Tim Almond

From The Times

From this the Tories draw the conclusion that government policy should be to look beyond direct state intervention, beyond the delivery of public services by public sector structures and bureacracies, and rope in a rainbow of freelance initiatives. Grants should be easier to get, hybrid partnerships between local authorities and citizens’ groups should be easier to set up. The public sector’s ancient distrust of what it sees as amateurism outside its gates, should be replaced by an open invitation by the State to us all, to find ways of helping each other.

….

Mr Cameron may find that the reason the small platoons he wants to rope in to a national plan have been succeeding is that they have not been roped in to a national plan. No targets; no mission statements; no inspectors; no departmental imperatives; no health ’n’ safety; no paperwork; in some cases no year-end accounts. Their clients among the poor have not seen themselves as having “rights” nor their staff as having “duties”.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. He who pays the piper calls the tune. The moment they get funded by government, government becomes their master. Instead of meeting the objectives of the organisation (which donors hand over money to support), they also have meet the political requirements of government. In no time, they’ll become quasi-government departments.

Arguably, we create the government, so these charities will do our bidding, right? Well, no. We vote for government every few years on a whole basket of policies. Giving to charity is part of the free market, which Von Mises correctly observed as a "daily plebiscite" (it’s more frequent than that). A charity that fails to deliver on its objectives, or upsets its donors will lose support, people will take their money away. Government is much slower to be decisive about these things.

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Tags: Politics //