Removed Children Treated Poorly, Moms Say
14th April 2008
There’s this widespread delusion that what government agents do is ipso facto superior to what individual citizens can (or can be trusted to) do because government agents represent the “best and brightest” expertise available.
Anybody who’s ever dealt with the government knows this to be horseshit. On average, government employees are dumber and more arrogant than most private sector employees, and the reason for that is not hard to find: They and their bosses aren’t subject to the discipline of the market, so they have less incentive to work for their “customers” (us) than for themselves.
The essential flaw in such nanny-state institutions as Child Welfare agencies is that it attracts the sort of know-it-alls who think that they know better how to raise other people’s children than the people themselves do — and that “expertise” gives them, not just the right, but the moral obligation to interfere whenever they choose.
There may perhaps be a case to make that in some portion of the available situations they’re correct. But that still doesn’t authorize them to act as high-handedly as they do. Just because I may know better than you what you ought to be doing doesn’t authorize me to tell you (much less force you under color of law) to live your life my way.
And there’s always Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy lurking in the background.