Vox’s Ezra Klein says the government needs to give us more ‘good choices’ so that we can move away from this whole ‘individualism’ thing

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Vox’s Ezra Klein sees the problems currently plaguing our society, and he’s zeroing in on the cause: our government.

But before you get ready to pat him on the back, consider his angle:

Klein writes:

But in shifting so much responsibility to individuals, our government has revealed the limits of individualism.

His piece concludes:

Governmental failure has paved the way for social fracture. If the US government had succeeded as Canada or Germany’s governments succeeded, it would be easier to trust each other because we would pose less danger to each other. If we could depend more on the state, we could make more reasonable requests of ourselves. In the wreckage of state failure, though, it is nearly impossible for us to thrive.

This is a lesson the coronavirus is, or should be, teaching us, but it applies to far more than this moment. I began this column with the fires that have burnt my region; fires worsened, year after year, by unchecked climate change. There, too, our failures as a polity have left us adrift as individuals — free to flee our homes, but not free to breathe air that doesn’t leave us choking. It is a thin form of liberty, but it is all we will have left if we cannot govern collectively. We all want to be free to make our own choices. But we need government that works well enough so we have good choices to make.

The government has set us up to fail … so we need more government so we don’t fail?

Does Ezra Klein ever just stop and read what he’s written?

Parting evergreen tweet:





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