I think that “let the professionals take care of it” comes from our society being highly specialized. Very large parts of our society are geared to learn about very specific areas and then do that one thing *very* well.

People have figured out that there is an expert (or at least some group of people) that knows how to do thing X much better then they do. As a result they call an expert. As an example: I don’t farm or process the food that I eat, I don’t know how to build a refrigerator to keep my food cool, I don’t know how to find or process the metal needed to build a refrigerator, I don’t know how to process water so that it is clean and safe to drink, I don’t work on my car (much), I don’t know how to process the oil that comes out of the ground into gas and oil for my car. On the other hand when I get to work I do a thing that I am very good at and there may only be a few thousand people in the world that can do what I can.

For everything I don’t know, I pick up the phone or trust the expert via the marketplace. Some people think that others should handle everything in their life, their safety and security, raising their children, etc and then try to build a system of experts to take control of their lives. The problem is that they are doing it via the government and making it required to participate in.

Based on my own background, I think this sense comes from the family. My mom was very active in community service, and I, by default, picked that up after being dragged along for so many years.

I think the notion of expecting experts in everything is interesting. I don’t know about valid, but it’s an interesting question to think about if we’ve actually taken specialization so far that we must rely on others in order to function in modern civil society, and for consistency’s sake, government can be there to provide that expert to some degree.

Steinkuehler, Constance A. and Dmitri Williams (2006), “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places,’” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (July), 885-909.

It directly addresses Bowling Alone (taking a contrary position, as you might imagine) and is written in pretty accessible style.

High taxes have ensured that people have less free time to spend on civic activity.

The way I look at it about half my workday goes toward civic activity in a round-about way.

It’s not a secret, the guys setting it up flat out SAID that’s what they were doing.

I’d say it worked.