Letters to The Editor
Rick Lowe : The Salmon Trap: An Analogy for People’s Entrapment by the State‏
By Rick Lowe, www.weblogbahamas.com
May 19, 2014 - 3:09:27 PM

What a perfect comparison - the government is like a salmon trap. We get in, and just can't get out. In fact we're subjected almost daily to "hopes and dreams" of individuals that we just need the "right people" to get elected to run the government and all will be well.

But for some reason, those "right people" never seem to come along. (Regretfully, many of those that do show up, think they are supposed to "run the country" not the government).

Yet, we want government to control high bank fees, or the phone company, or the food store, or give them free health care or… Well you get the idea.

Of course most of the political class tell us they can provide all our hopes and dreams, and can solve all the problems imaginable but forget to tell us they will run our lives in return.

Yet, to paraphrase Dr. Richard Ebeling, we never see a government minister standing in Parliament to say the problem his/her ministry was created for has been solved and the budget can be cut. For some "strange" reason the budget always needs to get bigger.

Wonder why?

The other curious aspect is we never stop payment on the cheque to government for the taxes they take to solve these problems on the grounds the service they promised is not satisfactory.

Do we fear going to jail, where the coercive power of government can place us?

What makes us press on regardless to pay our taxes and conform to the "leviathan" that if held to the same standards we expect of individuals and businesses they would have been shut down years ago?

As Dr. Robert Higgs, who coined the salmon trap analogy, notes:

    "Just as the salmon trap’s lead intercepts the fish in the course of their normal life cycle and directs them into captivity, so various political devices and entreaties intercept people in the course of their normal lives and direct them toward dependence on the state."

Listening to the countless ways folks around us call on the government to "fix" everything, I'm reminded of the optimist in a joke Ronald Reagan is often quoted as telling, that goes something like this.


An optimistic little boy was presented with a huge pile of horse manure. Without batting an eye, he ran to the top and started digging furiously.

When asked what he was doing, the boy said beaming, "With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

Kinda like those of us that believe the "political dung" we're told and go back seeking to have it thrown in our faces by continually getting caught in the "salmon trap".

Yours in Liberty,

Rick Lowe

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