Government tantrums: "Perception of a legitimate deficiency"
News ·Sunday May 10, 2009 @ 00:46 EDT (link)
Many Contra Costa crooks won't be prosecuted:
"Misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts and burglaries will no longer be prosecuted in Contra Costa County because of budget cuts, the county's top prosecutor said Tuesday." Pertinent comment from LiveJournal Libertarians:
For the sake of argument, let's assume for a minute that there were legitimate and desirable functions performed by this department. The ones I spotted are shoplifting/trespass/vandalism, so focus on those.
This kind of [stuff] will make your blood boil if you think about it for too long. Basically, any time a government department has to allocate resources during a period of "cuts" (or more realistically these days, "no increases" or "increases less than expected") the resources will always be denied to the areas that most crucially need them so as to create the perception of a legitimate deficiency. These childish antics are precisely why no amount of money can seem to fix the public education system. When increases are less than expected, the department will throw a tantrum; pay raises for teachers and administrators within the bureaucracy will simply be fed first (allocated a greater share of the pool) and money for books, buildings, etc. will be last. Why? Because mom and dad can see the effects of crumbling buildings and 1980's textbooks but couldn't give a rat's ass about the teacher's new car. Same thing with infrastructure and transportation. If you're in charge of the highway department and facing a cut, the last thing y
ou want to do is start fixing pot holes. You want to allocate resources as inefficiently as possible so as to guarantee the perception of deficiency.
So see if you spot the irony: a 35 year veteran prosecutor (want to take a stab at his salary?) is complaining about budget cuts that, by his account, will force his office to become redundant. Read that again until you get it. In the private sector this would be the equivalent of occupational suicide. It's a catch 22: either you fire some staff and take some other sane efficiency measures, or you can throw a toddler's temper tantrum and effectively cut off your nose to spite your face. The latter is only a viable tactic in the good old boy zero accountability land of the government.
Well said, sir, well said. Just another tactic big government uses to perpetuate and propagate itself, even in times where private enterprise, not being able to steal from the taxpayer but dependent upon voluntary contracts and satisfying customer demand, has to make tough and deep cuts.
This ties in well with the book I just read, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government (link below), where Murray examines the effect of throwing money at a cause, and how it is usually a net negative due to various psychological and sociological factors. (He makes this case based on the happiness of all concerned, without needing to appeal to libertarian principles of personal freedom and (severely) limited government, which not everyone will embrace, although I submit that those that don't must either desire power, beneficial income transfers, or are mentally defective.)
Books finished: Trading Chaos, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government.
