I recently "vacationed" by building a hiking trail in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona.  This is through a volunteer organization called Trail Tamers (trailtamers.org) that I have been affiliated with for several years including serving as the board president. Video evidence follows:

Photos: www.flickr.com/photos/44653950@N00/sets/72157621374902617/show/

What the heck is the point of this?  I am going to leave you in suspense for a moment.

During our week in the woods we got to talk shop with our host agency people in the national park service.  A point of great emphasis was the way that much of the policy governing parks is not natural, or in other words, dumb.  For example the trail we worked on is next to Fish Creek, which is intentionally poisoned to kill non-native rainbow trout in order to promote native Apache trout.  However when Fish Creek meets up with the Black River the Apache trout are eaten by the rainbow trout that have been stocked in the Black River.  We were all joking around the campfire about how this resembles the Simpsons episode (“Bart, the Mother”) where lizards eat the pigeons, snakes are brought in to eat the lizards, gorillas are brought in to eat the snakes, etc.

But another interesting government policy is the prevention of fires.  It is generally recognized that fires are beneficial for a forest in the long term.  Although a forest fire of course causes damage in the short term, it has a creative destruction effect.  The old growth burns off and allows new growth and grasses to grow, as well as promoting native plant and animal sustainability.  The biggest problem with actively preventing fires is that the forest gets very dense with wood fuel and when there is a fire it is extremely hot and out of control.  This means that a fire suppression policy requires lots of money to invest in order to preserve older vegetation.  A policy of letting nature take care of nature is a low maintenance and cost free approach.  A little more detail can be found here and here.

Well, what about our homes that are in the path of a firestorm?  There are 2 solutions:

1. A buffer zone (fire-break) between your home or subdivision and the forest

2. Don't put your house in a forest, on a fault line, next to a volcano, next to flood prone areas, etc.

So, when am I going to turn this nature lesson into anything pertinent?  Now.

You may have noticed that our great leaders have taken trillions of dollars from us to protect "old growth" industries and financial institutions.  These "too big to fail" businesses are not being allowed to burn, despite the fact that there are dying and deteriorating.  If they burn, it of course will be painful.  Yet the smaller businesses that did things the right way would be able to step up, grow, and take their place.  The smaller banks that did not invest in dubious deals and maintained their reserves would attract more customers. The smaller, more nimble and innovative firms would attract more customers and would grow.  Instead, our leaders keep more of the old growth hanging on and getting bigger so that when there is a failure it is a "too big to fail" out of control firestorm. 

Contrary to the notion that such an approach is irresponsible and that "all economists agree" that federal bailouts and takeovers are required, consider the credentials of Dr Jeffry Miron and many others: www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/ and www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf

What we as individuals can do is to build our own personal buffers and seek to isolate our exposure to the winds of bubble and bust cycles in the economy.  However we can't completely extricate ourselves from the economy.  We need to keep from putting our "houses" in the hands of the politicians in office.  What we can do as a political party is to challenge our opponents on the ballot and make it painful for them to continue these policies.

There are those typically affiliated with the left and the environmental movement that have adopted the "let nature take care of nature" approach.  The wilderness areas are best left alone (laissez faire).  What works in the forest works in the economy. 

The Libertarian Party is the only choice for those seeking nature's way in all matters.