Sometimes people ask me why I don't want the government to help people, with the insinuation being that I don't want people to get help. That's not it at all.
It's just that it's almost impossible for governments to get it right when they try. Back during the beginning of the pandemic, when we were worried about shortages of ethanol-based hand sanitizer, several distilleries switched some of their production lines to making it. After all, they know how to work with ethanol.
But because of new regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the distilleries that made the santizer became "monograph drug facilities" that made an over-the-counter medical product. To do that, the FDA requires a license, and to receive a license, the FDA would like distilleries to do a little favor for them: Write them checks.
The craft distilleries that switched their production lines managed to use their facilities to help reduce potential shortages and keep their workers employed when other government regulations forced them to shut down much of their more lucrative business activities like tasting rooms.
We often focus on elected officials as the source of many of our problems, and when we hear a self-serving primadonna like Missouri's Josh Hawley talk about how he will not vote to certify the results of Electoral College balloting when Congress is sworn in January 6 it's hard to believe they are not the biggest factor in government dysfunction. Term limits are suggested as the curative for this particular ill and maybe they would do some good. It would be nice to have something that automatically prevents Hawaii voters from making Mazie Hirono the nation's problem instead of just theirs.
But something like the FDA assessing distilleries facing economic hardship with licensing costs to allow them to be able to pitch in and help doesn't come from elected officials. It comes from un-elected government workers who have no term limits. No legislator proposed the fees. No Representative argued for them. No Senator approved them. And as idiotic as the elected personnel we hire to run our government may be, they frequently find themselves without a candle to hold when compared to the un-elected personnel somebody else hired.
Sometimes in football games a runner out of the backfield will lose yardage because he runs into his own offensive line. The linemen are trying to help but wound up destroying the play they were meant to make happen. Poor people have enough problems without playing the running back in that scenario to the federal government's offensive line.
So many people who want the government to help people don't want to help the people themselves. They want to write someone else a check, or, more likely, compel someone else to write the government a check to do the work they should be doing themselves.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the government helps itself first.