By Alex Marshall
April 2001

Some school kid will shoot some other school kids again soon, and thus provide an adequate “hook” for this article. I was worried that it had been too long since the last schoolyard massacre – at least several weeks – for people to care about what I say on the subject. But I needn’t worry. Another will be along soon.

It’s difficult to identify causes or cures for the random violence that erupts in our schools, malls and office buildings. I would like to suggest some that are perhaps less intuitive than gun control or less violence on television, valid as these may be.

I would like to mention subjects such as national health care. Better leave policies when families have children. Higher minimum wages. Stronger protection for injured workers. More equal school funding. Publicly financed elections.

What, I can hear you saying, have these to do with kids killing kids in schoolyards? It’s not as if someone picked up a gun because OSHA didn’t protect workers from repetitive motion injuries?

Not directly, but there are fewer degrees of separation than one might think. For the last generation, we have steadfastly refused to do things that give us some responsibility for the well being of each other. We have refused, over and over, to be our brother’s keeper.

Measures like national health care or family leave are the true test of community. Are we willing to limit our own actions for a greater good? Are we willing to share a burden? Are we willing, in the case of health care, to limit our fees if we are doctors, our premiums if we are insurance salesmen, our access to specialized health care if we are rich?

We have been tempted. We almost passed national health care, but “we” decided, after hearing scary stories by various special interests, that we just weren’t ready. We did pass a very weak Family Leave act. We have passed a few, limited gun control measures. But by and large, we have not. Most recently, “we,” that is the new Bush administration, rejected worker safety measures that would have given us responsibility for people injured through typing or whacking chickens.

And how does this relate to a teenage kid killing people in California, to name a recent news item? Quite simply, our insistence on pursuing individualistic, competitive solutions to every problem is producing a society that is individualistic and competitive. It is producing a society that tells people, including kids, you’re all alone. It’s every man for himself. If you can’t make it, tough luck.

We are a very rich society, yet we still have more poor people, worse schools, longer working hours and less adequate health care than other first world country.

The California kid who last month picked up a gun after being teased was a manifestation of this society where every man, woman and kid is on his own. I can almost hear that kid telling that to himself, as he grabbed his father’s gun.

We Americans like to think of ourselves as valuing family and community. But France and Germany have far greater protection for families, and far greater respect for the rights of a community. It’s telling that Europe has strong limits on how corporations can use information acquired over the Internet. We do not.

We tend to rely on markets to solve common problems, which means competition of individuals and companies. We reject cooperation. This runs like a theme through every major public policy issue. We deregulate utilities, airlines, TV cable companies, all in a belief that a frenzy of competition for money will somehow produce a greater good for everyone.

But it doesn’t always work that way. Adam Smith’s invisible hand sometimes pushes everyone down, instead of lifting them up. Or it sometimes pushes most of us down, and just a few of us up. “Market failure” is far more common than economists like to admit, as anyone who has paid a $1,000 for a short airline hop will know.

Gun control is, of course, one example of our refusal to cooperate, to give up individual liberties and choices for the sake of the common good. We are as addicted to guns as the worst alcoholic is to his whiskey. It is so tellingly clear that we need to control, manage, order, track and regulate guns and those who own them. Yet, we resist. Our government is our government, so we can’t blame the politicians without blaming ourselves. They do what we tell them to do, ultimately. And if they aren’t doing it, that means we aren’t telling them forcefully enough.