Department of Perverse Incentives

by Smitty

Brigette of the Moralia blog calls attention to a post of hers over at the New Mexico Independent, entitled "They’re Uncle Sam’s kids now — he paid for them".

The gist of the article is that once the government is picking up the tab for everything, it gets to dictate the terms. If a school or daycare or other service is funded to provide X service for Y children, then it is going to do exactly that. Doing more or doing less is a violation of regulations.

The general problem at work is that the means become ends unto themselves. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, if you will.

Now, if there was an alternative, it would not be so evil. Yet, this is your government: it has a monopoly power to extract as much treasure from you as desired to fund these services. And yet, the words "Federal dollars" are tossed about with such abandon that they seem to come from some Cosmic Credit Card, and not ultimately the people.

It's as though the Marxists, realizing they could not achieve their utopia through a head-on revolution, are oozing it under the door with gradual increases in federal control and intrusion into life. Sold beautifully, one must admit, in the name of some nebulous 'fairness', and combating an equally indistinct raaaaacism.

Training you to be subservient to a school at the expense of the family is a part of destroying the family. Picking up on these details, of course, marks us as reactionaries. I say, "So be it, not Soviet." It's Federalism or bust: