Are all government programs bad?

I have a relative who works in government.  Their bureau isn’t one of the bad ones that kill people or arrest them.  They help with public health research and education, but not regulation.  They believe in what they do, and challenge my libertarian beliefs on those grounds.

I point out that I believe that what they do is a valid and important social product, and if it was up to me I’d certainly eliminate their program among the last to be eliminated.  The question I pose, to highlight the problem with this program, is where their funding comes from?

Taxes.

I ask: do you personally go out and collect these taxes, carrying guns in case those who don’t pay taxes try to resist arrest?

They find the question to be ridiculous, as you’d expect.  Nevertheless, while it’s a very important question because it highlights the fact that bureaucrats take funding completely for granted and only focus on product not cost (which real life people like entrepreneurs are forced to consider), the question itself is sort of a libertarian cliché.  My next question is more to the point.

I ask: the funding you get could have gone to this purpose, or that purpose, perhaps to health research and education in a field other than yours; how do you know that your use of that money is more justified than someone else’s purpose?

Following a moment of blank out, my relative starts literally screaming at me that if they didn’t research the health topic in question no one would, and the people affected by the issue would be forgotten and die.  The screaming is because my line of questioning is perceived as a rejection of the needs of these unprivileged persons, and the fact that my morality is equal to that of literally Hitler’s is too frightening to deal with.  The conversation then ends because, “it’s just too hard to talk to you, you’re too stubborn and have no compassion.”

I’ve written about liberal psychology before.  I think it’s present here.  But the point is that I don’t think bureaucrats really ask these questions.  I’ve known people with a progressive outlook who do have answers to these questions.  They insist that certain things are public goods, which naturally need the government to do its best managing them.  The government, comprised of experts, takes as much money out of the private economy as is optimal, and distributes it among the public good categories according to need and impact.  The questions I’ve asked are considered, and they contend that a sincere attempt at optimization is made.

I think that this line of argument is totally bonkers.  I’m not sure that there is much of any optimization in the government.  The government deficit spends so much, why is it that we can’t simply double funding for health research?  We quadruple it for nukes, or whatever.  The Fed has left the money spigot totally open, with no apparent inflation – and pro-government economists insist that there wouldn’t and won’t be.  So, guys, why not quintuple health research?

It’s because the budget process is just sort of a big mess.  Health research spending exists because politics once, for some reason, favored the idea – and politics currently doesn’t favor repealing it, even if it mostly ignores it.

What my relative does truly helps many many people.  But it’s problematic in ways that supporters of the bureaucracy can’t admit.