. The politicians who spend it all have one thing in common. Their greatest skill is getting elected.
There is more than just religious doctrine in The Ten Commandments. Those rules would guarantee an orderly and peaceful society. Govern-ment regulation of the Missouri River violates the Seventh Commandment . The govern-ment did not earn the money used to regulate The Missouri so it was too easy to spend it foolishly.
Any opinions on this column are welcome at 4selfgovernment@gmail.com or through a letter to the editor. The blog is updated almost daily at www.alternativebyfritz.com. Try it. You’ll like it.