Government programs do not solve problems.
People on the ground do.
Find out why bottom-up is better than top-down (with text and Afterword links).
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Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
You smell it before you see it. Homelessness is an epidemic in America. Stories and studies from San Francisco and Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle paint a bleak picture. Local governments have not mediated the problem. Bureaucracy tends to be slow, and its organizational structure spends more taxpayer dollars on the machinery of administration. Monies trickle down to people who are in need or the actual workers on the frontlines of homelessness. Top-down management does not work well.
But there are local groups like the Lucky Duck Foundation in San Diego combating social problems such as homelessness. For instance, the very first thing a person is given at the San Diego shelter is an ID. On the street a homeless person may be a nobody; but in the shelter, they are somebody. Historically we know that the best kind of change is made by individuals, not government agencies. Burt Folsom’s book The Myth of the Robber Barons gives historical evidence of how individual entrepreneurialism is better than government control any day. Find the links to these two resources at the end of this Truth in Two
The best kind of change comes from the people who must live with the problems they face. Local initiatives are the way to overcome local concerns. The book of Titus leads the way for Christian bottom-up influence. Paul tells Titus eight times in three short chapters, that believers are to “do good, do good, do good.” For those who believe the Bible, teach the bottom-up philosophy of Jeremiah 29 where God’s people are instructed to “seek the welfare of the city where God has sent you.” And for those who don’t believe the Bible, give them a copy of Burt Folsom’s book.
It is a good reminder just after Labor Day: the best change, the best help you could ask for, comes bottom-up. For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeing Truth wherever it’s found.
AFTERWORD These are but a few of the resources that will point to others, showing that government programs do not serve people as well as the people who live there.
Nordlinger, Jay. “Angels in San Diego,” National Review 29 May 2023, pp. 18-20.
The Lucky Duck Foundation, San Diego
Folsom, Burt. The Myth of the Robber Barons.