Retrofitting

Today I will be installing devices for carbon monoxide detection and smoke detection in preparation for selling a home. I am required by local and state law to install eight (8) devices in a seven-room house. I am feeling a little Libertarian about this. I am shocked to admit this to myself. However, I know that the Libertarian approach is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

We live in a wealthy country where we allow poverty to drive people into sleeping on our streets. The illiteracy rate in our public schools has been rising, not falling. Drop-out rates are also staggering. The uneducated demonstrate against universal health care, a government program which could make their lives and their country healthier. But our houses are crammed with plastic disks which annoyingly malfunction when we boil pasta. 

Retrofitting is the antithesis of practical planning. It is symptomatic of reactionary thinking. Reactionary thinking is symptomatic of the lack of science in our social and political systems. 

When I hear the term "nanny society" applied to the U.S., I laugh. If this is a society which acts as a nanny, it acts as a demented nanny. Rather than focusing on disease prevention and disaster prevention, our government bumbles along with poor crisis intervention. Bandaids and splints are applied to problems as they arise in the media consciousness. The worse the problem, the bigger and less effective the splint. Obamacare is an example. 

Moving from a retrofitting consciousness to a proactive consciousness requires solid public education in a society. Until the U.S. adequately funds and improves its public education system, its effectiveness as a force for progress in the world will continue to decline. A well-educated populace is the best guardian of freedom. Planning and prevention are the most effective ways to achieve progress. The current foundering of the U.S. economy and its politics are symptomatic, I believe, of the American population's declining intelligence. Retrofitting that will be a massive undertaking.