By Zaldy Dandan – Variety Editor
IN “Man Versus State,” a book published in 1884, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer noted, much to his dismay, that even when government “has manifestly caused the mischief complained of, faith in its beneficent agency is not at all diminished….” Government’s “misdoings become…reasons for praying it to do more!” He called this “worship of the legislature” — that is, faith in the transformational powers of government through its policymaking and legislative authority. Spencer observed that “the civilized man persists in ascribing to this idol made with his own hands, power which in one way or other it confesses it has not got.”
By the time Spencer wrote his book in the late 19th century, Great Britain had already been enacting laws since the 13th century. One example he cited was legislation intended to assist the poor. A commission reported: “We find, on the one hand, that there is scarcely one statute connected with the administration of public relief which has produced the effect designed by the legislature, and that the majority of them have created new evils, and aggravated those which they were intended to prevent.”
Spencer died in 1903. Since then, governments not only in Britain but in many other countries have continued to pursue legislation aimed at improving lives — especially those of the poor — regardless of its efficacy. “To do something,” after all, is what many voters in democracies, then and now, expect of government.
Ask voters what they think about politics and politicians in general, and the response will usually include terms of abuse. Yet Spencer noted that once politicians take their seats in legislatures and other government offices, they often inspire great confidence. “Judging from the prayers made to them,” he wrote, “there is nothing which their wisdom and their power cannot compass.”
But to blame politics for its inefficiencies is like blaming the sky for being blue. Politics, at its worst, merely magnifies human failings. Humanity is deeply flawed, and through politics we choose which of our fellow flawed humans will govern the rest of us — then expect things to improve.
Ultimately, politics is driven by popularity. And what is popular is often harmful, if not disastrous, to the very people it is meant to benefit. Consider welfare laws — or, for that matter, any statute that seeks to regulate how we live our lives.
The most we can reasonably expect from politics is politicians who can minimize its inefficiencies and prevent them from obstructing the country’s well-being.
But ultimately, politics is politics, and it permeates government the way water saturates a mattress.
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Now consider this recent news from the world’s oldest continuous constitutional democracy.
According to the Government Accountability Office, as reported by National Review, improper payments “have consistently been a government-wide issue,” and 2025 was no exception.
The GAO estimated $186 billion in improper payments last fiscal year, up $24 billion from the year before.
“For perspective, $186 billion is larger than the budgets of ten Cabinet departments, more than seven times NASA’s budget, and over 18 times the budget of the entire federal judiciary. In the private sector, it is roughly three times Pfizer’s annual revenue, twice that of PepsiCo, and slightly more than JPMorgan Chase.
“Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this staggering figure is that it is likely an underestimate, since many federal programs do not report improper-payment data to the GAO. Among those that do, the highest amounts are found in Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program….
“The report was conducted between August 2025 and April 2026, entirely during the Trump administration, which emphasized rooting out fraud. Yet only three programs reported significant declines in improper payments since fiscal year 2024, while eight reported increases. Improper payments remain a trillion-dollar problem without easy solutions.”
Again, this is the United States — not a “third-world” country.
Three years ago, the late (great) David Boaz of the Cato Institute wrote that in 2009, as the federal government was rolling out the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program and preparing another $787 billion stimulus package, he published a post titled “How to Spend a Trillion Dollars without Waste and Fraud.” The first line: “You can’t.”
It wasn’t the first such case, he said. The reconstruction of Iraq, hurricane relief programs, and the 1990s savings-and-loan bailout are among the most egregious examples of wasteful, fraud-ridden government spending in recent U.S. history.
Boaz also cited reports of massive waste and fraud in Covid-19 relief spending. According to an Associated Press analysis, fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, that represents roughly 10% of total disbursements. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general has also estimated that more than $200 billion may have been stolen from pandemic relief programs.
No. The “lesson” is not that government should do more, but that we should be honest about what it can do well. When inefficiency becomes routine and waste becomes systemic, the burden of proof should rest not on those who question government expansion, but on those who insist upon it.
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Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the NMI Society of Professional Journalists’ Best in Editorial Writing Award and the NMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His four books are available on amazon.com/.
