Thoughts on Big Government

September 6, 2009 at 2:02 am | Posted in Cultural, Social politics | Leave a comment

My father worked for the federal hospital system for thirty-eight years. I saw firsthand the mountains of wasteful spending, inefficient use of resources and the hiring of minorities being used as some sort of litmus test of racial victory. After all, if you hire minorities that automatically means they are actually qualified for the work, right? And if they show themselves to be bad employees it should be rather simple to replace them, right? That is true only if you live in a fantasy camp world where the IRS actually gives you refunds when you don’t even ask for the confiscated salary back.

If you had a team headed for the Olympics and you put a 350 lb sprinter as your lead runner in the 50 yard race you can rest assured that you won’t be popping any champagne corks in the winner’s circle. And what if you decided to solve the problem by searching for another 350 lb sprinter to take over in that spot? After failing to win again and coming in last place yet again, do you think that you would finally understand that the problem you have is not that you picked the wrong 350 lb sprinter to be on your team, but rather that 350 lb people do not make good sprinters? If you were competing in Kyoto at the international Sumo championships you would have made the right choice, but sprinters by their very nature must be thin and, of course, fast. The same is true with social systems. The bigger they are the worse they run.

Living in the post-Katrina haze has shown me the exact same principle. It has been the churches and non-profit organizations that have run swiftly and efficiently in the urban aftermath, not FEMA. I am grateful for the federal assistance, but the overweight sprinter eats too much of her help packages and shows up late and overtired if she even makes it to the right house at all. The rampant nonsense of big, bloated bureaucracies is a matter of public record so why do people still look to her as their panacea?

It’s easy to cry, ‘stupidity!’ but I think it something much deeper and insidious. People like big government because it appeals to their lack of discipline and promises to unburden their lives. Big government seduces us into thinking that free is good even when we pay more for it and she likes to convince us that this time she really will go on a diet.