No Bull Mom

Bureaucracy is Bureacracy, No Matter How It's Packaged

From today's Wall Street Journal re the housing crisis:

"An Obama administration effort to reduce home foreclosures by lowering the mortgage payments of struggling borrowers before they fall behind is failing to help as many people as expected.

Among the problems: Some homeowners are being told they must be behind on their payments in order to receive help, which runs counter to the aim of the proposal. In other cases, delays are so long that borrowers who are current when they ask for a loan modification are delinquent by the time they receive one. There is also confusion about who qualifies."

The above exemplifies precisely why bureaucracy, or too much government oversight, always fails. It's like the difference between your local hardware store and Home Depot. Home Depot may try to be everything to everyone, but the service will never be comparable to the family-operated store down the street.

Here's another example from the WSJ -- this time about health care:

"The U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. The government-run health care system has pauperized the entire population. A pauper may be treated well or badly treated. But a pauper must accept what he is given."

Indeed.