Better That The Responsible Suffer

Editor’s note: I’ve been skull-deep in a home improvement project this week (and the week before, and the next week), so today I’m cranking the WABAC machine to May 2016, where I pondered how government’s response to the opioid epidemic mirrored its approach to other “help the public” matters.

The nation is in the midst of an opioid painkiller epidemic. At least, that’s what we’re being told by a hyperventilating press and a passel of politicians. If you want to cut through the chaff to some facts, start with this article over at Reason and then let Google do the walking. But, lets set that aside in favor of considering the default statist remedy for this and other perceived societal problems.

One prescription (pun intended) for combating this particular “epidemic” is more restrictive prescribing guidelines that include both reducing the quantity prescribed per visit and whether to prescribe them at all (vs suggesting over-the-counter painkillers, for example). At its core, the guidelines are about making things more difficult for everyone in order to help/deter abuse by a minority. People who need pain meds and can handle them responsibly have their access curtailed and their time consumed because the addicted or irresponsible minority (yes, there is a difference) is to be prioritized over the responsible majority.

This is the modus operandi of big government. If you are prudent, live within your means and manage your life effectively, you get punished so the imprudent and reckless can be absolved of responsibility for their imprudence and recklessness. If you work hard to provide for yourself, your income is taxed in order to support others. If you live frugally in order to save money, the interest you can earn on those savings doesn’t even keep up with inflation, because the government is choosing to keep interest rates artificially low. If you watch your weight, eat healthily and exercise regularly, you don’t get to pay lower health insurance rates because the government mandates community ratings. If you like to enjoy an occasional drink or cigarette, you pay punitive taxes meant to deter those who indulge heavily and to the detriment of their health. If you like to enjoy an occasional (insert illegal recreational drug of your choice), you’re debarred from doing so because someone else might do something improper in conjunction with his enjoyment of the same substance. Your tax dollars were used to bail out companies that made irresponsible loans (themselves prompted by a combination of the push of things like the Community Restoration Act and the pull that arose from NGOs like Fannie Mae buying up whatever garbage mortgages lenders were making), that managed themselves poorly (e.g. General Motors), and that convinced the government that their failure would have bad consequences for everyone else.

This behavior derives from a false conflation. We are taught that it’s a good thing to help the less fortunate. We are taught this by religion, in school, and by philosophy. The fact that these teachings have been persistent throughout history and across cultures strongly suggests that there is a biological mechanism involved, and, indeed, it feels good to help others. Where we run into trouble is when the act of helping others is subsumed by the government.

We believe helping others is a Good Thing. Some of us think that others aren’t as willing to help others as we believe they should be, so we empower government to do some of it for us. Some of us think that others who have more than we do should be helping more than they are, so we empower the government to take from them to do so. Some of us think we don’t have enough time or money that we’ll part with willingly to help others, so we empower the government to act on our behalf.

No matter the reason or rationalization, the transference of responsibility is the abdication of responsibility. This introduces two distortions.

First, it eliminates the natural check on assistance created by scarcity. If we’re dispensing our own money and time, we will judge who is most deserving of that help and who can manage without it. If the job is handed to the government, there’s no natural check against a person from saying “help everyone,” because the government is dispensing other people’s money (OPM) and buying time by spending OPM on government workers. No one manages OPM as well as they do their own.

Second, it eliminates the natural feedback mechanism. If someone helps someone else out, then sees the person he helped out spending that money on booze and cigarettes instead of rent and food, he’s less likely to continue funding irresponsible behavior. If I hire someone to do some work for me, figuring that he could earn some money, and he does a lousy job, I can fire him or point out that he needs to work better. If I hear someone needs help, but see him with the latest smart phone, tablet, designer clothes, and other signs of profligate spending, I might choose to help another.

Then there’s the moral hazard that is greatly amplified when direct assistance is changed over to government-managed help. If someone’s risk is back-stopped by an impersonal entity that doesn’t care as much about managing resources and that can be influenced or bought, that someone is likely to act in a more risky manner. In other words, likely to act more irresponsibly.

Government, being impersonal and broad-brush in its actions, thus finds itself in a situation where it needs to do more than would be done were it not involved in the first place. The excuse for shifting help from private to public management is the (usually unsupported) assertion that private help is insufficient, that without government intervention, many who need help wouldn’t get it. This is self-fulfilling, since many who would be prompted to help others feel that the government’s assumption of that role means they don’t have to.

Thus, we have abdication of responsibility, transference of risk and amplification of moral hazard. It’s no wonder that government’s efforts to help the poor and protect people from themselves continue to grow and continue to fail. These phenomena also translate over to the other form of government “help,” i.e. restrictions and prohibitions intended to curtail potentially self-harming behaviors, with similar results.

Consider three major government initiatives, intended to help either by proving assistance and by regulating behavior.

Social Security was created in 1935. Today, at least half of all retirees consider Social Security to be a major source of their retirement income, but Social Security is actuarially broke, and will eventually lose the ability to fund its obligations. When that happens, the government will have to raise taxes, means-test, borrow money, print money, push the retirement age, or simply tell people “sorry, you don’t get what we promised you.” Raising taxes will impact the responsible more than the irresponsible, means-testing will do the same, and printing and borrowing will devalue the wealth of those who’ve accumulated it (those who haven’t won’t be as affected). The last two options, which are probably the most responsible actions the government could take, are also the ones that will generate the greatest outrage from the irresponsible.

The War on Poverty was declared in 1964. Total welfare spending in 1966 was about $12B ($88B in current dollars). Total welfare spending today is about $400B/year. The poverty rate today is about the same as it was in 1966. One might think that half a century of this war, and trillions spent, might have done better than “about the same.” One might be a starry-eyed optimist with too much faith in government.

The War on Drugs was declared in 1971. The War on Drugs has utterly failed to curtail drug use or availability, with anyone willing to take on an iota of risk able to get any drug, in purer form than ever, he wishes. One might think that it’s time to end this colossal failure. Instead, we are told that everyone needs to be further burdened to deal with an “epidemic” of abuse. The responsible, the people who are given a bottle of Vicodin after a major surgery and still have half that bottle in the back of their medicine cabinets years later (because they only used what they needed), are going to have their access to pain meds further restricted to try and “help” those who have chosen irresponsibility. Addiction is both powerful and terribly difficult to overcome, but not every user is an addict, and instead of demonstrably useless bans and restrictions that harm everyone, efforts should be dedicated to helping addicts instead of making life harder for non-addicts.

All three of these initiatives burden the responsible in order to offset the consequences that the irresponsible might otherwise suffer. Whether it be confiscation of earnings via taxation or restriction of behaviors by regulation and prohibition, government tells people “good citizens will be used to absolve bad citizens.” Is it any wonder that these major government initiatives haven’t worked out as intended?

We, as individuals and collectively via private organizations, can and do help those in need. We don’t burden others when we do so, and there are neither pressures nor incentives to burden others when we do so. Private charities compete for scarce dollars, and that competition drives efficiency. Just as a poorly run business will be competed out by others, a poorly run charity will find itself losing contributions to better ones.

Government, on the other hand, both by its nature and by the myriad pressures and incentives that arise, does burden others when it seeks to help some. Those it burdens are those who least need its help i.e. those who live their lives responsibly and self-sufficiently. In seeking to help the needy and manage the imprudent, government punishes prudence and makes it more difficult for the responsible to help others themselves.