This is not a criticism of the author of the article; I can feel their frustration and the pain of their loss but I don’t have anything to say that can ameliorate that.

I’m coming up on 60 years old. The mindset that many people have now seems to be to wait for someone from the government to help them- whether it’s ambulance, police, health care, food assistance, college, whatever.

Back in the 80s when I was coming of age the mindset among the people around me was different. The mindset of many people today seems more “I’m helpless”.

The government has never been good at anything; it doesn’t have the right organizational incentives and doesn’t give the right personal incentives to employees. I’m not criticizing government employees; there are individuals that do a great job, and from time to time I am delighted with an interaction, but mostly it’s just lots of waiting for mediocre service.

I don’t know how to change a widespread mindset of helplessness, but I suspect that it involves changing laws to remove all the obstacles that government and lawsuits have put in place to helping yourself and helping others.