Parable Of The Swim Team

IN THIS COMPLEX world, how can an ordinary person cope without instruction from the experts? That’s the rationale for liberal colonialism, under which the average American is ruled by a colonial administration of liberal experts. Just like the colonialists of the nineteenth century, liberals find themselves called to minister to the natives of the inner cities and suburbia of America.

Without the tutelage of experts, after all, many people will stumble, and we can’t allow that to happen.

Or is it possible that ordinary people are perfectly able to run their lives without expert supervision?

The real problem with colonialism only surfaced once the European imperialists had lost their nerve and gave up their colonies. They had imposed a foreign system upon an aboriginal people and destroyed their aboriginal culture. Unable to replicate the colonial culture, and unable to return to the Garden of Eden of their aboriginal culture the former colonies collapsed in ignominy and shame.

What will happen when the liberal colonial masters lose their nerve and withdraw from the schools and the welfare offices of America? For over a century they have relieved their colonial subjects from all responsibility for educating their children and living a responsible life? Will the suburbs and inner cities of America collapse into disorder like the former colonies of Africa? Perhaps not. We’ve learned from the school choice movement and the welfare reform of 1996 that ordinary people can be responsible for their lives. Indeed, there is a hint that they may turn out to be better at running their lives than the experts.

Now comes the heart-warming story of the Mighty Marlins, the Marysville, Washington swim team.

It used to be that the swim club in Marysville was run as an extracurricular activity by the Marysville School District. But a couple of years ago, the parents got fed up. The swim coach supplied by the school district wasn’t up to the job and the good kids were leaving for other, better swim programs.

So the parents went to the school district and offered to take the program private. They would hire their own coach; they would rent pool time at the Maryville-Pilchuck pool; they would collect the fees. No problem, said the school district; the program was losing money, even though it charged the members of the swim team extra.

Of course, under private management the Marysville Marlins Swim Club thrived. There are now over 90 kids on the swim team, even though the club has to pay for their coach and pool time.

And even though the monthly fee now covers the expenses of the swim team for each student, the program is now making money.

Recently the school district expressed an interest in taking over the newly profitable Mighty Marlins Swim Club.

The great conceit of the twentieth century was the notion that we should turn over the commanding heights of society to the rational control of the experts, and thereby reap a bountiful harvest from their knowledge and efficiency. Ordinary people just weren’t educated enough, or wise enough to know enough about education to know where to send their children to school or understood enough about investments to be able to save for retirement. So the best thing would be to turn the responsibility over to experts. Instead of the higgling of the market, economic affairs would be rationally organized by the state. Instead of the down-at-heel dame school, children would be educated at the well-staffed, well-equipped common school. Instead of the chaos of private charity, the poor would be served by helping professionals. Instead of the second-rate lodge doctor, people would have health insurance and be treated by the best doctors available. Instead of venal insurance companies and stock jobbers, the people would be served by an efficient government pensions scheme.

Why didn’t it work? The experts have a number of reasons. Mises wrote that the experts would fail because they couldn’t compute prices. Hayek said that they would fail because a few hundred government planners can’t outperform millions of consumers. But maybe the answer is simpler than that. Maybe what you really need is a bunch of people who care enough to make a difference. Like the good people at the Mighty Marlins Swim Club.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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