Bonnie Blodget: How does our metaphorical garden grow?

My friend Bill and I are quite the pair. A study in contrast, you might say. I'm a do-it-yourselfer and a skinflint who would rather eat live spiders than hire a service to mow my lawn.

Bill wouldn't dream of mowing his own lawn. Not that he minds yard work. He's an excellent cook and a gardener who takes his tomato patch seriously. He also loves cars and can't help himself when he sees a smudge on the undercarriage. Out come the garden hose and the bucket, even though there's a full-service car wash just a mile away. I can almost read his mind on these occasions: Here I am taking away jobs from that car-wash guy, a good Republican no doubt.

My parsimony makes Bill see red. Not that he tells me that. It's just in the air. I actually kind of envy Bill because his worldview is a lot simpler than mine and in some ways easier to defend. How can she live with herself, he must wonder as he sees me cleaning my own house and trying to figure out how to operate a chain saw. Doesn't she care about job creation?

In the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers went down and the bank bailouts were on the table and I asked Bill what he thought about it all, he snarled the word "greed" in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, then added, as if to make sure I didn't get the wrong impression: "Government won't fix this."

Government better fix this, I said, because it's all we've got.

Bill's a good guy. I don't think he's evil just because he's rich. He's smart and sophisticated. That's what's so bewildering. I can't figure out why he clings to his version of reality when everywhere I look I see evidence that it's, well, just dumb. I thought for sure the collapse of our economy would have put an end to the fairy tale that wealth trickles down of its own accord. I assumed there'd be some sort of mea culpa from the right after it was shown in such dramatic fashion what happens when government regulation breaks down.

Instead, regulation has taken the rap for crimes committed by the private sector, whose handsomely paid political operatives now seem intent on dismantling government itself.

Darwin figured out that species survival is a group endeavor. In other species individuals routinely sacrifice themselves for the greater good. We humans have more difficulty curbing our selfish instincts. A bit of coercion (government) keeps us on the straight and narrow. Always has.

I think growth is just as likely to lead to an ever-escalating rate of misery on a per capita basis as it is to, as the supply-siders like to say, "lift all boats." Again, the evidence is everywhere. You have to be blind not to see it.

This notion that profits are a panacea makes us overreliant on fiscal fiddling at the expense of sound financial planning. Last month the CEO of the Oppenheimer & Co. investment firm, Brian Belski, complained in the Star Tribune that "everybody is so focused on short-term data instead of economic fundamentals ... [i]t's becoming increasingly difficult to measure things on a monthly and annual basis." Shopping is one of those fundamentals. Belski said that despite all manner of incentives, people are "still shopping less."

My guess is that's because we're figuring out (finally) that there are some things money can't buy -- a clean trout stream, a safe and friendly neighborhood -- and that doing things yourself instead of delegating adds value, too, just not monetary value. I'm absurdly proud of my garden not because it's perfect, but because I'm the gardener.

I want to convince Bill that I'm all for private enterprise but that shrinking government to the size of a pin is a bad idea. There's another option. I know it's complicated and messy, but so is everything we humans touch. Let's stop demonizing government and figure out how to make it work.