Why is this?
1) Government is found to wasteful, full of fraud, and rife with abuse.
2) A blue ribbon committee composed mostly of practical business folks is created to identify the problems and craft a program to build some market discipline into government processes, e.g. Grace Commission
3) If any of the suggestions of the blue ribbon committee are followed then government may in the short run become a little better run.
4) However, in the long run, the government is now no longer perceived as a separate kind of entity ... one that can enforce its will at the point of a gun and the threat of an IRS audit. Instead it is viewed as just another source of products and services that might otherwise be provided by private businesses.
5) Finally the people buy into this and we no longer have a healthy niggardly attitude towards transferring powers over to government. Instead we have a quasi-pragmatical case-by-case discussion of what things government can do conceivably better or more fairly than business.
Thus do we travel down the road to serfdom.
1) Government is found to wasteful, full of fraud, and rife with abuse.
Well, first of all b/c this - and/or any -- government is managed and maintained by human beings, not angels comes down from heaven. Human being subject to all the follies and foibles that...well, that human being are error to. An excuse? No. An explanation? Yes.
Secondly, "found to wasteful, full of fraud, and rife with abuse" according to whom? Those on the outside looking in (those out of power) or those on the inside themselves (those in power)? Of course there are times when it's easy for anyone to see the whole thing is a rotten, stinking mess from top to bottom; but I suspect more times then not the charges of waste, fraud and abuse comes from envy, greed, and ambition.
2) A blue ribbon committee composed mostly of practical business folks is created to identify the problems and craft a program to build some market discipline into government processes, e.g. Grace Commission
The problem here is that government --any government -- was formed for, and is in the business of, administration. It is trying to put feathers on a fish. Unlike business(es) it has no competition, it doesn't have to woo its "customers", it can print its own money, it can (theoretically) answer to no one. Sort of like the continual comparison between socialism and capitalism, a case of apples and oranges if there ever was one: Socialism is an administrative concept. Capitalism is an economic concept.
3) If any of the suggestions of the blue ribbon committee are followed then government may in the short run become a little better run.
Granted, but bare in mind that blue ribbon committees come and blue ribbon committees go, but government bureaucracy, like the kudzu vine, goes on forever.
4) However, in the long run, the government is now no longer perceived as a separate kind of entity ... one that can enforce its will at the point of a gun and the threat of an IRS audit. Instead it is viewed as just another source of products and services that might otherwise be provided by private businesses.
I question this. Where this truly the case, our blood would not run cold upon receipt of a thick letter from the IRS.
5) Finally the people buy into this and we no longer have a healthy niggardly attitude towards transferring powers over to government.
And here is that famous fork in the road: By "we" do you mean "we, the people" or "we, the people of the state(s)"?
Instead we have a quasi-pragmatical case-by-case discussion of what things government can do conceivably better or more fairly than business.
Which, IMHO, is as it should be for most cases. While for civilized interaction the Law generally requires broad, sweeping brush strokes, i.e. red means stop, etc. those who enforce the Law are enjoined to handle many -- most?-- things on a "quasi-pragmatical case-by-case" bases.