Regulating Away Private Charity

Is it better to starve or eat something that might be a little salty or a bit heavier on calories than the government would prefer? Well, Bloomberg’s agencies in New York think it’s better for people to go hungry than to eat something they haven’t tested for nutritional value.

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

The story highlights good samaritans who have been donating food for decades, but who have been turned away and their food turned down because of these new restrictions.

This is the kind of regulation designed to frustrate people into stopping their acts of charity and community work because the government knows best. If the bureaucrats can keep them from getting involved, then the government will be the only source for solving this “problem.” Reliance on government means more government employees who are doing more “good.”

I don’t mean to present this as a tinfoil hat type of conspiracy that the Bloomberg administration is purposefully letting people go hungry in order to create more dependency on the government. But, it is a mindset of many people who think up these regulations. They are the government and they know best. They might acknowledge that the good samaritans mean well, but they don’t care about motivations or even outcomes since clearly a government structure to organize it all is better than people getting involved from the community in a way that they cannot control with perfect certainty. They don’t particularly care that their restrictions may end a tradition of civic engagement because bureaucrats are paid to be engaged, they don’t need volunteers to do that work for them. It’s oddly logical when you’re working within a system that is always growing.

I actually believe that acts of private charity and civic involvement are the best ways to fight the expansion of government. Everyone heard the stories about how private companies and organizations were the first ones into New Orleans when the government workers wouldn’t get around to going in there and getting the goods the city residents needed. Normal folks, when they hear these kinds of stories about NYC turning down private food donations for the homeless, have a gut reaction that the government is going too far. It’s actually by being engaged at this level where small government advocates can pick up the stories and examples of how we don’t need the government to handle it all.