Bailouts lead to socialism

I liked this article, I especially liked the graphic.

Here's one of the often overlooked problems with socialism: there is no diversity. When citizens are expected to save for their own retirement, some make good decisions, and some make bad decisions. When bureaucrats decide that the government should take the citizens money and save it for them, there is no diversity. If the government is responsible, everyone wins. If the government squanders the money, everyone loses. Since the government is not known for being responsible, it should not be surprising that everyone will most likely lose.

Here's a hypothetical. Let's say the government has socialized health care. The bureaucrats realize they are spending lots of money on treatment for breast cancer. Being smart bureaucrats, they know that early detection is the best way to fight breast cancer, so they mandate that every woman over 35 must get a mammogram every year. That way they will be able to catch breast cancer early, and treatments will be less expensive. So, every woman in the U.S. over 35 gets a mammogram every year, and the breast cancer rate surges. What happened? Well, some researchers are now linking mammograms to breast cancer. Since there is no diversity, the wrong decisions of the bureaucrats negatively impact everyone.

It is also inevitable that the government will be more intrusive when it is more financially invested in our lives. If the government is paying for insulin for diabetics they will try to stop people from drinking soda and eating fast food. Some bureaucrats may try a patriarchal approach to nudge you in the right direction, and others may try heavy handed approaches. But it is an unavoidable reality that the more the government controls, the more financially invested they are in our decisions, the more the government will want to control or limit our decision-making. They might want to control our decisions to reduce costs, to save the environment, to help the poor, or to get into better shape. Almost all of it will have good intentions, but if the ends do not justify the means, then certainly the pursuit of the ends shouldn't justify the means either.