Once a governmental program is instituted, a specific clientele is born, with clearly defined interests in both the maintenance and expansion of the program’s benefits. These interests make themselves felt politically, with the familiar concentration of pressures toward expansion as opposed to the dissipated opposition reflected in the generality of the taxes used to finance the benefits. Even if the structure of a program is widely acknowledged as producing undesired results, it may prove politically impossible to work out the set of compromises and compensations that would be required either to replace or to reform the program in accordance with the promotion of shared objectives.
-James Buchanan (The Economic Constitution and the new Deal: Lessons for late learners)
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
