There Is No Charity in Bureaucracy

Why bureaucracies and large charities are, almost by definition, unsentimental:

The welfare state in fact dissolves the very notion of desert, because there is no requirement that a beneficiary prove he deserves what he is legally entitled to. And where what is given is given as of right, not only will a recipient feel no gratitude for it, but it must be given without compassion—that is, without regard to any individual’s actual situation. In the welfare state, the notion of a specially deserving case is prohibited, for it implies a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving. In my career, I was many times startled by the unfeelingness of welfare bureaucrats in the face of the most appalling, and non-self-inflicted, suffering.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.