The evolution of Homo Latch-Key

by Mark Yannone

Time's cover story, "Britain's Mean Streets," has drawn worldwide attention to a problem that can bloom anywhere, given the right conditions. The trend is for those conditions to worsen, to be more common than ever.

The symptoms are essentially these: England's children are increasingly violent, poorly educated, and unambitious. Of those who survive the violence of their peers, many mature into unproductive parents and wards of the state--criminal or merely chronically poor. Americans can read the writing on the wall. We've been setting ourselves up for the same scenario for years.

The necessary conditions are all too common: households in which both parents work outside the home, children educated by the state and trained by their televisions, the proliferation of drugs, the confiscation of wealth by the state (i.e., taxes), the redistribution of private property by the state (i.e., taxes), the criminalization of self-defense (e.g., gun laws), and the proliferation of legislation.

It's a well-established formula for disaster: use coercion to take from the producers (taxpayers) and redistribute to the takers (tax eaters) in exchange for votes. The confiscation of private property increases the cost of living, so families that should have a parent at home to raise the children then need the income of both parents to make ends meet. The confiscation is used to fund mandatory, poor-quality education provided by the state, which uses its utmost influence to make obedient workers who are ignorant enough and scared enough to support the state with slave labor. Drug laws are used to enrich the state and control the populace. Freedom does not fit into the picture, so great effort must be expended to suppress it. In the resultant police state, prison, fines, torture, death, election fraud, and many other forms of coercion are used to keep the population under control. Rights are no longer acknowledged, and the proliferation of legislation is accompanied by increasing lawlessness, decreasing accountability of government, growing poverty, and vanishing economic opportunity.

On our way to oblivion we can expect governments to seek increasing control as their efforts to thrive at the expense of others meet the growing resistance of society's producers. This only aggravates deteriorating conditions throughout society, leading to the scenarios described in the Time article and the Telegraph.co.uk article that reviews it.

"Shit happens, innit? Shit happens and people do stuff. You know what I mean?"


Virtually incomprehensible