We should erect a Statue of Responsibility to go with the Statue of Liberty. Responsibility and freedom are corresponding concepts.  In order to assure freedom and responsibility stay connected we need to make sure our policy makers, leaders, business owners, etc., are held accountable.  In other words, their actions must be tied to consequences.  Far too many people in power have “no skin in the game” that they play.  When a city Mayor takes action to defund the police, they should be required to live in the most crime ridden area of that city without any special security.  When the crime and homicide rate goes up, and if they’ve survived without harm, they should reimburse the crime victims for the added cost of their misery.  Being voted out of office is not a suited consequence for most politicians.  If a Secretary of Defense orders young people to war in some overseas land, they should have a loved one on the front lines.  We love George Washington because he was there on the battle field fighting with his soldiers for what he believed in.  He had “skin in the war for independence”.  

I believe the best government is small and local so that the citizens can better hold the officials who administrate, and the people who benefit from a service more accountable.  The failure of most federal and state wide programs is that they are too distanced and removed from where the “rubber hits the road”.  For example, an alcoholic in my neighborhood is more likely to receive effective and efficient treatment from a local source because those of us who know our neighbor, and who are paying for the treatment program, will know if Bob is “working the program”.   We won’t continue to enable his drinking when we know what he’s up to, and we also have some “skin in the treatment”.  Big, sweeping federal and state government actions are often unintentionally less moral and less effective than the actions of a local tribe or municipality.  Ideally, local problems will be best solved by private voluntary philanthropy.  If we were not taxed so high to the fund the big federal and statewide social programs, we’d have more of our own money to help the downtrodden we knew personally.