Why do people have blind faith in bureaucracy? Large bureaucracies are never efficient and as the state gets bigger the abuses get worse. That doesn’t stop progressives from giving up on their faith based ideas. In fact, their bureaucratic comrades take it a step further by manufacturing problems. We’ve seen this first hand as the White House attempted to use its power to make the sequester worse. Why not? There’s a growing state to protect.
This week we’ve learned that bureaucrats are manufacturing crime. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) has had a long history of killing Americans without due process. One might ask the question, why does the ATF even exist? Alcohol, tobacco and firearms are legal in the United States. So what are our tax dollars paying for?
The most recent ATF malfeasance involves using mentally challenged teens to set up drug and gun stings. It gets even worse. Our tax dollars were used to coerce these poor kids into getting neck tattoos to advertise the fake storefront….
Aaron Key wasn’t sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint. But the guys running Squid’s Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store.
They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards. Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed. He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid’s. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, “Squid,” and the store clerks.
So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones. It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid’s were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street. The tattoos had been sponsored by the U.S. government; advertisements for a fake storefront.
Gotta love bureaucrats, but you can blame them? A bureaucracy that actually solves problems wouldn’t be a safe job for a bureaucrat. Why do progressives distrust corporations, but have so much faith in the state? Are bureaucrats somehow immune to selfishness? It’s delusional thinking and it infects how the educated class thinks about everything from health care, the environment, and settled economics like the minimum wage. You can’t argue with people who “want to believe.” Believing in social justice means never having to say you’re sorry for the havoc your policy preferences create.
If you talk to progressives it’s inevitable they’ll mention one extraordinary example after another to justify their position. A person shouldn’t have to go bankrupt in order to get health care. A person can’t support a family on the minimum wage. Who are these people? Why are they immune to bad choices? Why don’t they have a free will? Why are taxpayers responsible? American’s are generally charitable. We have spent trillions in safety net programs. Most of these programs are inefficient. The nation hasn’t been able to reduce poverty since the Great Society. Progressives would argue that it’s because we haven’t spent enough, but they offer very little compelling evidence that spending more would help.
Spending more only makes the state bigger: a bigger and more powerful state that is in bed with powerful corporate interests. These two groups are in a mutually beneficial arrangement. The rich stakeholders use the government to stamp out competition. You see this in the airline industry, farm subsides, and in the telecommunications industry. Why is this so difficult for so many to see? It’s not the rich vs. the state. It’s the state/rich vs. the Forgotten Man: the average American taxpayer.
