https://mises.org/wire/shutdown-shows-us-how-unreliable-and-harmful-government-can-really-be
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They document some of the problems due to the government shutdown. However, long wait times at airport security, problems providing food stamps, difficulties with affordable housing contracts expirations, meeting payrolls, etc., etc., do not disprove that “government is the problem.”
To illustrate this, remember that there are many things the government does that it has no business doing. Say one of them was creating a bureaucracy that had the power to decide on issuing “free speech” permits, which they sold to those approved to speak on particular public issues (you might think that could never happen, especially given the First Amendment, but it is not so different from the effects of the fairness doctrine for broadcast radio before the Reagan administration eliminated it) or that administered the civil asset forfeiture abuses of their citizens. Neither advances our general welfare. Neither comports with the logic or core documents of America’s founding. Yet people would adapt to the rules they were faced with, and their expectations would come to incorporate them. If at that point, a government shutdown shut off funding to those bureaucracies, those disappointed expectations would cause people difficulties. Complaints on that score, however, do not demonstrate that such government functions will be considered more valuable than before as a result.
MCViewPoint 