Government Catch‐​22

The Washington Post reports today on the series of corruption scandals to hit Connecticut in recent years.


One scandal involved former Governor John Rowland, who was sentenced to jail for illegally accepting gifts. The Post quotes Rowland’s defense attorney lamenting that a new state legislature effort to crack down on corruption by imposing tighter rules will mean that “government will operate less efficiently.”


That illustrates a central conundrum of Big Government. Because today’s governments give away billions of dollars in contracts, grants, benefits, and loans they must have massive and complex bureaucratic rules to minimize the inevitable efforts to rip‐​off the taxpayer through fraud and corruption.


But all the red tape that is needed to prevent even the worst abuses results in the government working nowhere nearly as efficiently as private enterprise. Government bureaucrats, and anyone dealing with the government, spend an enormous amount of time and money filling out paperwork, but if you believe in big government programs, there is no way around that.


The only solution to excess bureaucracy and the chronic corruption in Washington and the states is to downsize government by moving activities to private competitive markets. See my book, Downsizing Government.